tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-113937232024-03-07T13:41:07.579-06:00The Fire and the RoseAnd all shall be well and /
All manner of thing shall be well /
When the tongues of flame are in-folded /
Into the crowned knot of fire /
And the fire and the rose are one.
— T.S. EliotUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger931125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-23709556046762006542018-04-09T10:16:00.004-05:002018-04-09T16:48:33.382-05:00The Gift of Thomas: A Sermon<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Gift of Thomas</b></div>
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Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL</div>
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April 8, 2018</div>
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Second Sunday of Easter</div>
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Lectionary texts: Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31</div>
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It is real joy for me to be back here among you all. It fills me with great emotion to see all these familiar faces. I bring Easter greetings from Amy, Aidyn, and Elliya. Wherever we go, we sing the praises of Holy Nativity, and we are constantly filled with a longing to be with you all again. This is a special place, and we were blessed to find a home here for the five years we lived in Chicagoland.<br />
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Some of you know that when we first arrived at CHN, Amy and I were not in the best place. We had just left New Jersey after seven years. During those years we were both fired from a Presbyterian church for not requiring the youth we were leading to attend church, and then a couple years later I was fired from another church for affirming the full inclusion of LGBT people. By the time we moved to Downers Grove I was in the middle of my PhD program, and we were both pretty much done with church. We knew we needed more than a fresh start; we needed healing. And we found that here. The sad conclusion to that story, as most of you know, is that after five years here I was fired again, this time from the evangelical Christian organization that I had been working for since moving to the area, because my beliefs were deemed not to be in alignment with their statement of faith.<br />
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I share this to explain why, over the past year, Amy and I have become very involved in online networks of ex-Christians and ex-evangelicals. Some of you may have seen stories about the group of people who have no religious affiliation, often called the “nones.” It’s the fastest growing religious category in the country; they aren’t necessarily atheists, but they no longer identify with any religious institution. Amy and I feel a deep kinship with these people and we’ve gotten to know many of them. The online groups we’re involved with are full of “nones,” many with stories far more harrowing than my own; many of them have experienced gaslighting by pastors, have faced emotional and sexual abuse, were shunned or kicked out for being gay or simply for refusing to place doctrine over the well-being of people’s lives. These social networks are full of people hurting deeply, seeking friends in the wake of spiritual loss and emotional wreckage. Many of them are triggered by the very sight of a church. For them Christian churches are the secret locations of their trauma, not the hospitals for their healing.<br />
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Many of these people will never set foot in a church again. Many of them will never believe in God again. Many of them couldn’t even if they wanted to, since God has become little more than the cosmic manifestation of the abusive power that was wielded against them by the people charged with caring for their souls.<br />
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These people know what it means to doubt. For them—for me—“Doubting Thomas” is one of those characters with whom we can truly relate.<br />
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*****</div>
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If you’re like me, the story of Doubting Thomas can be quite liberating. It was freeing to hear a Bible story normalize doubt. As an intellectually skeptical teenager, I could look at Thomas and see my questions about the authenticity of the gospel spoken aloud and validated. In the same way that the Psalms validate expressions of anger at God, so too Thomas affirmed my curiosity and quest for knowledge.<br />
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But the story was rarely if ever told this way. In the hands of many youth leaders and pastors over the years, the story of Thomas became the story of what not to be, an admonition to precocious kids and independent thinkers to get back in line. Jesus seemed to be looking out over the course of history directly at me and saying: “Don’t be like Thomas over here, asking for proof. Believe me without any evidence. Just trust me!”<br />
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Now to be sure this can be a freeing message in its own way. For the 99.999% of people who didn’t live in the first century, the words of Jesus assure us that we are no worse off, that we aren’t bereft of God’s blessing just because of some historical accident of birth. And biblical scholars speculate that this is what John had in mind in this passage. We have to remember that this Gospel was written at least two generations after the time of Jesus, so the original eyewitnesses had all died, probably long ago. There was little by way of “proof” for the young Christian communities to hold on to. In narrating the story of Thomas, the Gospel writer was almost certainly speaking to his community through the person of Jesus, reassuring them that they are blessed for believing even without seeing Jesus face-to-face.<br />
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But the story of Doubting Thomas easily transforms into something less comforting and more controlling when church leaders use him as an example of what not to be, namely, someone who questions, challenges, and demands proof. According to many a sermon, Jesus says we are blessed for having blind faith—a faith that believes completely without seeing anything.<br />
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We are perched here on the edge of a knife—between “you can believe without evidence” and “you must believe without evidence.” On the one hand there is a much-needed freedom from constantly needing to have your knock-down arguments for God’s existence, your historical sources for Jesus’ death and resurrection, your sophisticated theological defenses for your particular tradition, your knowledge that your religion is true and right. On the other hand, though, there is the grave danger of falling into what we might call Authoritarian Religion. Authoritarianism is a form of social life that concentrates all power in the hands of a central power and requires blind submission to authority; authoritarian leadership denies the freedom of individuals to question or disobey its decisions. You may have heard this term in the news, since our current government displays many of the trademark tendencies of authoritarianism, most clearly seen in the way certain leaders oppose the work of journalists and claim that truth is a function of power: whatever these leaders say is supposedly true, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Authoritarianism says: “Just trust me! Don’t listen to all those doubters and skeptics. I have all the answers, and anything you hear to the contrary is #fakenews.”<br />
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Many people in the media have been scratching their heads as to why over 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, but we need look no further than the story of Doubting Thomas. For many evangelicals, this story provides biblical support for authoritarianism, both in the church and, by extension, in the government. On this reading, Jesus is telling us to blindly submit to his authority, and to the authority of anyone who assumes his divinely appointed role—whether that’s the priest ministering to the congregation or the president ministering to the public.<br />
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Once the church heads down this path—silencing all opposition and forcing people to sacrifice their intellect and will—it opens the door wide to the very abuses that have led so many of my friends to abandon Christianity altogether. In a time of Authoritarian Religion, we need more Doubting Thomases, more people who ask difficult questions and refuse to believe blindly.<br />
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The problem with Thomas was not that he asked for evidence; it was that he was blind to the evidence already around him. The problem was not that Thomas asked to see too much but that he was able to see too little.<br />
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*****</div>
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Thomas, we might say, had a restricted range of vision and a limited imagination. He was only satisfied with one kind of proof: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” As if Jesus were only visible in one particular body, as if he were exclusively revealed in these particular physical marks. Thomas had a highly literal mind; he was a kind of fundamentalist.<br />
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If only Thomas had been there a few moments earlier, he would have realized his mistake. Earlier Jesus had told the other disciples, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” and, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” In other words, through the giving of the Spirit, Jesus empowered his disciples to be his bodily presence on earth in his absence. The followers of Jesus are sent to be Christ for others. But that means when Thomas says he will only believe on the condition he sees Jesus, he has completely missed the point—though, in his defense, he wasn’t there. Nevertheless, Thomas does not realize he has already seen Jesus: he sees Jesus in the faces of his fellow disciples. <br />
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With the eyes to see, Thomas could have found Jesus in other places as well. Recall the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 25, in which the righteous ask the king, “When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king’s answer is that “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:37–40).<br />
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Thomas wanted to see the risen Lord, but his eyesight was far too literal, his imagination too limited. He couldn’t see the truth: that Jesus was risen already in Thomas’s friends and neighbors, in the impoverished and imprisoned, in the often surprising places where the Spirit of Jesus is active. Thomas was still stuck in the past and so missed the new thing that God was doing in the present. Thomas was right to demand proof, but the proof he should have needed was not the literal body of Jesus but rather the larger body of Christ, the diverse, global community of people who are sent into the world just as Jesus was sent: to be the manifestation of God’s love, the aroma of Christ (2 Cor 2:15).<br />
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How appropriate then that the lectionary places today’s Gospel reading alongside the passage from the Acts of the Apostles, which serves as the very proof that Thomas was looking for:<br />
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Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32–35)<br />
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This is a vision of the church as the body of Christ in action, a people living in accordance with their calling. If our Gospel reading describes Jesus sending his disciples to be the church, then the reading from Acts describes what this ideally looks like: a community of true equality and justice.<br />
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But lest we get too comfortable and start to congratulate ourselves for being the church, how many of us have ever been in a church like the one described in Acts 4? How many of us have seen a community where no one was in need because everything was held in common and shared equally? By contrast, how many of us have instead been in communities where many were in need, where some were made to feel unwelcome, where some were even harmed and abused? How many of us have seen places call themselves churches while actively perpetuating the injustices in our society?<br />
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The point is that we need more Thomases—not Thomases with a limited imagination for where Jesus is present, but Thomases who will demand proof that a community of faith is truly the living body of Christ. Thomases who will hold communities accountable to the Acts 4 vision of the church. Thomases who will refuse to believe until they see the marks of Jesus in the hands and sides of the people called to be bearers of the gospel.<br />
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This is why I embrace my ex-Christian friends, for they are my Thomases. Their gift and calling is to be the one who says: “Prove it. Prove that you are who you say you are. Let me see your hands. Let me see your sides. Show me that Jesus is really alive in your life.”<br />
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For the rest of us, our job is not to convince them to join the church. We cannot expect those who have been abused and harmed by spiritual leaders to ever set foot in a church again, much less to react like Thomas did by crying out, “My Lord and my God!” The only reason I remain connected to Christianity is because of this community, because of the love I was shown here at CHN, and even then there are many weeks where I don’t know if I have the will to carry on as a Christian. But that’s OK, because Jesus isn’t alive only within the church, because the Spirit of God is not limited to these walls, because when my will fails the Spirit “intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). My friends and I may not find God in the church, but God can still certainly find us.<br />
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So no, your job and mine is not to convince the “nones” to check the box “Christian” on the next survey or census. Rather our job is to live in such a way that our ex-Christian neighbors can say, “I may never be able to call myself a Christian again, but I know for damn sure that Jesus is alive in this place.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-12765767391386284662017-11-13T15:55:00.000-06:002017-11-13T15:55:33.167-06:00Why some Christians think transgender is gnostic—and why they’re wrong<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPURSStz7c8rgy_yKRYUM3OB0AOfEArHA5Mx3kDodQL9a2MFoXw7BjOlpmOgI5FbjBXUrQMyrmjSog-B-r9hofASWQaUGjS1DjhYTlXEHKtLZvvkt-WujQUQoAcU3gDbQbR7EN/s1600/DGlh2KqV0AE5S8x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="938" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPURSStz7c8rgy_yKRYUM3OB0AOfEArHA5Mx3kDodQL9a2MFoXw7BjOlpmOgI5FbjBXUrQMyrmjSog-B-r9hofASWQaUGjS1DjhYTlXEHKtLZvvkt-WujQUQoAcU3gDbQbR7EN/s400/DGlh2KqV0AE5S8x.jpg" width="312" /></a>This past summer the well-known New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, made <a href="https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/NT-Wright-attacks-fashionable-fantasy-of-allowing-children-to-choose-their-own-gender">headlines</a> for his letter to the London<i> Times</i> in which he claimed that “the confusion about gender identity is a modern and now internet-fuelled, form of the ancient philosophy of Gnosticism. The Gnostic, one who ‘knows’, has discovered the secret of ‘who I really am’, behind the deceptive outward appearance. . . . This involves denying the goodness, or even the ultimate reality, of the natural world.”<br />
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The claim that trans* identity is a form of gnosticism has a long legacy. Oliver O’Donovan may have been the first to connect them in his 1982 pamphlet <i>Transsexualism and Christian Marriage</i>, where he says the “claim to have a ‘real sex’, which may be at war with the sex of my body . . . [is] a kind of Gnostic withdrawal from material creation.”<br />
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The 2003 House of Bishops report, <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=kL0t1EBLq1AC">Some Issues in Human Sexuality: A Guide to the Debate</a></i>, quotes O’Donovan directly to provide expert support for the view that “transsexualism” implies a gnostic dualism. The report amplifies this view by quoting the ethicist Robert Song, who characterizes medical interventions to change the body as a form of gnosticism. Song asks, “Is one’s true self to be found in separation from or identification with one’s body?”<br />
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Framing sex reassignment surgery as a separation from the body, however, is a significant misunderstanding. In her 2005 <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0040571X0510800504">response</a> to <i>Some Issues</i>, Christina Beardsley observed, “The transition journey, in which the subject’s body is subtly or dramatically changed by hormones and surgery, is not the Gnostic rejection of the body, or a dismissal of its imp<br />
ortance, but a quest for a fuller embodiment of the person.” The trans* person pursuing resolution of gender dysphoria desires identification with the body. The separation is precisely the problem, not the solution.<br />
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Nevertheless, the notion has persisted and spread throughout conservative Christian circles. Kevin Vanhoozer recirculated O’Donovan’s views in his 2009 essay for the Zondervan volume, <i>Four Views on Moving beyond the Bible to Theology</i>. In the course of six pages on the “lie” of transsexuality, he asserts that this idea “flirts with a gnostic, even docetic, disregard for bodily reality.” <br />
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More recently, Catholic Bishop Robert Barron <a href="https://t.co/pVDvjVoyxP">connected</a> Caitlyn Jenner with the “Gnostic heresy” in June 2015, which prompted a <a href="https://catholictrans.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/are-transgender-people-gnostic/">response</a> by the trans Catholic Anna Magdalena Patti. She observes that “the word ‘Gnostic’ has become to Catholicism what ‘Communist’ was to McCarthy-era Americans.”<br />
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Peter Leithart, in February 2016, <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2016/02/invasive-gnosticism">decried</a> an “invasive Gnosticism”—a theological parallel to the conservative worry about “invasive leftism”—because of the Washington State Human Rights Commission’s <a href="http://www.hum.wa.gov/media/dynamic/files/207_Updated%20SO%20GI%20Guide.pdf">policies</a> regarding gender-neutral restrooms. These policies, he claimed, are “an effort to use the blunt power of the state to to [<i>sic</i>] make Gnostics of us all.” According to Leithart, trans* people have power that “ancient Gnostics never dreamed of,” since they “can wish away the shameful bits of our bodies with a wave of the will.” Some might respond: if only this were so!<br />
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The majority of these claims boil down to a rejection of the distinction between sex and gender, between biology and psychology. Conservatives dismiss not only psychological experience but also the social construction of gender. By conflating gender with genitalia—and thereby failing to confront the challenge of intersex persons—conservative theologians and ethicists are able to smuggle in socially constructed gender norms under the guise of biology and so claim that certain hierarchical and patriarchal social dynamics belong to the permanent structures of creation. Anyone who denies these cultural norms thereby denies creation and is thus a gnostic.<br />
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Vanhoozer, for example, grounds these cultural norms in the will of God. God’s decision to create establishes a divine drama, and our purpose in life is to discern our dramatic role in the world. The limits of our role are “given to us with our biological sex.” By refusing what is “a natural given,” a person “exchanges the gospel for the pottage of self-determination.” Vanhoozer thus characterizes self-determination as gnostic heresy. If one is to live in obedience to God, then one must conform to the roles that have been established for us by our biology—an argument that has been used historically to legitimize gender subordination, slavery, and genocide.<br />
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The conservative Christian rejection of gender identity is further bound up with the dismissal of sexual orientation and mental health concerns. Each case involves pitting individual experience against traditional norms and narratives (e.g., homosexuality is a choice, depression is the result of sin, etc.). While each case is distinct, they all challenge the traditional Christian bias against psychology and experience in favor of a narrow reading of scripture and tradition, one that is not tempered by considerations of pastoral care and medical science.<br />
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Unlike sexual orientation and mental illness, however, trans* equality, with its talk of identity and the body, was labeled heretical and not merely sinful.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6KpQiU-yza8K0IetN-UZpyBOsh4hK3cPnkeHfp_j0_BN8w0xCU_XfGdA-77SlrDcYu7SQcTh5VdHpmKCTv8GgTjnaSN318Zy_IwboFtBU1QuxV6AuW0jaGuP2p6H8uzdU9Dxj/s1600/51dG92gifvL._SX322_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6KpQiU-yza8K0IetN-UZpyBOsh4hK3cPnkeHfp_j0_BN8w0xCU_XfGdA-77SlrDcYu7SQcTh5VdHpmKCTv8GgTjnaSN318Zy_IwboFtBU1QuxV6AuW0jaGuP2p6H8uzdU9Dxj/s400/51dG92gifvL._SX322_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="258" /></a>But the charge of gnosticism is highly problematic. Research on late antiquity shows that “gnosticism” at best is a broad umbrella for a widely diverse range of texts and beliefs. In his groundbreaking work, <i>Rethinking “Gnosticism”</i>, Michael Allen Williams challenges the entire discussion of gnosticism, even criticizing the “scholarly orthodoxy” that speaks of “a characteristic ‘gnostic contempt’ for the body.” The most colorful expressions of hatred of the body are found not in those texts described as “gnostic” but in the accounts of the desert monks. Moreover, many “gnostic” texts also present the body as divine or as something to be transformed.<br />
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The concept of a “gnostic heresy” is arguably an invention of Irenaeus, the second-century bishop whose treatise <i>Adversus haereses</i> appears to provide the earliest and most detailed systematic account of gnostic beliefs. However, thanks to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices, it is now evident that the system of belief Irenaeus depicts is represented by only a small fragment of the texts that might be labeled as gnostic. Even these texts display significant diversity. The “gnosticism” of Irenaeus is thus a rhetorical construct he devises for the purposes of his argument.<br />
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The same shifty use of the term continues in today’s hunt for modern heretics. And the sloppy use of the term is not limited to blogs, church reports, and magazine articles. Wright himself displays an alarming lack of precision even in his academic work.<br />
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In his 1700-page work, <i>Paul and the Faithfulness of God</i>, he defines gnosticism primarily as “the idea of a rescue <i>out of</i> the cosmos,” a definition he does not nuance or qualify. (If true, it seems hard to square this with trans* people who wish to be more fully in the body, not away from it.) Elsewhere in his study, however, he defines gnosticism as the denial of a “continuous narrative” from creation to redemption by way of the covenant. He then leverages this more abstract definition against theologians like Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, as well as the present “apocalyptic” interpretation of Paul.<br />
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None of them, Wright would admit, conceives of salvation as escape from the world, much less the body. Instead, they argue that Christ’s coming is a radical break with the old order. The incarnation inaugurates something new and unanticipated that transforms our prior understanding of God, the world, and ourselves.<br />
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Wright calls this a “non-narrative” because it’s not the “right” narrative; it doesn’t fit the schema he’s ostensibly derived from (or rather imposed on) the Bible. Any account that doesn’t fit his narrative loses continuity between old and new, and since Wright assumes that narratival continuity is a prerequisite for affirming the goodness of creation, he charges these views with embracing gnosticism.<br />
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Despite his professed concern for historical research, Wright has dehistoricized the concept of gnosticism and turned it into an abstract type or narrative pattern. He then applies this label to positions and persons that haven’t a shred of connection to the ancient system of belief, so long as they seem to fit the pattern.<br />
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The whole conversation poses a pressing pastoral dilemma. The <a href="http://www.ustranssurvey.org/">2015 U.S. Transgender Survey</a> by the National Center for Transgender Equality <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/08/transgender-survey-suicide-poverty-unemployment-mental-health">revealed</a> that trans* individuals are nine times more likely to attempt suicide and one-third were living in poverty, about twice the national average. Is the church more concerned about trans* lives or about rooting out what it perceives to be heresy?<br />
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Even if it were proven that all trans* people <i>were</i> heretics, the church that follows Jesus—who chose to share table fellowship with the cultural “heretics” of his day—should always choose to be with and for them. A church that prioritizes doctrinal purity over the marginalized neighbor may need to ask itself who the real heretic is.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-53121806827880054762017-10-18T16:00:00.000-05:002017-10-18T16:00:28.278-05:00Imma Let You...Keep Talking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After years of private reflection and discussion, my wife Amy has decided to <a href="http://www.amyecongdon.com/2017/10/18/oh-hi-im-bi/">come out as bisexual</a>, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. She is the model of persistence and courage. If growing up as a woman of color within conservative evangelicalism wasn’t enough, becoming aware of her sexual identity has been a slow and anxiety-filled journey of discovery. I encourage you to read <a href="http://www.amyecongdon.com/2017/10/18/oh-hi-im-bi/">her post</a>.<br />
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And that’s about all I am going to say, because this isn’t my story to tell. It is so tempting for straight allies to loudly announce their allyship, especially when you have a public platform as a writer and scholar, as I do. But straight allies need to learn to hand over the mic, give up the stage, and step aside for those who have been silenced and marginalized for far too long. So to reverse Kanye’s infamous interruption: “imma let you keep talking.”<br />
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Keep talking, Amy. And for the rest of us, let’s keep listening.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-48151002165720338212017-09-14T20:08:00.000-05:002017-09-14T20:08:16.202-05:00Breaking Silence: Amy’s StoryI don’t usually use this space to write about personal matters, but it’s time I changed that.<br />
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I want to tell you about someone. Her name is Amy.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_gTrLloTe6jJz7wyZKn6zgh2S0F09VeuHzxEENE7Uk4VZnB-9NOl6tbJiTWNaq5FFtJ5WyR_ahpINiBC5Hrux2E-sQoodgs8_CeB-DyPKZ5l0RWsj8gZ9vybsAq9p2YkLqsPs/s1600/IMG_4550.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_gTrLloTe6jJz7wyZKn6zgh2S0F09VeuHzxEENE7Uk4VZnB-9NOl6tbJiTWNaq5FFtJ5WyR_ahpINiBC5Hrux2E-sQoodgs8_CeB-DyPKZ5l0RWsj8gZ9vybsAq9p2YkLqsPs/s400/IMG_4550.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David and Amy at a march in Kansas City</td></tr>
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<br />
Amy has endured a lot, more than I can adequately convey in this space. Her life before me had many challenges that I am going to pass over, but they are part of the background to the story I’m telling here.<br />
<br />
That story begins with me. But that doesn’t mean it’s a happy story. Far from it.<br />
<br />
We both grew up in suburban Portland within conservative Christian families. We’re both the oldest of three children. And we loved it there. Portland was an incredible place to grow up, with its quirky mix of West coast culture, hippy weirdness, bookish intellectualism, and progressive politics.<br />
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We originally met in middle school, but that wasn’t the start of some teenage romance. Hardly. But we did eventually fall for each other at the end of high school. I went off to Wheaton College, while she stayed in Oregon, going to George Fox University and then Multnomah University (Multnomah Bible College at the time).<br />
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Here is where things started to go awry. Our relationship thrived, but I was getting used to two things: (1) being away from Oregon and (2) becoming a scholar.<br />
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We married after finishing college in 2005, like young evangelicals often did at the time. Five weeks later, we were on the road to Princeton, New Jersey, where I would start the MDiv program at Princeton Theological Seminary. <br />
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And this is where things really went awry.<br />
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Amy hated New Jersey. On top of that, I was going through a massive transformation: I was sloughing off my evangelicalism as fast as I could, and I was taking on the mantle of the budding theological scholar, ready to go wherever this would take me. I was coming alive during my studies, finally realizing what I was meant to do with my life.<br />
<br />
All the while, Amy was dying inside. She missed Oregon. She missed her friends—some of her closest friends seemed to abandon her. Whereas I had a community of professors and fellow students around me, she had no one. It seemed like all the other spouses had friends in the married student community—everyone except Amy.<br />
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She went from job to job trying to find something to keep her occupied and help her avoid depression. Teach for America, test tutoring, Starbucks—each job a temporary band aid disguising, or contributing to, her pain.<br />
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We eventually made some friends in the community, but then they left and we were still there. Because I stayed on to do a PhD, we ended up living in New Jersey for seven years. We saw two classes of MDiv students come and go during that time.<br />
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On top of all this, a church we were heavily involved at kicked me out of leadership and closed their doors on us. We lost our only refuge. We still had friends from the church, but it became harder and harder to maintain contact with them, especially since we now had a child and they all lived in the Philly suburbs over a half-hour away.<br />
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Thankfully, in our final years in Princeton, Amy found a great job at a private Catholic school. She loved the people at the school and finally felt like things were settling down for her.<br />
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But just as things were looking up, we had to move.<br />
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My PhD funding was about to run out and we needed to figure out our next steps. A position opened up at InterVarsity Press in the western suburbs of Chicago. I had extended family in the area and it was near where I went to college. I didn’t want to enter the evangelical world again, but it seemed like the best—or rather, the only—option. So we went.<br />
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We hoped that this move would be different. We were excited about the possibilities. But it was like going to New Jersey again, only worse. Those first two years were miserable for Amy. Once again, she didn’t know anyone. She was once again looking for work. Again, I had a community of people at my job, whereas she had no one. We didn’t have neighbors who were our age or showed any interest in us. It was even more isolating in Downers Grove than in Princeton. On top of this, Amy became pregnant within the first few months that we moved and her morning sickness made it impossible for her to socialize. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdh7M2fhOUrXY4XkOUYL6ZRNfSkVWTLqNWKMHz66_LHVLrosSnVQLfC4Vywg_9Oj2-hBOnT38vZ8DypJxddZNqTcYnP6ngELXNeIjN0HSiCBxBiTDKuLco-l5dVBfyUPG10UdT/s1600/IMG_8945.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdh7M2fhOUrXY4XkOUYL6ZRNfSkVWTLqNWKMHz66_LHVLrosSnVQLfC4Vywg_9Oj2-hBOnT38vZ8DypJxddZNqTcYnP6ngELXNeIjN0HSiCBxBiTDKuLco-l5dVBfyUPG10UdT/s320/IMG_8945.JPG" width="320" /></a>Our saving grace was our church, a loving, generous, liberal Episcopal Church that became, again, our sole refuge in the midst of mounting depression. But as much as we loved our church, we didn’t have friends there that we could spend time with outside of church. We were still very much alone.<br />
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Eventually Amy came to work at IVP as well, and for a brief period of time, things seemed to work. We began to make friends at the office. We found others who shared our convictions and beliefs, who also were fed up with many of the problems within evangelicalism. Amy and I often felt like imposters, since we had abandoned evangelical Christianity long ago, but at least there were others who could sympathize with us.<br />
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During this time, Amy discovered what she wanted to do with her life: she was supposed to be a therapist, helping others struggling with mental health. It was as if a light turned on behind her eyes. She knew, after years of wandering, what her purpose was, what her story was supposed to tell.<br />
<br />
She applied to George Fox University’s counseling program and was accepted. I applied to telecommute from Oregon. Two other editors at IVP telecommuted from Washington and California. Why not Oregon?<br />
<br />
My bid was denied.<br />
<br />
Amy and I tried to regroup. While it was <i>my</i> proposal that was shot down, it was <i>Amy</i> who experienced the most pain. I still had a job; she had lost her chance to find her own career and vocation. She had to tell George Fox that, sadly, she would not be matriculating in the fall.<br />
<br />
Amy mustered up her strength and applied instead for Northeastern Illinois University’s program. NEIU is in the heart of Chicago’s north side and was a much more affordable and diverse program. Amy was accepted to start in spring 2017.<br />
<br />
In October 2016 she submitted her resignation from IVP. A week later the news broke about InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s decision to fire staff that believed Christianity was compatible with affirming gay marriage. Amy was glad to leave.<br />
<br />
Her last day was Friday, December 16. An hour after she left the office, I was handed a notice saying, in effect, that I was going to be terminated from my job. The termination was not made official until January, and my position did not end until March 3, but December 16 was my last day in the office as well, though I had no idea at the time.<br />
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Suddenly, five years after the last time, we had to move. Again.<br />
<br />
Once more, even though it was my job that was terminated, it was <i>Amy</i> who experienced the greatest pain. It was her dream to become a counselor that was being smashed again. I had people around the world offering their sympathy and support for me. Amy had almost no one. While she saw people filling up my social media feed with comments, her own account was blank. She suffered mostly in silence, her sense of isolation only growing deeper.<br />
<br />
Again, Amy and I tried to regroup.<br />
<br />
I started applying for new jobs. At my encouragement, Amy applied for George Fox’s PsyD program. She was invited to fly out for an interview, which she did. In April she found out she had been accepted into the program. At the same time I was interview for positions at various places, including a couple university presses. I flew out for a final interview at Kansas.<br />
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It all came down to a fateful weekend in early May when we had to decide where we were going: Oregon or Kansas/Missouri. And this was where I made my great mistake—a devastating mistake that I will regret for the rest of my life.<br />
<br />
On paper, the decision to go to Missouri made plenty of sense. Though I would take a significant pay cut, I would be able to continue my career in academic editing at a more prestigious press, entirely free from evangelicalism. Amy would be able to continue the master’s program she was enrolled in at NEIU at the University of Missouri Kansas City. We would be able to buy our first home, get the kids into a good school program, and more or less continue with our lives.<br />
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But this was foolish, though I didn’t fully understand how foolish at the time. In the moment all I saw was the crisis of needing to find a new source of income and insurance to take care of the family and keep things going. <br />
<br />
Amy saw something quite different. She saw a crossroads: one path led to a place where her dreams might finally be fulfilled, the other path led only to a further destruction of these dreams, a confirmation that nothing was ever going to work out and no one had her back. Not even her husband, the one friend she should be able to count on.<br />
<br />
Sure, going to Oregon—where there are no jobs remotely in my line of work—would have been tough. It would have meant living with parents while Amy went to school and I struggled to figure out my future. Oregon didn’t look great on paper.<br />
<br />
But in my desperate attempt to figure out what would be best for our future, I failed to see what would be best for our healing.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFQe4M2-PDEiw-jYaX00IR2pqPjSg6x9C7vFDCXQSygPjjhWaQPHiSMa2XlbuEKw1k7LZeDcqLkErpENetpPZu0A5MhRrYYclv9GVWjfjpvfmEWMBFT4fawiTwETslv0wt0ME/s1600/IMG_0800.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFQe4M2-PDEiw-jYaX00IR2pqPjSg6x9C7vFDCXQSygPjjhWaQPHiSMa2XlbuEKw1k7LZeDcqLkErpENetpPZu0A5MhRrYYclv9GVWjfjpvfmEWMBFT4fawiTwETslv0wt0ME/s320/IMG_0800.JPG" width="240" /></a>Amy’s pain was made worse when hundreds of people congratulated me on my job, as if we should be excited by this new opportunity. Very few acknowledged the devastation she was feeling, and her sense of isolation and abandonment only deepened.<br />
<br />
And that brings us to today. Like I said, this isn’t a happy story.<br />
<br />
I don’t have a clean, tidy conclusion that wraps everything up. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. While she plans on enrolling at UMKC in the spring, who’s to say this will actually work out? The track record is not good, and she’s apprehensive about the program. We’re definitely not in Chicago anymore. We’re in red state territory, and it’s frightening sometimes.<br />
<br />
And who’s to say she’ll want to stick this out with me. Quite frankly, I have been the cause of much of the pain from day 1. I took her away from Oregon, took her to Illinois, then took her to Missouri—all while she was dying inside with no one to lean on except the one person most directly responsible for her suffering.<br />
<br />
If I sound hopeless, it’s because, on most days, I am. On the Sunday before we left for Missouri, I preached a farewell sermon at our church titled, <a href="https://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2017/06/journeying-into-utter-darkness-trinity.html">“Journeying into Utter Darkness.”</a> Those words have never felt truer.<br />
<br />
I am tempted to say something meaningful about how God is with us in the abyss, how faith is a hope against hope that life will rise out of the chaos of this world. And I think all that is true.<br />
<br />
But for now, Amy and I are just in the darkness—Amy especially. And that’s really the point of my story. It’s always been about me: my education, my job, my books. But it’s never just been me. This whole journey has also involved Amy, and her silent suffering can no longer remain unmentioned and unnoticed. I have been privileged to receive all the attention, but that attention has only contributed to her agony.<br />
<br />
Hence this post. It’s time to break the silence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-30822128253511306782017-08-01T08:20:00.000-05:002017-08-01T08:20:08.106-05:00The God Who Saves: Reader Reviews #4<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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Love this. Tho I feel if <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s grounding was in France rather than German it would read: "W(holy) (in)secure in w(holy) (O)therness" <a href="https://t.co/fQ9NJ3V58X">pic.twitter.com/fQ9NJ3V58X</a></div>
— Liam Miller (@liammiller87) <a href="https://twitter.com/liammiller87/status/813612781354135552">December 27, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This is easily in the top five books I've notated/underlined/highlighted the most - highly recommended. <a href="https://t.co/LJdQ0BbXuE">pic.twitter.com/LJdQ0BbXuE</a></div>
— Richard Allen (@rmasvg) <a href="https://twitter.com/rmasvg/status/813902195749961731">December 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> TGWS Seriously one of the best paragraphs on theology I've read in a while! Wow! <a href="https://t.co/OUtbJe5gxa">pic.twitter.com/OUtbJe5gxa</a></div>
— neal foster (@nealifoster) <a href="https://twitter.com/nealifoster/status/814667460485980160">December 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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BEST <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/THEOLOGY?src=hash">#THEOLOGY</a> BOOK of 2016 goes to Dr. <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> The God who Saves <a href="https://twitter.com/wipfandstock">@wipfandstock</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Apocalyptic?src=hash">#Apocalyptic</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Church?src=hash">#Church</a> for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Justice?src=hash">#Justice</a> <a href="https://t.co/fDBEF2r2Mp">https://t.co/fDBEF2r2Mp</a></div>
— Peter Heltzel (@PeterHeltzel) <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterHeltzel/status/815380325773627392">January 1, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/rmasvg">@rmasvg</a> for the review of "The God Who Saves"! <a href="https://t.co/4b0vaYMnUG">https://t.co/4b0vaYMnUG</a> <a href="https://t.co/5CUsveSTDX">pic.twitter.com/5CUsveSTDX</a></div>
— David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon/status/815619431296471040">January 1, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s TGWS gets a good mention here by <a href="https://twitter.com/ToddHBrew">@ToddHBrew</a>: The Top Theology Books of 2016 <a href="https://t.co/QDM0r2V4b5">https://t.co/QDM0r2V4b5</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/mockingbirdnyc">@mockingbirdnyc</a></div>
— lauren r.e. larkin (@laurenrelarkin) <a href="https://twitter.com/laurenrelarkin/status/817011121139908608">January 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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"The God Who Saves" has been named one of the top theology books of 2016 by <a href="https://twitter.com/ToddHBrew">@ToddHBrew</a>. <a href="https://t.co/5JzXeUcuss">https://t.co/5JzXeUcuss</a> <a href="https://t.co/5rqDcY8kxZ">pic.twitter.com/5rqDcY8kxZ</a></div>
— David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon/status/817035076286484481">January 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Just finished my post-reading notes for <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s THE GOD WHO SAVES, they just kept coming. It is an excellent book, a must read.</div>
— Liam Miller (@liammiller87) <a href="https://twitter.com/liammiller87/status/817157295968653312">January 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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New review of "The God Who Saves." <a href="https://t.co/fVHuD8yVK6">https://t.co/fVHuD8yVK6</a> <a href="https://t.co/3nJa81QWGz">pic.twitter.com/3nJa81QWGz</a></div>
— David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon/status/817805734738087937">January 7, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Review of "The God Who Saves: A Dogmatik Sketch" by David W. Congdon <a href="https://t.co/C6aFZc01tn">https://t.co/C6aFZc01tn</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a></div>
— PostBarthian (@postbarthian) <a href="https://twitter.com/postbarthian/status/819750082496995329">January 13, 2017</a></blockquote>
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From <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> ::The God Who Saves:: <a href="https://t.co/JX2SqXIPkh">pic.twitter.com/JX2SqXIPkh</a></div>
— The Jürgenmeister (@postmoltmannian) <a href="https://twitter.com/postmoltmannian/status/828286527910260737">February 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Reminder: <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s ::The God Who Saves:: is an absolute must read! Here are the forty passages I found most helpful/challenging: <a href="https://t.co/Dzi7xEOCWp">pic.twitter.com/Dzi7xEOCWp</a></div>
— The Jürgenmeister (@postmoltmannian) <a href="https://twitter.com/postmoltmannian/status/833902455012388864">February 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Let me add that <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s excellent book "The God Who Saves" is very helpful in reframing the question of salvation/existence.</div>
— Richard Allen (@rmasvg) <a href="https://twitter.com/rmasvg/status/834893978940100608">February 23, 2017</a></blockquote>
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I'm reading The God Who Saves by <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>, and writing about it as I go. Really great first chapter: <a href="https://t.co/fm8UjLCCUb">https://t.co/fm8UjLCCUb</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/834966062869409793">February 24, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Reading and writing about "The God Who Saves" by <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>. I'd call this portion theology after objectivity - <a href="https://t.co/BE0PgAxY9K">https://t.co/BE0PgAxY9K</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/835258373591482369">February 24, 2017</a></blockquote>
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My musings on The God Who Saves by <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> continue. This time, theology is about God *while God is saving*: <a href="https://t.co/DHPStD1tLR">https://t.co/DHPStD1tLR</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/836041028926865409">February 27, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> on Salvation as Apocalypse: continuing through his book "The God Who Saves" -<a href="https://t.co/Wp8LooIHfN">https://t.co/Wp8LooIHfN</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/836759086712688642">March 1, 2017</a></blockquote>
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My "The God Who Saves" series continues, as I respond to <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> 's universal salvation via cocrucifixion: <a href="https://t.co/58GM3uTEpz">https://t.co/58GM3uTEpz</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/837856829497622529">March 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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My <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> The God Who Saves series continues. This time: Christ and the Spirit in Congdon's dogmatic sketch - <a href="https://t.co/DlMar6evEp">https://t.co/DlMar6evEp</a></div>
— Ben Nasmith (@BNasmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/BNasmith/status/839306170330415104">March 8, 2017</a></blockquote>
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I reviewed <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s ::The God Who Saves:: on October 18th, 2016. Check out the review:<a href="https://t.co/Mb1AdD31Kr">https://t.co/Mb1AdD31Kr</a></div>
— Juan C. Torres (@postmoltmannian) <a href="https://twitter.com/postmoltmannian/status/888436788578013185">July 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> Finally(!), finished The God Who Saves. A remarkable work. Really resonated with it, now I have SO many questions. Well done.</div>
— Kenneth Kovacs (@KenKovacs) <a href="https://twitter.com/KenKovacs/status/892195583745765378">August 1, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-81035229653475783612017-06-11T17:07:00.000-05:002017-06-11T17:07:33.950-05:00Journeying into Utter Darkness: Trinity Sunday Sermon<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Journeying into Utter Darkness</b></div>
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Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL</div>
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June 11, 2017</div>
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Trinity Sunday</div>
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Lectionary texts: Genesis 1:1–2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11–13, Matthew 28:16–20</div>
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A friend of mine who is a professor of theology in Australia, Benjamin Myers, <a href="https://twitter.com/FaithTheology/status/867536211400810496">recently posted</a> on social media that the church should “abolish Trinity Sunday, that fateful day on which preachers think they have to explain it.” Now since I am not in a position to abolish the day in our church calendar, my only hope is to redeem the day by refusing to explain the trinity. So there will be no clever analogies this morning—or any other morning, for that matter. If you ever hear someone say, “The trinity is like . . .” the best thing would be to run away as quickly as possible. You can be fairly certain that person has <i>not</i> understood the trinity.<br />
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Perhaps the most common pitfall when it comes to the trinity is the attempt to explain how one can be three and three can be one, as if understanding the trinity involves learning some new-fangled mathematics. But the trinity is not an example of #alternativefacts. When theologians call it a mystery, they don’t mean it is irrational. God doesn’t demand that we turn off our minds when we serve God, and that goes for how we think about God too. But God does demand that we not make idols, that we reject the human impulse to capture God as an object we can possess and manipulate, and the doctrine of the trinity is a fancy way of saying that God is not an object and we don’t believe in idols.<br />
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So how <i>should</i> we think about the trinity? When we confess that our God is triune, what exactly are we saying? What positively can we affirm beyond the rejection of idols?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rocking the wireless mic at the park</td></tr>
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Let’s put ourselves in the place of the disciples of Jesus. Even on the most charitable interpretation of the disciples, it is clear they did not view Jesus as God in the flesh during his life. They disbelieved until the very last moment, despite all signs to the contrary. The resurrection overturned their expectations about God and overthrew their flawed understandings of Jesus. According to the book of Acts, some did not get it even after watching Jesus ascend to heaven! It was only very late in the game that the apostles came to the startling conclusion that the Jesus they followed was more than a mere teacher, that he was—in some obscure sense—truly Immanuel, God with us and among us.<br />
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Still later the early Christians came to view the Holy Spirit in the same way. Whatever the Spirit is, she/he/it is also the presence and power of God with and among us. And this too was thoroughly unexpected. Pentecost came as quite the shock—a violent wind shaking the foundations of their existence, a tongue of fire in the midst of the depressing aftermath of Jesus’ absence, igniting their lips and compelling their bodies into action. It was perplexing then, and it should still be surprising to us today.<br />
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While it took a few hundred years for most of the church to agree that “trinity” describes this mysterious and unpredictable God, the point is that the doctrine of the trinity is not a logic puzzle meant to confound us. It is an attempt to say that the God we worship is a God of infinite surprises, a God of unceasing wonder. Doing new things is not just a human experience; it is a divine experience. Newness belongs to the very life of God.<br />
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The great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, once said that if Jesus is truly God—if God is really a trinity—then we have to say that humanity is part of God’s own eternal life. Karl Barth says we have to talk about the <i>humanity</i> of God. We are often accustomed to thinking of God as the opposite of humanity, so distant from us, so above us in every way. But the trinity says something truly radical: not only is God near to us, but we are included in God’s own life, made to be participants of God’s very being—a being that is constantly in motion, always pressing ahead. We are thus given a share in the perpetual novelty that characterizes God. Newness not only belongs to God, but it belongs to us as well. To be a Christian means to be one who believes in fresh possibilities. To be a Christian means to live constantly in wonder—to live in expectation of something surprising.<br />
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I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Some of you know I grew up in a very conservative—some might say fundamentalist—home, where I was taught that women should be subordinate to men, evolution is a lie of the devil, people who baptize infants aren’t really Christians, sexual orientations are part of the “gay agenda,” Christians have to support the Republican Party, and God always blesses America. I went to Wheaton College in part because I thought I knew this was a place that wouldn’t challenge my beliefs. I didn’t want to learn anything new when it came to my convictions. I can pinpoint the date of my “conversion” to July 2002, the summer before my sophomore year. I had heard that the Bible classes at Wheaton were too liberal—and by “liberal” I mean they taught that men and women were equal partners in the church—and so I decided to take my class on the New Testament at a conservative Bible college in Portland, my home town. One day in class—to my utter astonishment—the professor at this fundamentalist school explained how our English translations misrepresented the Greek, and that men and women were indeed fully equal.<br />
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I remember the moment vividly; it was a life-altering experience, though no one else in the room would have had any idea. While the lecture continued as if nothing unusual was happening, my world was being turned upside-down. It was the closest thing I’ve experienced to having God speak to me, and they were not pleasant words of affirmation but the harshest words of divine wrath. <i>How dare I, an arrogant and ignorant mortal, presume to control and limit God?</i> For all my knowledge of the Bible, I in fact had no knowledge at all, because I had failed to see that the God described in scripture is never content with staying put but insists on saying and doing surprising new things. The god I claimed to worship was not the trinity but a dead idol, an idea I had learned or constructed, but which had no living power. This false god was unmoving, static, fixed, incapable of being present with me, and unable to give people a share in its life.<br />
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It took me a long time to realize that Christians serve a <i>living</i> God, and that’s what we claim when we confess belief in the trinity. When we say the Nicene Creed, as we do each week, we are confessing that the God we love and serve is a God of life—of new life, new realities, new ways of being.<br />
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Each of today’s readings bears witness to this truth. The reading from Genesis tells the creation story. What better example is there of God doing something radically new? Here is a God who is so full of life that even God cannot contain it and so overflows like a cup running over into the cosmos. The reading from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians refers to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit in the context of his closing appeal to the church to “live in peace.” Here is a God who is trinity in the midst of the community’s life in the world—a God who is present in the midst of sharing greetings and holy kisses. Finally, our Gospel reading this morning is the famous Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus tells his followers to go and make disciples of all nations. If Genesis tells us about the newness of creation, then the Great Commission tells us about the newness of <i>new</i> creation. God’s desire to see new things happen never ceases; God’s mercies are new every morning. If the trinity tells us anything, it tells us that <i>God is open to being surprised</i>. Matthew’s Gospel ends with the disciples being sent out into the wild unknown. Where they will go and what they will do is anyone’s guess. All we know is that the Spirit of God has been given to empower them, to guide them into all truth—truth that remains to be discovered, explored, tested, and shared.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Congdon (left) and Josiah Daniels (right)</td></tr>
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Five years ago this month, Amy and I set out for the wild unknown of Illinois. I had been surprised by a job offer that I had not expected, about which I had a number of reservations. But we made the journey from Princeton to Downers Grove, in anticipation of many exciting developments—a new home, a new job, a new child, and a new church. We came to Church of the Holy Nativity on a Sunday in late June 2012 and we’ve been here ever since. You have been our church family for these past five years, and in so many countless ways we have been blessed by your love, generosity, and hospitality. After leaving behind a bitter church experience in Princeton, CHN was a healing place for us—a reminder that, sometimes, by God’s grace, Christians really do live out their faith in community. Here at CHN we have experienced what it means to participate in a living trinity that says and does new things.<br />
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Five months ago, however, we were surprised yet again. I found myself, quite unexpectedly, out of a job, and where we were headed next was at the time anyone’s guess. Last month I accepted an offer to become the new editor at the University Press of Kansas and this week my family and I will be traveling to our new home in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Once more we head out into the wild unknown. Like God we open ourselves yet again to being surprised.<br />
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This is rarely easy. Waiting in hope for something new can be a dismal experience. The Psalmist cried out, “How long?” The disciples retreated into their locked room. In the void of the unknown, the promise of Jesus to be with us to the end of the age is often drowned out by the cry of Jesus on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?” Our lives feel as dead as the idols we sometimes worship: unmoving, static, fixed. There are days when I have wanted to grasp the future the way I sometimes try to grasp God, to make the future something secure and clarified, as opposed to the obscure, impenetrable shadow before me.<br />
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This is why Martin Luther, whose Reformation we celebrate this year, speaks of “the darkness of faith,” for we step into this wild unknown in trust, believing what we “neither see nor feel nor comprehend.” And yet faith, he says, “is able to see even in darkness.” This is the mystery of the trinity: we journey forward with the triune God into the utter darkness of the future, and yet we journey in faith, seeing what we cannot see, believing what we cannot comprehend, reaching out for what we cannot grasp. Walking in faith means that we hope against hope that something radically new will happen, that life will rise out of the terrifying chaos of this world, that we will live again in peace and fellowship with new neighbors, that God will be with us to the end of the age, though we do not know where that will take us or how we will get there.<br />
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If we are going to have an image to help us understand the trinity on this Trinity Sunday, then I suggest leaving behind all clever analogies and sticking with the one that the New Testament gives us, namely, enjoying table fellowship with each other and with God. In the Gospels Jesus welcomes all people to sit and eat with him, and the visions of the kingdom of God are of a feast where the “least of these” are ushered in to share the blessings of God. Sharing food with one another does not explain the trinity, but it represents what the trinity means for Christian life, which is that God has space within God’s own life for others—for <i>all</i> others—to live in peace and love together.<br />
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In her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Difference-Sexuality-Transformation-Spirituality/dp/1138938033">recent work</a>, theologian Linn Tonstad calls this a “banquet without borders.” There are no limits to God’s generosity and hospitality to the world. She writes:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgfKRgScDWd9v6posWLcRRFJaAEJMokiOKfvxDiz1uive3d3-gRBaECWgXbbKOeaPRfP9fb5p4DT57cab1KSDenctSKlGGW7hG33Rryx9GtsdosALIv3H2OfVOZCQZP4obCi4/s1600/61VPEWDyV7L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="855" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgfKRgScDWd9v6posWLcRRFJaAEJMokiOKfvxDiz1uive3d3-gRBaECWgXbbKOeaPRfP9fb5p4DT57cab1KSDenctSKlGGW7hG33Rryx9GtsdosALIv3H2OfVOZCQZP4obCi4/s320/61VPEWDyV7L.jpg" width="201" /></a>The aim of the trinity’s action in the world is to give human beings a share in the life of God. What such a share in the life of God looks like is best seen in New Testament passages dealing with food and banqueting practices. Salvation entails “fellowship with God . . . which also embraces a renewal of fellowship with others.” What is promised in the life and ministry of Jesus is a reality . . . that will one day culminate in God’s making God’s home among human beings. . . . It is . . . the promise and reality of . . . table fellowship in friendship with each other and Jesus, as adoptive children of God all seated around the banquet table enjoying the overflow that characterizes the life given by God. (<i>God and Difference</i>, 238)</blockquote>
Taking this all to heart, we can say that the trinity sets a table for us—a eucharistic table where all are welcome to share what we have been freely given. In setting this table God welcomes surprises. God invites new conversations, new experiences, new friends. God’s table always has open seats. There is always more room in the trinity than we imagine. God’s cup never stops overflowing.<br />
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I do not know what lies ahead—for me, my family, this church, this country, or this world. But I know that, wherever we go, in every moment of this journey into the darkness of the future, there is a table waiting for us with open seats for every person. A table for me and for each one of you. May we meet there again as friends and children of God. Amen.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thanks to <complete id="goog_1194524708"><a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels">@josiah_Rdaniels</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Rediet">@Rediet</a> for the photos!</complete></span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-67119927585442694432017-04-20T12:47:00.000-05:002017-04-20T12:54:28.901-05:00Why the Church Is Not in Exile: A Response to Brad East<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh19RWQnBOqOHYkz7SvMfF_kUJeBenfBkNOeHeI3IWxBxD83NpeFpjcnm1RzS1hRG_CFCqAaFYxf1aIBj67uUVseUlag-UyWa7LyxKx-x73adHGRO3pNQGPIaUShwMXAVM0M9Ye/s1600/Tintern_Abbey_and_Courtyard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh19RWQnBOqOHYkz7SvMfF_kUJeBenfBkNOeHeI3IWxBxD83NpeFpjcnm1RzS1hRG_CFCqAaFYxf1aIBj67uUVseUlag-UyWa7LyxKx-x73adHGRO3pNQGPIaUShwMXAVM0M9Ye/s640/Tintern_Abbey_and_Courtyard.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saffron Blaze, via <a class="external free" href="http://www.mackenzie.co/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; padding-right: 13px; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">http://www.mackenzie.co</a></td></tr>
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Yesterday <i>Sojourners</i> published <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/no-american-church-isn-t-exile">my article on why Christians should stop talking about the church being in exile</a>. My argument can be summarized and expanded as follows:<br />
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1. Unlike Israel, which is a distinct cultural community, the New Testament claims that Christians are exiled from the world as such, not from a particular culture. Christians are eschatologically distanced from the world, and this distance from every culture coincides simultaneously with Pentecost's affirmation of every culture within the scope of God's reign. The gospel for Christians does not come prepackaged with a specific language or culture but is open in principle to every context. This is what missiologists call the principle of contextualization, indigenization, translation, or inculturation (some terms are better than others, but they all get at the same point). Western Christianity lost sight of this principle in the period of Christendom, when the church established itself as a specific imperial culture. The loss of Christendom thus appears as the loss of the church when it is in fact only the loss of this church-culture amalgamation; it is the loss of the distortion of the church created by Christendom.<br />
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2. Many (predominantly U.S.) Christians today, however, claim that the church is now exiled from modern western culture, because it is no longer hospitable, in their view, with certain "Christian values" and moral norms. In order to make their case, they appeal invariably to Old Testament exile texts, such as Jeremiah 29:7. Rod Dreher is the most prominent representative of this way of thinking at the moment, but one sees this way of thinking across the board—from evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and even many mainliners. Dreher uses the language to continue and refine the culture wars, while others use it as a way of escaping from what they see as the belligerence of the old culture warriors who tried to convert American culture. Instead of the imperialism of the Religious Right, many exile-proponents advocate for a kind of separatism.<br />
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3. The problem is that imperialism and separatism are two sides of the same Christendom coin: both share the fundamental assumption that the church is a specific culture, and the goal of Christian mission is either the diffusion of this culture to other locations (imperialism) or the dissociation of the church from surrounding cultures (separatism). Either way, it involves a fundamental misunderstanding and distortion of the Christian community as presented in the New Testament, and it can only be defended by appropriating the identity of Israel and/or pining after Christendom—and usually both, since the former is the basis for the latter.<br />
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4. I argue that we need to abandon speaking about the church in exile. It contradicts the New Testament witness about the radically new reality established through Christ and his Spirit. It is complicit in the supersessionism and imperialism that characterizes Christendom. It fosters a deeply problematic and unhealthy political and ecclesial imagination, which approaches cultural difference as a threat to its purity and/or as an object of its evangelistic witness. It fosters an attitude of fear and anxiety about change in clear contrast to the biblical witness. And it produces a missionary method that is ultimately indistinguishable from colonialism. If we are going to redeem the language of exile, it has to be an eschatological exile from the world as a totality, but precisely for that reason it is an exile that allows us to embrace wherever we are placed as our home. As Pontius of Carthage wrote: “To [those outside the church], it is a severe punishment to live outside their own city; to the Christian, the whole of this world is one home. Wherefore, though he were banished into a hidden and secret place, yet, associated with the affairs of his God, he cannot regard it as an exile.”<br />
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With that summary in mind I wish to turn to the <a href="http://resident-theology.blogspot.com/2017/04/on-mostly-agreeding-with-david-congdon.html">helpful response by Brad East</a>, who raises some thoughtful and important questions that help get to the heart of the matter. I will take up each point in turn, but since they all share a common theme I will first give a general reply that should address a core point of confusion.<br />
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Brad's general critique boils down to: <b>Isn't there some sense in which the church is distinct from society, since obviously some societies are more hospitable than others and the church has always engaged in prophetic critique and must continue to do so?</b><br />
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This is an excellent question that I would have liked to address in a longer article, so I will do so here. My answer is simple: <b>What is distinct from society is not the church but rather the <i>gospel</i>. The church does not critique society based on society’s difference from itself, but on society’s difference from the reign of God in Jesus Christ.</b> Criticisms like Brad's elide the distinction between church and gospel, between church and the kingdom of God. This elision is widespread in academic theology today thanks to the influence of postliberalism (see, e.g., Robert Jenson’s conflation of Christ with the church or Scot McKnight’s conflation of kingdom with the church), and I am nothing if not a resolute opponent of postliberalism in all of its forms.<br />
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A standard response at this point is to say: But if the church is supposed to be a corporate witness to this gospel and kingdom, then doesn’t that mean the church is indeed separate from the culture and could experience itself as being in exile? <i>No</i>. The kerygma/gospel/kingdom that identifies the norm for Christian witness and action is not itself a culture: it is not a language that tells us how to speak; it is not a law that tell us how to act in each situation; it is not a set of practices that determine how we are supposed to live. Of course Christians in any particular situation have languages, laws, and practices (among other cultural markers), but these are never directly identical with the gospel itself. These are, at their best, culturally specific forms of the gospel, but they are not the gospel itself.<br />
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What is the gospel? I don't think there is a single correct formulation, but Jesus and Paul give us a fairly clear indication when they say, in their own ways, that neighbor-love is the fulfillment of the law. What does it mean to love? That is precisely what Christians have to discover in their particular context. Christianity does not give us a “Christian worldview” or “Christian culture” that can determine in advance how people should conduct themselves in any situation. The gospel of love has to be contextualized and inculturated in each specific moment. There is no single form of the “new creation” that Christians are called to export wherever they go. The new creation is an event and mode of relation that Christians translate in myriad new ways.<br />
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Here is the crucial point: the kerygma/gospel—however we define this exactly, which is the purpose of theology to clarify—does not enter a context as an alien culture that must either colonize or remain distinct from the surrounding society, but instead it takes root within each context and establishes a local and indigenous form of love. The church, wherever it exists, is this or that culture animated by the Spirit of love. Each existence of the church—and to be clear I am not speaking about the institution of the Christian church but rather any place where people correspond to the reign of God in their embrace of the other—will be particular to that situation. Attempts to unify each instance of the church through structural forms of unity may be pragmatic efforts to achieve social change, but we cannot identify them with the Christian faith itself, and we will have to test them constantly against the norm of the kerygma to prevent their ossification.<br />
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My disagreement with postliberals is over the definition of the gospel itself. The response I typically hear is that the Christian norm is inevitably cultural, and I understand what they mean: loving the neighbor could be understood as a kind of cultural action. But I counter by saying: (a) the gospel <i>becomes </i>cultural in each new moment without itself becoming a culture; (b) defining the gospel as cultural necessarily makes all Christian mission colonialist, and we have to avoid this at any cost; and (c) defining the gospel as love (or as ex-centricity, solidarity with the oppressed, etc.) does not necessarily dictate in advance what this must look like for each person. Love as such is not a culture but a formal category; it becomes cultural as it gains cultural content in a particular situation. Christianity, as Rudolf Bultmann says, it not a “what” but a “how.” It is a mode of existence, but that mode can in theory take an infinite variety of forms in response to each new moment.<br />
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Having said all that, I will now respond as briefly as possible to each of Brad’s points:<br />
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<ol>
<li>The “holiness” of the community depends entirely on how we define holiness. I would argue that Christ redefines holiness so that it no longer means cultural distinction (as it did for ancient Israel) but rather loving solidarity and openness to the other. It is not a centripetal separation but a centrifugal dispersion. Texts like Deuteronomy are not normative for the Christian community without being christologically and pneumatologically reconfigured.</li>
<li>The point of this adage is simply that Christians cannot speak as if exile is something that pertains to one situation but not another. It is an absolute characteristic that applies to all situations, regardless of how hospitable a particular context seems to be.</li>
<li>Again, for the Christian, “exile” names an absolute horizon that does not admit of relative distinction. The eschaton is qualitatively, not quantitatively, distinct from the world. Of course some situations are more or less just than another, but this doesn’t make the church more or less exiled. The church can and must call out injustice without succumbing to the temptation to view itself as a countercultural polis.</li>
<li>I’ve already answered this above.</li>
<li>It is entirely possible for Christians to articulate their “perpetual alienation,” but this is not what Dreher, Moore, and others do. They make it very clear that it is a specific alienation from modern western, post-Christendom culture. If they were to abandon this and articulate a perpetual exilic status—along with the corresponding claim that they are therefore at home in every culture—then I would happily commend them.</li>
<li>To love something does not mean to embrace it uncritically. Love can be quite radically negative. I appeal here to Chesterton's notion of patriotism: to be a patriot—that is, to be one who loves one’s context—does not mean to say “my country, right or wrong,” but rather it means being ready and willing to prophetically tear down one’s country or context in light of the revolutionary inbreaking of new creation. Love is not the opposite of judgment; it is judgment oriented toward the eschatological horizon of God’s reign.</li>
</ol>
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I am grateful to Brad East for pressing me on these issues, and I welcome ongoing dialogue on this important topic. While I am concerned about the language of exile, ultimately I am concerned about the conflation of the church with culture and the disastrous consequences this has for Christian life and mission. I think we share the same concern and goal, but different understandings of what this goal means and how to achieve it. I look forward to future conversations.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-22625080828839397882017-04-18T11:22:00.000-05:002017-04-18T11:22:46.136-05:00Reading Rudolf Bultmann Forty Years Later<i>The following piece was written last summer and submitted for publication to a popular Christian periodical. It was a time-sensitive piece, since I wrote it to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Bultmann’s death. I still think it’s a valuable and worthwhile piece, so I am publishing it here, though it is not as timely as it could have been.</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lVfJQCYU3pfEal7QhrNMKjlw5GpgkTnUYQOO-msBf2E8AuafyQ0M3V4lfvfYh2MerGiTOhxkMRdTEzw2Z2uc8Y9cglatQcfrkiWnJfJ8p4Q_PwZPGZR7VzF1Y3ykmibdESjy/s1600/bultmann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lVfJQCYU3pfEal7QhrNMKjlw5GpgkTnUYQOO-msBf2E8AuafyQ0M3V4lfvfYh2MerGiTOhxkMRdTEzw2Z2uc8Y9cglatQcfrkiWnJfJ8p4Q_PwZPGZR7VzF1Y3ykmibdESjy/s320/bultmann.jpg" width="222" /></a>The twentieth century’s most influential New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, died forty years ago on July 30, 1976. The occasion offers an opportunity to reflect on his enduring legacy. A <i>TIME</i> magazine article in 1964 made the statement that “Dr. Rudolf Bultmann’s [University of] Marburg Disciples . . . dominate German theology the way the Russians rule chess.” Today, however, if he is read at all, it is as a required text in advanced seminary courses or doctoral seminars.<br />
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A number of factors conspired to turn Bultmann into a relic from the past rather than an ongoing source of theological insight and inspiration. His New Testament scholarship was tied to views about Gnosticism and early Christianity that came under intense criticism with a new generation of scholars. Bultmann was also presented to English-speaking audiences as a Heideggerian theologian; this made him seem passé as Martin Heidegger’s existentialist philosophy was superseded by newer philosophical trends. But above all it was his program of demythologizing, which became the source of international controversy in the 1950s, that resulted in both his fame and his later fall into disrepute. Perhaps now, forty years after his death, we have enough distance to see his program in a new light. <br />
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We can compare Bultmann’s program to a mosaic. If you stand too close to a mosaic, all you see are the individual pieces—an acute triangle of red, a rectangle of green. But when you step back you are able to see the whole as a coherent picture. Similarly, a close analysis of demythologizing can get stuck on the particular details of his exegesis. We have to step back and survey his various writings on the topic in order to see the full picture.<br />
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Bultmann began his career as a form critic of the New Testament. One of his early doctoral advisers was Johannes Weiss. In 1892 Weiss showed that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament held very different ideas about the world and history compared to modern Christians. They belonged to a different culture. This was highly controversial at the time but was widely accepted by the time Bultmann began his studies.<br />
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The challenge for Bultmann and others at the time was whether we can speak of some truth in Christianity that transcends this cultural barrier between past and present. Weiss spoke of issuing the old coinage at a new rate of exchange. Adolf von Harnack, one of Bultmann’s professors, spoke of separating the temporal husk from the kernel of eternal truth. These were salvage operations designed to sustain liberal Protestantism. Karl Barth issued a wholesale critique of these liberal approaches by arguing that the truth of the gospel lies beyond history altogether in the wholly other God. Bultmann shared Barth’s convictions regarding the otherness of God, but he also sought to address the complexities of history and culture. His program of demythologizing was his solution to this problem.<br />
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In essence, demythologizing affirms a divine revelation that is irreducible to any single culture or context. Bultmann’s word for this revelation is “kerygma,” a term taken from the New Testament word for proclamation. In order to recognize this kerygma in the text, we have to distinguish it from the cultural perspective of the biblical authors. Bultmann refers to this process as criticism of the ancient “world picture.” If we are going to proclaim the kerygma today, however, we must find new language appropriate to our context. Bultmann’s term for this is “existentialist interpretation,” which he also calls “translation.”<br />
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Bultmann does not mean that existentialism is the only appropriate way of understanding the Bible today. The term, as he uses it, contains two ideas. First, it means we must speak about God in a way that is meaningful to us today. God is not an abstract object that we can observe from a safe distance but rather a reality that affects us personally. Second, it means existentialist philosophy provided the language Bultmann found most useful in conveying the kerygma to his audience. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5le4srIgd_06bYVV80hu_a2PrSB37sIeq5HEZqtuK9JWswkzYo5QQqSnFhydLyMZfCLQwVXbm2zVIJX6S0R4wD_Z1ESybbWedJuol2w3YWePsr_89erMzyYeifkCefzok_Tjg/s1600/beyondbultmann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5le4srIgd_06bYVV80hu_a2PrSB37sIeq5HEZqtuK9JWswkzYo5QQqSnFhydLyMZfCLQwVXbm2zVIJX6S0R4wD_Z1ESybbWedJuol2w3YWePsr_89erMzyYeifkCefzok_Tjg/s320/beyondbultmann.jpg" width="214" /></a>This does not mean we must use the same conceptual framework. In a lecture given at the same gathering where he publicly announced his demythologizing program, Bultmann insisted that “even the most accurate translation itself needs to be translated in the next generation.” He took for granted that his particular translation would become obsolete. Demythologizing does not produce a permanent, “demythologized” gospel. Instead, it explains why the gospel has to be heard anew in every context.<br />
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The year after Bultmann’s death, one of his former students, Günther Bornkamm, published a eulogy in which he said that “the critical conversation with [Bultmann] cannot and should not cease if our scholarly work is not to decline catastrophically.” This is a warning worth heeding. While for a time the critical conversation came to a virtual standstill, today there are signs of recovery. Baylor University Press published a volume in 2014 called <i>Beyond Bultmann</i> that engages his magnum opus, the <i>Theology of the New Testament</i>. Younger scholars like myself are exploring his theology from new vantage points. <br />
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The days of Bultmann dominating theology may be long over, but his work continues to inspire new explorations in Christian faith and practice. Perhaps the next forty years will see a renewed interest in his legacy for the church.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-66923731309618688662017-03-27T15:58:00.000-05:002017-03-27T19:29:19.761-05:00I See That I Am Blind: A Lenten Sermon<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b>I See That I Am Blind</b></div>
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Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL</div>
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March 26, 2017</div>
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I.</div>
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Here’s a fun fact: technically speaking, the Gospel of John contains no parables. Those famous stories of Jesus are all found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But John does something even more remarkable: he makes the entirety of Jesus’ life into a kind of parable. And the story of the healing of the blind man in John 9 is a great example of this. Like any good parable, there is the initial, surface-level story. But there is also something much deeper going on, and even a surprise twist at the end.<br />
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Think about some of the famous parables of Jesus. Take the prodigal son, for instance. This story initially appears to be about a selfish son who squanders his inheritance and who is welcomed back due to the boundless love of his father who lavishes gifts upon him regardless of what he has done in the past. All of that is true—and yet at the very end we discover the story is also about the older son who harbors resentment in his heart and refuses to rejoice with his father. Jesus leads us initially to focus on the graciousness of God, until suddenly at the end he turns the focus back on ourselves, exposing the hardness of our own hearts towards others.<br />
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This happens again and again in the Gospels, and it happens again here. For it seems initially like this is yet another miracle story meant to reinforce the claim that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God. These stories start to blend together after awhile: someone is in need (often on the Sabbath), Jesus heals the person, the Pharisees get upset, and Jesus continues his ministry in defiance of their laws. There is plenty to unpack even with this much. We could talk about how the Pharisees can’t make sense of this event, so bound are they to their way of seeing the world. We could talk about how the man born blind attempts to be completely honest to the end, even in the face of repeated interrogations. He answers with the facts as he knows them: “One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” We often lift him up as the model evangelist: the man simply tells others what he has experienced. He doesn’t bludgeon people with arguments for the existence of God or explanations for why we need God. He merely witnesses to what he has seen and encountered. We celebrate this every time we sing “Amazing Grace”: “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”<br />
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This might be the moral of the story if John stopped writing at verse 34, but the story goes on. And what comes next throws everything we just heard into doubt. After being questioned relentlessly by the Pharisees, suddenly Jesus himself questions the man, after which Jesus declares: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Obviously Jesus is no longer speaking about literal blindness, but what exactly is he trying to say?<br />
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We probably wouldn’t be nearly as excited about singing: “I once was found but now am lost, could see but now am blind.” Our instinctive reaction is to protect ourselves from what seems like bad news, so we try to ascribe one story to ourselves and the other story to those terrible Pharisees over there: we are the ones who were blind but now see, but <i>they</i> are the ones who could see but now have become blind. We try to isolate ourselves from the judgment for which Jesus came into this world. Surely that judgment belongs to someone else!<br />
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The story seems to confirm our instincts when the Pharisees enter the picture again. “Surely we are not blind, are we?” they say. But Jesus’ response is no less perplexing: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Jesus turns everything on its head. Earlier the Pharisees were using the blindness of the man as evidence that someone had sinned, but now Jesus uses blindness as an indication of sinlessness. But that’s not all. Jesus’ words contain something far more scandalous. For who has been the one saying “I see” this whole time? In verse 11 the man says: “I went and washed and received my sight.” In verse 15 he says: “Then I washed, and now I see.” And in verse 25 he says: “Though I was blind, now I see.”<br />
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Surely, we think to ourselves, Jesus couldn’t be talking about the <i>blind man</i>. And yes, it’s true that he is speaking to the Pharisees. But look at the story again. After the man declares three times that he sees—and, by the way, where before have we heard about someone insisting on something three times?—Jesus himself finally confronts him. The man’s faithful and honest testimony to the Pharisees did not let him escape judgment; in fact, it actually brought judgment upon himself. He must now answer the all-important question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Why does Jesus ask this? Hasn’t this man been interrogated enough already? Hasn’t he proven himself the perfect evangelist? Wasn’t he simply telling the truth?<br />
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II.</div>
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Here’s a somewhat less fun fact about Jesus: his message, while good news, is always challenging news; it is news that unsettles us, maybe even disturbs us, scandalizes us. The apostle Paul insists that the gospel is a stumbling block, a scandal, foolishness. And it never ceases to challenge and unsettle us. Faith does not suddenly make the message of Jesus something comfortable. Like Aslan in <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i>, Jesus is not safe.<br />
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When Jesus says the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, do we think this is a single movement: the two groups simply switch places? This statement by Jesus always troubled me. If the last become the first, then are they the ones who must then become the last again? And, conversely, if the first become last, will they become the first again? Or to use the language of John 9: If the blind gain their sight, will they become blind again? And if those with sight become blind, will they regain their sight? We could extend this indefinitely.<br />
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This is the great paradox of the gospel: faith is not a once-for-all moment, a single act that, once completed, is permanently finished. The first constantly become the last, and the last constantly become the first. Or rather, perhaps Jesus is saying that the entire way of ordering people in terms of first and last belongs to the old way of things, the passing age. His coming inaugurates something new and unprecedented. No longer can we rest content in the knowledge that we possess the truth and gifts of God. This, if anything, was the true error of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law: they were still trapped in the old way of thinking that understood God’s grace to be something stable, fixed, and definable. The Law was indeed good, but it was not flexible. It lacked the Spirit of God, the Spirit that blows in new directions and breathes in fresh, surprising ways.<br />
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The man born blind was faithful to this old order of the Law. He answered the Pharisees in the only way he knew how. Everything he said conformed to what was obvious, explicable, rational, sensible, and evident. But he was still seeing with old eyes, and ultimately Jesus had to step into the picture. The man learns that he must leave behind his entire existence, his whole way of understanding himself.<br />
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The new vision that Jesus brings doesn’t abide by the old rules. Our eyes have to be retrained—our vision has to be crucified and resurrected, not once but every day. And when that happens, we can no longer say, “We see! We see!” As if this vision were something we possessed as our own, something we could put in our back pocket. No—we must learn to see anew in every moment. That is to say, we must learn to recognize our blindness anew in every moment. For if we are blind, then we see; and if we see, then we are blind. If we are last, then we are first; and if we are first, then we are last.<br />
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Like Socrates, the Christian learns to say: “I know that I do not know.” Or to put it in the terms of John’s Gospel: <i>I see that I am blind. I hear that I am deaf. I possess what I do not possess.</i><br />
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Like his parables, Jesus’ message to the Pharisees places us, as the hearers of this story, in an endless loop of constant examination. As we recognize our blindness, we receive new sight; but in our tendency to rest content with our sight, Jesus confronts with our blindness again. We never arrive at our final destination. When Jesus calls us to faith, he calls us into an ongoing journey, a process that never stops. Early Christian theologians like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa believed this process even continues beyond death as we journey towards God for all eternity.<br />
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If this strikes us as impossibly daunting and overwhelming, then perhaps we have grasped the truth! The great paradox of Christian faith is not one that simply lets us remain where we are; it doesn’t fit itself comfortably in our lives like a fine new piece of mental or spiritual furniture. Like the temple, Jesus tears down our inner dwelling places and rebuilds them again. And again. And again. But as we go on this journey we know that we are not alone, that we journey with one who has gone before us, who intercedes on our behalf, who stood in our place and stands with us now.<br />
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This is why we confess our sins each day and hear Christ’s absolution. This is why we come to the table each week to partake of Christ’s body and blood. This is why we journey through the wilderness of Lent each year.<br />
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Every year we discover that the darkness of Lent is in fact the unsettling, uncomfortable light of the cross. John tells us earlier in the Gospel that the light came into the darkness, but “people loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19). How could this be, we might wonder? Who would prefer to be in the dark—unless the light were something so bright that it hurts our eyes, so piercing that it blinds us, and only in blinding us, allows us to see, truly, once more, who we really are?<br />
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In this season of Lent, I challenge us not to turn away from this light. Allow this light to blind us with its glory, and in recognizing our blindness, may we see ourselves anew.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-19891393089883092092016-12-26T12:24:00.002-06:002016-12-27T14:33:42.145-06:00The God Who Saves: Still More Reader Reviews<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">Started <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s The God Who Saves. I Just finished the prologue, and he finna make me rework my whole damn approach! Amazeballz! <a href="https://t.co/42ehFtFqJg">pic.twitter.com/42ehFtFqJg</a></div>— KOA the boy Shima (@koashima) <a href="https://twitter.com/koashima/status/795143907415687168">November 6, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">This arrived today - excited to dig in! <a href="https://t.co/up1ghOhY4y">pic.twitter.com/up1ghOhY4y</a></div>— Richard M. Allen (@rma_mt) <a href="https://twitter.com/rma_mt/status/796562274689384448">November 10, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> The section on protological/eschatological actualization in the introduction is blowing my mind</div>— Richard M. Allen (@rma_mt) <a href="https://twitter.com/rma_mt/status/796908464933105664">November 11, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> omg. like...holy wow. <a href="https://t.co/m658og3EhN">pic.twitter.com/m658og3EhN</a></div>— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/798881610196283392">November 16, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> I feel as if I underlined and highlighted almost all of the "Theology as Hermeneutics" section of TGWS</div>— R.M. Allen (@rma_mt) <a href="https://twitter.com/rma_mt/status/799432189167308801">November 18, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">Enjoying <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> 's new book. "...The Christ-event is definitive, even constitutive, of who God is and how God acts." Yes! <a href="https://t.co/9BlY5sIdUx">pic.twitter.com/9BlY5sIdUx</a></div>— J.S.Warner (@Fundiestan) <a href="https://twitter.com/Fundiestan/status/800159573952692225">November 20, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">"The event of God's revelatory self-disclosure is the event of salvation." <br />
- <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a><br />
"The God Who Saves" (p. 48)</div>— R.M. Allen (@rma_mt) <a href="https://twitter.com/rma_mt/status/801469503590846464">November 23, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="und">YES 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> <a href="https://t.co/4orb6ewXFf">pic.twitter.com/4orb6ewXFf</a></div>— R.M. Allen (@rma_mt) <a href="https://twitter.com/rma_mt/status/801649773644222464">November 24, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">Anyone else reading <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> (God Who Saves) and <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterRollins">@PeterRollins</a> (Insurrection) at the same time? It's a real mindflip! I love it!</div>— neal foster (@nealifoster) <a href="https://twitter.com/nealifoster/status/801822903222276100">November 24, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">Just finished <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> 's "The God Who Saves." It was a "shattering disruption" of my theological "cosmos." An ex-centric experience!</div>— Matthew Warren (@Matthew__Warren) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matthew__Warren/status/802258657966637056">November 25, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">A review I wrote for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/thegodwhosaves?src=hash">#thegodwhosaves</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>. <a href="https://t.co/djqQuHj0fF">https://t.co/djqQuHj0fF</a></div>— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/812019653396533248">December 22, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">I'm two chapters in and it's fantastic. Take the deal! Need more convincing <a href="https://t.co/FeWjtjX5He">https://t.co/FeWjtjX5He</a> <a href="https://t.co/KEWbWezIIe">https://t.co/KEWbWezIIe</a></div>— Liam Miller (@liammiller87) <a href="https://twitter.com/liammiller87/status/812411726608015360">December 23, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/WTravisMcMaken">@WTravisMcMaken</a> @postmoltmannian <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> 2/3 the way there. TGWS has been so eye opening. It tossed most of my categories in the trash.</div>— Jarad Corzine (@jaradcorzine) <a href="https://twitter.com/jaradcorzine/status/812526800064671748">December 24, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">Guys, I really think y'all should buy <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s The God Who Saves... <a href="https://t.co/JMfnBxqmML">pic.twitter.com/JMfnBxqmML</a></div>— Liam Miller (@liammiller87) <a href="https://twitter.com/liammiller87/status/813212918359523328">December 26, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s ::The God Who Saves:: is the most challenging and most enjoyable book I read in 2016. A must for theology nerds. Buy and read!🔥</div>— Juan C. Torres (@jcarlostzavala) <a href="https://twitter.com/jcarlostzavala/status/813430284129431552">December 26, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
<b>For those interested in purchasing my book, you can save 40% on <i>The God Who Saves</i> through December 31 when you <a href="http://wipfandstock.com/the-god-who-saves.html">purchase from Wipf & Stock</a>. Use discount code BYE2016 when you check out.</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-88748081340739279042016-12-08T07:25:00.000-06:002016-12-08T07:25:34.113-06:00Announcing the Society for Dialectical Theology<a href="https://about.me/w.travis.mcmaken">Travis McMaken</a> and I are launching the Society for Dialectical Theology (SDT)—a group that will promote, explore, and develop the theological vision initiated a century ago by Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten, and their friends. The goal of this group is more constructive in nature. Our aim is to demonstrate the contemporary vitality of this school of thought by expanding and contextualizing their ideas for our present situation.<br />
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If you would like to learn more about dialectical theology, I encourage you to view our new video introducing both SDT and DT more generally. Travis and I survey some of the historical key moments in the founding of DT.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b0jflfgm9J0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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If you are interested in learning more about SDT and participating in future gatherings and discussions, please <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScx__TpfGn8hghnE8-XWrR0rtblw1nNA1f5VFeYc6j1_y5g3A/viewform?c=0&w=1">sign up here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-5164505786554246802016-11-04T10:00:00.000-05:002016-11-04T10:00:41.761-05:00The God Who Saves: More Reader Reviews<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> finished the God who saves - much to appreciate, and much to ruminate</div>
— Jon Out Loud (@JonOutLoud) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonOutLoud/status/783396153794580481">October 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> I understand, as a pastor your work is exceptionally stimulating and has me hungry for more "what this means" if I buy in</div>
— Jon Out Loud (@JonOutLoud) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonOutLoud/status/783402612284465156">October 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
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"The history of Xian theology is largely a story of missing kerygmatic forest for confessional trees" -<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> GOOD LORD, MAN! 👍👍👍👍👍 <a href="https://t.co/sP7nSd84CF">pic.twitter.com/sP7nSd84CF</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/783399837328871425">October 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> currently preaching in I Cor. This is pastoral theology from you. Soteriocentric christocentrism frees us from social compulsions <a href="https://t.co/HgMFSTeqAm">pic.twitter.com/HgMFSTeqAm</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/783405665544843265">October 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> And...I'm walking away...so much to think about. Put down the book, son. Wow. 😣😣😣😆😆😆 <a href="https://t.co/GYI7hG5QqQ">pic.twitter.com/GYI7hG5QqQ</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/783407062231330816">October 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> Dude. You're killing me. <br />
"the consecration of Babel." 😮😎👍 <a href="https://t.co/dn4o2zRL9V">pic.twitter.com/dn4o2zRL9V</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/784117415911231488">October 6, 2016</a></blockquote>
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The God Who Saves by <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> is a thrilling post-metaphysical theology. A great casting of apocalyptic theology for dogmatics.</div>
— Hank Spaulding (@Duke13Theo) <a href="https://twitter.com/Duke13Theo/status/785315994000588800">October 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> I went to see Kubo today with my lil bro and it made me think of The God Who Saves <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/theologyandcartoons?src=hash">#theologyandcartoons</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/787472680748457988">October 16, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/postmoltmannian">@postmoltmannian</a> for his review of The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch. <a href="https://t.co/sg3dyUsb7Y">https://t.co/sg3dyUsb7Y</a> <a href="https://t.co/pQ09HNvAH1">pic.twitter.com/pQ09HNvAH1</a></div>
— David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon/status/788493150419427328">October 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> it's been said that a key component of genuine spirituality is the ability to "inhabit paradox" <a href="https://t.co/QkzoFVS7Yk">pic.twitter.com/QkzoFVS7Yk</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/788718102372507648">October 19, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> Dude. This. <a href="https://t.co/hZSdaLCcb3">pic.twitter.com/hZSdaLCcb3</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/788721551201931264">October 19, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> i wept. "The eschatological word makes us eschatological creatures." <a href="https://t.co/EWuwYvEwoJ">pic.twitter.com/EWuwYvEwoJ</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/789518067273392128">October 21, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> Your use of Mark and the exorcism of the world. JAW. DROPPING. <a href="https://t.co/3YGuC5LTJh">pic.twitter.com/3YGuC5LTJh</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/789526602912788480">October 21, 2016</a></blockquote>
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After an engaging foreword, the work begins. Excited to review <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s 'The God Who Saves': <a href="https://t.co/ZiDJEtD9jL">pic.twitter.com/ZiDJEtD9jL</a></div>
— Alex Rayment (@RaymentAlex) <a href="https://twitter.com/RaymentAlex/status/791573184369856512">October 27, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Review of The God Who Saves by <a href="https://twitter.com/RaymentAlex">@RaymentAlex</a>: "an utterly convincing effort." <a href="https://twitter.com/wipfandstock">@wipfandstock</a> <a href="https://t.co/vHQvms8v31">https://t.co/vHQvms8v31</a> <a href="https://t.co/yZGMOlEwut">pic.twitter.com/yZGMOlEwut</a></div>
— David W. Congdon (@dwcongdon) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon/status/794337063264919552">November 4, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-15739721169714991932016-10-12T07:09:00.000-05:002016-10-12T07:57:47.687-05:00In Honor of Books & Culture: A Review of The New Measures by Ted A. Smith<i>Yesterday John Wilson, editor of </i><a href="http://www.booksandculture.com/">Books & Culture</a><i>, <a href="http://blog.ayjay.org/uncategorized/john-wilson-and-books-culture/">announced</a> that the next issue of the venerable magazine of Christian arts and letters would be its last. I have been a loyal reader of the magazine for the last decade, and some of the most intellectually compelling essays I have ever read were in its pages. Back when this blog was more active, I often engaged in critical dialogue with John, and this ultimately led to his asking me to write a review of a new book, </i><a href="http://www.cambridge.org/US/academic/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/new-measures-theological-history-democratic-practice">The New Measures</a><i>, by <a href="http://candler.emory.edu/faculty/profiles/smith-ted.html">Ted A. Smith</a>. I jumped at the opportunity. The review took me too long to write—it is always hardest to review a book that you love. I finally submitted it in fall 2009. Unfortunately, it was never published. In honor of both Ted Smith, whose book is one of the best scholarly books I have ever read, and in honor of </i>Books & Culture<i>, which I will miss dearly, I now present my review for the first time.</i><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Redeeming the Past<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><i>A Startling New Look at the Second Great Awakening</i></b></div>
<br />
Ted A. Smith, <i>The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice</i> (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), xiii + 340.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfZJtOS5k5CaLSQr_Rutv7qz7uvDTvBtZO_sWeICSaJdR2SoEezqn69lf_YFHMhj7QXfyASOCWg60PC6VhbJniGmLAAN9oNO6jKlzcnEmsUklSXRsiOxQ7RAFf3gRRRuwUmVu/s1600/newmeasures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfZJtOS5k5CaLSQr_Rutv7qz7uvDTvBtZO_sWeICSaJdR2SoEezqn69lf_YFHMhj7QXfyASOCWg60PC6VhbJniGmLAAN9oNO6jKlzcnEmsUklSXRsiOxQ7RAFf3gRRRuwUmVu/s320/newmeasures.jpg" width="213" /></a>In his 1834–35 <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SAkLmo8S50oC&dq=finney+lectures+revivals&source=gbs_navlinks_s">Lectures on Revivals of Religion</a></i>, Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) presents his argument for the use of what he calls “new measures” for preaching, by which he means those tactics or aids employed by ministers in order to grant the gospel the best hearing possible:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ministers ought to know <i>what measures</i> are best calculated to aid in accomplishing the great end of their office, the salvation of souls. Some measures are plainly necessary. By measures I mean what things should be done to get the attention of the people, and bring them to listen to the truth. Building houses for worship, and visiting from house to house, &c. are all “measures,” the object of which is to get the attention of people to the gospel. (167)</blockquote>
In an age of mass media, market strategies, and mega churches, Finney’s pragmatic logic—do whatever works—is simply part of the air we breathe. We are surrounded by “new measures.” We seem to be bombarded by new methods of getting our notice and keeping it. In this sense, the church is often no different than the local business or the latest pop star. The preaching of the gospel is just one more voice in a global cacophony—all clamoring for our undivided attention.<br />
<br />
What is second nature for us today was scandalous in the age of Finney and the Second Great Awakening. In his unwavering pursuit of conversion, Finney believed that preachers must do whatever is necessary to ensure the greatest possible “success,” that is, the greatest number of “saved souls.” This might mean rebelling against the status quo, whether cultural or religious. It might mean wearing the latest fashion, addressing the congregation in different and unusual ways, changing the architecture and design of the church, and even jettisoning long-held doctrines which inhibit the preaching of the gospel.<br />
<br />
Most (in)famously, for example, Finney rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination on the basis that, “Anything brought forward as doctrine, which cannot be made use of as practical, is not preaching the gospel” (184). Because conversion was the central goal, Finney believed it was necessary for every person to have the individual freedom to make a decision of faith. Instead of a God who elects sinners to salvation, Finney argued that sinners must elect God. This theological revolution coincided with what Ted Smith calls a “revolution in choices” within American society more broadly, in which political, economic, and religious choices proliferated. The disestablishment of religion and the rise of consumerism joined with Finney’s revivalist conception of human agency to permanently shape the nature of American culture.<br />
<br />
These evangelistic strategies or “measures” were highly controversial at the time, provoking cries of heresy and the use of counter-measures—which, of course, only further solidified the new measures as permanent staples of American religion. As a result, today, the “new” measures are simply old hat. They are commonplace features of modern democratic, religious life—as common as the fact that men and women, rich and poor, black and white, are able to sit together. The new measures are ubiquitous, and thus practically invisible. We see them in the evangelistic crusades of Billy Graham, in “seeker” mega-churches with the latest technology and stadium seating, in emergent communities that appeal to the younger evangelicals. Each of these examples, and the many more like them, adheres to Finney’s utilitarian frame of mind. And just as in Finney’s time, if today’s measures provoke controversy, that only further guarantees their dominance in the American religious landscape.<br />
<br />
When assessing these measures, it is all too easy to become either the curmudgeonly traditionalist or the cheerleading progressive. The one disparages all measures (and the utilitarianism undergirding them) as capitulations to the present culture and thus as deviations from God’s Word or from “the way our ancestors did it.” The other champions the new measures as the basis for today’s democratic virtues, including individual freedom and social equality. The one adopts a “narrative of decline,” the other a “narrative of progress.” For both, the history of the new measures becomes an example within a larger story about the rise or fall of American religion and culture. The measures simply reinforce one’s ideological “worldview.” By treating Finney and the new measures in this way, one refuses to let the history speak for itself—with its unique successes and tragic failures, promises kept and promises deferred. The result is the loss of concrete particularity and the inevitable disappearance of history itself.<br />
<br />
In his ambitious and brilliant study of Finney and the new measures, Ted Smith, associate professor of preaching and ethics at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology,<sup>1</sup> charts a radically different approach to history. Smith takes his cue from the conclusion of Theodor Adorno’s <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZiD-I5vX-oMC&dq=minima+moralia&source=gbs_navlinks_s">Minima Moralia</a></i>, in which we find the following statement:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light. To gain such perspectives without velleity or violence, entirely from felt contact with its objects—this alone is the task of thought. (247)</blockquote>
Adorno’s statement has been discussed at length by philosophers such as Jacob Taubes and Giorgio Agamben. What makes Smith’s study so remarkable is that he has applied Adorno’s axiom to the field of church history. The result is what Smith calls “theological history,” which strives to avoid all narratives of progress and decline by viewing the past “from the standpoint of hope.” <i>The New Measures</i> is therefore an exercise in theological history applied to the life and work of Finney and the new measures that he championed.<br />
<br />
Smith’s stated goal is to bring this fertile period of the Second Great Awakening under the “messianic light.” Put another way, Smith seeks to interpret the American religious past through an act of “eschatological memory.” For him, this means acknowledging “the complexities and discontinuities within the new measures” and recognizing “the indirect, ironic relationships between human projects and the saving work of God.” The result is, as he says, “both empirical and theological at every point.”<br />
<br />
The key to Smith’s “eschatological memory” is that he refuses to construct an immanent historical continuum (read: Hegelian philosophical history) in which the new measures are evaluated wholly on the basis of their historical consequences in relation to some immanent teleological norm. Narratives of progress or decline view the past entirely in terms of whether the end result is positive or negative: “Both depend on a morally charged ending that is continuous with other moments in the story.” Against this, Smith’s “eschatological memory” places the new measures in relation to an end that is <i>not</i> historically continuous with them. This is Adorno’s “standpoint of redemption,” what Smith calls the perspective of hope. In addition to being eschatological, this hope is also <i>apocalyptic</i>; it comes, like Christ himself, as an interruption of our existence, an incursion into the world. For that reason, the stories of the past “do not run smoothly on, but tangle to a halt.” The redemption of the past “will come neither from a little more progress on the road they are already on, nor from a quick reversal to retrace their steps and then run in the other direction. It will come in death and resurrection, or not at all.” In other words, the work of theological history depends upon a thoroughly <i>christological</i> and <i>eschatological</i> hermeneutic. This gives the historian freedom, as Adorno says, to “displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light.” <br />
<br />
The theological historian is able to present the past neither as a long-lost Golden Age nor as the start of our current cultural ills. Instead, the theological historian speaks about the past as it actually was, with all its “rifts and crevices,” but also as it is and might yet be in the light of our redemption. As Smith puts it, “I try to offer a perspective that neither damns democratic practice, nor celebrates it, nor depicts it as a project in which we might bring in the Reign of God if we worked a little harder. I argue that the new measures never kept their explicit promises, but that in and in spite of those promises deeper covenants were kept. . . . I hope neither to affirm the new measures as if they did the work of God directly nor to reject them as if God had utterly forsaken them, but to break them open so that they might testify to a hope against their hope.” For Smith, this hope against hope occurs in the messianic <i>Jetztzeit</i>, or “now-time,” discussed by Walter Benjamin: “the NOW of redemption.” And it is only from this perspective that the new measures appear neither as an artifact of the past nor as a novelty to be recaptured nor as a banal feature of democratic life today, but instead as “a gift for us” who have ears to hear and eyes to see.<br />
<br />
With this ambitious theological-historical method, Smith has crafted a book that not only succeeds as an illuminating work of church history, but also, and perhaps more importantly, serves as an excellent work of theology. More accurately, we should say that Smith has elided the distinction between history and theology altogether. The genre of “theological history,” as conceived and practiced by Smith, results in a project that enriches both fields, challenging historians to be more theological and theologians to be more historical. On this point alone, Smith has done us a great and lasting service.<br />
<br />
Smith’s methodology provides the architectonic structure of the book. Smith limits his focus to six new measures. This forms the book’s backbone. These six chapters each have six sections which loosely imitate the form of a sermon by Finney: (1) Smith begins with a story that encapsulates the point of the chapter; (2) he describes a particular crisis in its social and religious context; (3) he introduces the new measure that seeks to address the problem; (4) he tells how this new measure was eventually adopted by two opponents of the measure; (5) he demonstrates how the new measure failed to live up to its promise (what he calls “mortification”); and (6) finally he seeks to bear witness to the eschatological “transposition” of the new measure. Instead of an easy progress from failure to fulfillment, Smith juxtaposes the “mortified” measure with its eschatological redemption. His goal is to employ what Jürgen Habermas called <i>Rettendekritik</i>, redeeming-critique, in order to “speak of practices as justified and sinful at the same time.”<br />
<br />
Because of their “resistance to definition,” there is no list of the new measures, nor can one identify some common “essence”—other than the fact that they were used to increase the effectiveness of one’s preaching. They arose individually in response to specific social issues. As a result, they simply “invite illustration,” as Smith says. The choice of six measures is, he admits, arbitrary. Smith has chosen what he calls a “constellation” or a “hodgepodge of practices.” There is no necessary connection between them: they could be treated individually, ministers might use some but not others, and taking them together does not somehow constitute “revival culture.” As he puts it, “Neither the new measures nor this book pretend to organic coherence and completion.”<br />
<br />
Instead, Smith looks at six concrete practices which have had an enormous impact on American society. The first is Finney’s pragmatic instrumentalism, which transformed everything in life into a means toward conversion (that is, into a measure), such that things “had value only as they served the end of saving souls.” The inevitable issue with this instrumental logic is that “in order to be effective, [the measures] had to attract attention.” As a result, the second measure is the endless pursuit of novelty and sensation as part of the ongoing competition for the attention of the people. In his <i>Lectures</i>, Finney thus writes, “The object of our measures is to gain attention, and you <i>must have</i> something new.”<br />
<br />
The third measure, already noted, is the emphasis on the freedom of the will, illustrated nicely by Finney’s sermon entitled, “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts.” Fourth, the new measures brought about a kind of egalitarianism, in which middle-class respectability joined with a formal equality. This affected everything from doctrine to architecture. The fifth measure is the shift in concern from the sincerity of new converts to the sincerity of the ministers. Along with this comes the rise of the “star system” and what we now call “cults of personality,” as well as the ongoing debate over the relation between public life and private life that continues to dominate political discourse today. The sixth and final measure that Smith treats is the use of “typological narratives” that illustrate a higher truth through a rhetorically compelling story, something we now almost expect preachers to do. <br />
<br />
While Smith repeats the process of mortification and redemption for each of these measures, one example should suffice to show how this plays itself out in practice. Let’s consider the third chapter, on the issue of equality in the church. There is considerable ambiguity regarding the egalitarianism of the new measures. On the one hand, Finney preached a universal atonement in which all are potentially included. This change in the gospel message corresponded to a change in the layout of churches. Whereas the pews were formerly separated by sex, class, and race, the “free church” movement enabled men and women to sit together, eliminated the practice of pew rent, and in some cases even allowed for racial integration. And along with the changes in the church came changes in education, as gender and racial boundaries were abolished at Oberlin. On the other hand, this “formal equality” of all people went hand-in-hand with particular assumptions about middle-class respectability. As long as each person maintained a certain level of social decorum, everyone could enjoy “the respectable, static equality of a purified mass of formally identical subjects.”<br />
<br />
The breaking point—the moment of the measure’s mortification—came with the infamous “lynching at Oberlin” in 1840. Without rehearsing the entire ordeal, the basic story centers around Horace Norton, who sent sexually explicit notes to several female students. A plot was devised to lure him out at night. While walking with a female student, Norton was attacked by a group of male students and faculty, dragged by rope to a barn, and strung up on a post while the men beat and interrogated him. The ensuing controversy revealed that the real issue behind the lynching was, as Smith puts it, that Norton’s notes “called into question the respectability of Oberlin’s style of equality. White and black women and men mixed freely as equals in the public spaces of classrooms, the church, and the dining hall. Such mixing retained respectability because it involved the transcendence, rather than the transgression, of differences.” In the end, “Norton became a demon who had to be exorcised so that the fragile union of equality and respectability cobbled together at Oberlin could survive.”<br />
<br />
Smith identifies the mortification of this new measure with the fact that “universal equality” became “a badge of respectability, a marker of class distinction.” Ironically, “Formal equality became itself a marker that enabled distinctions that grounded inequality.” In fact, as Smith points out, such equality “not only marked but also <i>legitimated</i> inequality.” From this mortifying perspective, the new measure of universal equality becomes little more than class ideology. It is a form of “cheap grace” that proclaims equality while further baptizing social injustice. In this sense, we must give this measure a quick burial.<br />
<br />
But there is another perspective—the perspective of grace. From this new angle, the “practices of formal equality ask to be remembered eschatologically.” We must look at equality in the messianic light. Instead of a formal equality that reduces every individual to a more general and abstract class of “human being,” this eschatological community “features amalgamation without loss of distinction.” It is a universal equality which will “risk difference, desire, and disrespectability.” Drawing upon Walt Whitman, Smith argues that the redemption of equality will come not through the violent transgression of social differences, nor through their formal abolition, but rather through a kind of “adhesiveness” in which love “binds different people together as citizens, church members, classmates, lovers, and equals.” The new measures witness to this eschatological end without ever being able to realize it in practice.<br />
<br />
This is only one example from the book, yet it speaks to the overall depth of theological insight that Smith discovers in the new measures. And while it is a work of history, every page seems to be part of a grand sermon addressing the church in America today. The new measures are still with us, perhaps more now than ever before. Ted Smith’s book is thus truly a gift: he not only speaks about an eschatological hope, but his work embodies it.<br />
<br />
––––––––––<br />
<sup>1</sup> At the time I wrote this review, Smith was assistant professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-41681622448651301592016-10-04T07:08:00.000-05:002016-10-04T07:10:28.121-05:00The God Who Saves: Early Reader ReviewsMy latest book, <i><a href="http://wipfandstock.com/the-god-who-saves.html">The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch</a></i>, has not even been out for a month and already the reviews are coming in. Here are some tweets from two readers, Josiah Daniels (<a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels">@josiah_Rdaniels</a>) and NC Clair (<a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair">@nc_clair</a>). Daniels read an early draft, while Clair read the ebook version.<br />
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If Im reading <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> right, his soteriology is an apocalyptic, mystical, materialist ensemble. <a href="https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh">https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779127660706398208">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> "The truth of the gospel is that the Messiah is already here with me and you today."<a href="https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh">https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779457049574969344">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> We r saved from ourselves. Not the sinful old self. Saved frm our pursuit of security-our desire to assert freedom and authority</div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779458107936215040">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>'s apocalyptic soteriology emphasizes "our death-the death of the existentially secure world that we build around ourselves."</div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779458589098438656">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> "We may not have a firm grasp on ourselves, much less on God, but *God* has a firm grasp on us." <a href="https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh">https://t.co/L0U6M2IOMh</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779464282908090369">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a>. Excellent book. Cannot recommend it enough. <a href="https://t.co/L0U6M2rdnH">https://t.co/L0U6M2rdnH</a> <a href="https://t.co/EWvWNFnL6O">pic.twitter.com/EWvWNFnL6O</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779465341340561408">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Great news everyone: <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> reminded me why I am a Christian and he also helped me (officially) make the materialist leap. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/theologynerd?src=hash">#theologynerd</a></div>
— Josiah R. Daniels (@josiah_Rdaniels) <a href="https://twitter.com/josiah_Rdaniels/status/779466488818216960">September 23, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> I've been waiting for someone to say this. To give words to my rejection of "worldview" talk. <a href="https://t.co/n80V7n2vLP">pic.twitter.com/n80V7n2vLP</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781970422443208704">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> you've written a generative work that reaches beyond your primary thesis. What a gift you possess and give to us.</div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781970716103245825">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> this kind of theological writing stokes my mind, and heart. It's doxological. And only in chapter 1! Yikes! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheologyMatters?src=hash">#TheologyMatters</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781971606746849281">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Ladies and Gentlemen, theology for grown ups. <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> <a href="https://t.co/0Cw4Pc1MUT">pic.twitter.com/0Cw4Pc1MUT</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781980241120075776">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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"Apologetics as the attempt to defend Xianity by extratheological criteria is...ruled out in principle" -<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> PREACH IN THIS PLACE.</div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781984199481909250">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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I can't even. The "Theology as Science" section of The God Who Saves... No words. <a href="https://twitter.com/WTravisMcMaken">@WTravisMcMaken</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/JonOutLoud">@JonOutLoud</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/781986558916329472">September 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> i wept when i read this. This means everything for the pastor/preacher who has ears to hear. Beautiful. <a href="https://t.co/ioALWcGTtp">pic.twitter.com/ioALWcGTtp</a></div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/782684730324123648">October 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> seriously...thank you for doing theology for the Church.</div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/782686089421156353">October 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dwcongdon">@dwcongdon</a> i mean, i haven't even gotten to the central thesis yet and this prologue is totally bonkers. 👍👍👍👍👍👍</div>
— NC Clair (@nc_clair) <a href="https://twitter.com/nc_clair/status/782686438106226688">October 2, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-35478203016647789372016-09-13T15:00:00.000-05:002016-09-13T15:18:02.906-05:00The God Who Saves: A Preview of My New Book<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VcU4euRM8z5HuW5z0TVuDL0ZhL1Z7wbD-AJyW3xNwBv8tWjFAjfDI9HuwrDroRMbvidoxUArUHz7vGegjX3NdyoPlvWDcqm0IC5eYUQUUyQFuxCUFrgy0cg2TMXJ7l5Ron1Q/s1600/Congdon_GodWhoSaves_Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VcU4euRM8z5HuW5z0TVuDL0ZhL1Z7wbD-AJyW3xNwBv8tWjFAjfDI9HuwrDroRMbvidoxUArUHz7vGegjX3NdyoPlvWDcqm0IC5eYUQUUyQFuxCUFrgy0cg2TMXJ7l5Ron1Q/s400/Congdon_GodWhoSaves_Cover.jpg" width="262" /></a><br />
<div>
I am pleased to announce that my new book, <i><a href="http://wipfandstock.com/the-god-who-saves.html">The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch</a></i>, is now available from <a href="http://wipfandstock.com/imprint/cascade-3">Cascade Books</a>. This work is near to my heart. For one thing, it is the first book contract I ever signed. The project originated in January 2010 at a request from Robin Parry, an editor at Wipf and Stock, who was familiar with my work. I tell the whole story of the book’s origin in the prologue, so I will not relay the details again here. Suffice it to say, it has been on my mind for the last half-dozen years and, in a certain respect, it is the project for which all my previous writings were the prolegomena.<br />
<div>
<br />
The book is essentially a dogmatics in outline, but it is controlled throughout by a very specific claim, namely, that salvation—not trinity, not christology—is the orienting center and guiding norm of Christian theology. To give a sense of what I mean, here is a sample from chapter 2, where I outline my theological method.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>From Chapter 2: “Soteriocentrism: Prolegomena to a Dogmatic Sketch”</b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have argued that Christian faith confesses a God who saves. Theology is the conceptual interpretation and clarification of this axiom of faith. It is a scientific, hermeneutical, and practical discipline that humbly and rigorously reflects on the relation between God and humanity in the light of God’s reconciling self-revelation in Jesus Christ. But what does it mean for God to save? What does it mean for us to be saved? These questions—which lie at the very heart of Christian self-understanding—elude easy answers and must be asked anew by every generation. The difficulty of reaching any kind of agreement is only compounded by the fact that there has never been a dogma of the atonement. No ecumenical conciliar statement about the meaning of salvation exists. The ecumenical councils were content with clarifying the nature of Christ’s person without clarifying the nature of his saving work and how we participate in it. This has left the church with “an inherited heap of proposals” and little agreement about how to evaluate them.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The following chapters attempt to offer a systematic theological account of salvation, a soteriological <i>dogmatica minora</i>. That is to say, they seek to articulate various doctrines of the Christian faith in terms of the economy of grace. Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and creation—these and other doctrines will be explicated in light of the saving event that Christian faith confesses has taken place in Christ. This project is thus the consistent application of Melanchthon’s axiom (“to know Christ means to know his benefits”) to the whole of Christian theology. <i>To know God is to know the God who saves</i>. Theology is only properly Christian theology when it interprets the subject-matter of theology—the material content of dogmatics—in terms of its salvific significance for us. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The implication is that, as Eberhard Jüngel puts it, “you are not teaching the <i>matter</i> properly if you do not at the same time think of its use.” . . . To adapt Luther, unless we learn to know God in this way (i.e., soteriologically), we necessarily go wrong. Unless theology speaks of a reality that is “useful for us as believers,” that “helps us,” it speaks in vain. To borrow an image from Wittgenstein, theology that is not determined by soteriology is language “idling,” that is, not “doing work.” If any doctrinal statement is irrelevant to the question of salvation, then it is highly questionable whether it has a place in a distinctively <i>Christian</i> articulation of faith. To paraphrase Luther, it is not Christian theology when you explicate doctrines from a historical or metaphysical point of view; they must be interpreted in terms of their usefulness and significance for us as believers. (53–55)</blockquote>
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All of this talk about salvation is situated within the context of trying to work out a problem regarding Christian universalism—a position I have defended and articulated on <a href="https://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-i-am-universalist-dogmatic-sketch.html">this blog</a> in the past. Over the years my thoughts on the matter have changed. I came to see the individual person’s historicity to be a significant problem for most universalistic soteriologies, indeed, for soteriology as such. Most classical Christian thought began to strike me as hermeneutically uncritical and highly metaphysical (in a pejorative sense that I define in the book). I had to subject my own views to thoroughgoing scrutiny and reconstruct my theology from the ground up. This book is the result. The purpose of <i>The God Who Saves</i> is thus to construct an alternative account of salvation that addresses these concerns and provides an internally coherent and consistent presentation of Christian theology.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>What Is Salvation?</b></div>
</div>
<br />
You may be thinking: if this is a reconstruction of theology around soteriology, what exactly is that soteriology? The answer, in a nutshell, is that I define salvation apocalyptically. Salvation, in other words, is an eschatological event—one that existentially destroys our old existence by crucifying us with Christ. I make this argument in conversation with recent work in apocalyptic theology (especially Ernst Käsemann and J. Louis Martyn), but hermeneutically filtered through the critical lens of Rudolf Bultmann and Eberhard Jüngel. I then appropriate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of unconscious Christianity to argue that the apocalypse is an inherently unconscious event. I distinguish between unconscious faith/Christianity—as the level at which God’s saving act occurs—and conscious faith/Christianity, which is the level at which religious practice takes place. Conscious Christianity fulfills its mission as it orients us toward and connects us with the unconscious faith that is its transcendent ground. From this the other doctrines follow: the Spirit is the agent of unconscious faith, the church is primarily an unconscious community, and the creature is defined by its unconscious, unnatural existence.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Reading tip: </b>If you want to get right to my reconstruction of Christian theology, then skip ahead to chapter 3. The first two chapters are introductory material. The main course—and really the heart of the book—is found in the third chapter, where I articulate my account of salvation as apocalypse. </blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>How Does This Book Relate to My Previous Books?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There is a close connection between <i>The God Who Saves</i> and my previous work. In <i><a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/mission-demythologizing-rudolf-bultmanns-dialectical-theology">The Mission of Demythologizing</a></i>, I attempted to figure out what the relationship between Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann actually is. What I discovered is that Barth and Bultmann part ways over soteriology—over universalism in fact. Barth’s mature theology, in which he rejects the form of dialectical theology he previously shared with Bultmann, is a thoroughgoing attempt to secure the universality and sovereignty of divine grace. His later doctrine of election claims that all human beings are elect in Christ, who alone is the elected and rejected one. Bultmann opposes this idea and argues instead that election takes place in the act of faith itself, which is the position of the early Barth. This is a clear impasse and I make no attempt to reconcile Barth and Bultmann on this point in my previous books. I have always been convinced that Barth was right to make God’s grace universally effective, but I became convinced that Bultmann was equally right to emphasize the freedom and historicity of the human person. <i>The God Who Saves</i> is my attempt to develop an account of universal salvation within a Bultmannian approach to theology.</div>
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This has been a personally meaningful book to write. I hope it proves as meaningful to those of you who read it.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
____________________________</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Table of Contents</b></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Prologue: How My Mind Has Changed</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1 Introduction: The Problem of Christian Universalism<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dare We Hope? Can We Know? </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Defining Universalism: A Typology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Problem of Universalism </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Toward a Universalism without Metaphysics </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2 Soteriocentrism: Prolegomena to a Dogmatic Sketch<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Exordium to a Soteriocentric Theology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Theology as Science </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Theology as Hermeneutics </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Theology as Praxis </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Theology as Soteriology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Orthoheterodoxy: In Defense of the Freedom of Theology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
3 The Act of Salvation: Apocalypse<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Soteriological Multivalence and the Hermeneutical Problem </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Salvation as Apocalypse: Interrogating New Testament Soteriology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Salvation as Embarrassment: Eberhard Jüngel’s Eccentric Eschatology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Salvation as Cocrucifixion: The Participatory Event of the Apocalypse </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Unconscious Apocalypse: “. . . You Did It to Me” </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
4 The Agent of Salvation: Christ-Spirit<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Soteriology and Christology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Person before Work: The Internal Incoherence of Chalcedonian Christology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Person as Work: Toward a Soteriocentric Christology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Interruptive Event: Apocalyptic Christology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Interruptive Agent: Apocalyptic Pneumatology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Deus Praesens</i>: Apocalyptic Pneuma-Christology </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
5 The Site of Salvation: Apostolate<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus?</i> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Problem of Ecclesiocentrism </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Church as the Apocalyptic Apostolate </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Toward a New Letter to Diognetus </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
6 The Space of Salvation: Unnature<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Destroyer of Eden </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Reversing the Loci: Two Ways </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Existential Theanthropology: A Theology of the Creature </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Existential Theocosmology: A Theology of Creation </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Existential <i>Epektasis</i>: The End of Creation </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
7 The God of Salvation: Trinity<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Trinity as <i>Schluss</i> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God the Christ: The Inbreaking of the Apocalypse </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God the Spirit: The Power of the Apocalypse </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God the Creator: The Ground of the Apocalypse </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Apocalyptic Trinity </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Ex-Centering God </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Epilogue: Faith, Love, and Hope<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Universalism and Religions </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Universalism and Justice </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Universalism and the Afterlife</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-47234987288311183992016-06-06T08:15:00.001-05:002016-08-09T10:01:31.433-05:00Eberhard Busch to Rolf Italiaander, 1968The question of Karl Barth’s position on homosexuality was raised recently by <a href="http://postbarthian.com/2016/06/05/karl-barths-flip-flop-homosexuality/">Wyatt Houtz</a>, who has quoted <a href="https://pres-outlook.org/2002/03/thinking-outside-the-box-part-4-the-voice-of-progressive-traditionalists/">George Hunsinger’s reference to a letter</a> near the end of Barth’s life that indicates a change of mind on this issue. Since this letter is only available in German, Wyatt asked if someone could translate it. In answer to the call, I have done precisely that. It’s a rough translation, and no doubt others could improve it, but the gist should be clear enough. Below I have included the letter in both German and English.<br />
<br />
___________________________<br />
<br />
<b>To the ethnologist Rolf Italiaander, Hamburg 1968</b><br />
Letter from Eberhard Busch (at the instruction of Karl Barth) written on June 21, 1968.<br />
<br />
Sehr geehrter Herr Italiaander!<br />
<br />
Professor Karl Barth hat Ihren Brief vom 10. Juni zur Kenntnis genommen und hat sich gefreut, daß Sie bei der von Ihnen geplanten Sammlung zum Problem der Homosexuellen und ihrer sozialen Stellung und Anerkennung daran gedacht haben, auch seine Stimme zum Klingen zu bringen.<br />
<br />
In der Tat hat er sich bereits einmal (<i>Kirchl. Dogmatik</i> III/4, 1951, S. 184f. [note]) zu diesem Problem geäußert - freilich in einem Sinn, der jenen Abschnitt für Ihre Sammlung wohl nicht als geeignet und passend erscheinen läßt. Damit Sie seine dort überwiegend negative Einstellung zu homosexuellen Beziehungen nicht falsch oder überbewerten, sei kurz angedeutet:<br />
<br />
1) daß die dort - nur <i>beiläufig</i> - gemachte Äußerung nur auf dem Hintergrund des ganzen <i>Zusammenhangs</i> jenes Abschnitts zu verstehen und zu würdigen ist: ein Zusammenhang, in dem K. Barth das dem Menschen als Kreatur und in seiner Kreatürlichkeit gegebene <i>Gebot</i> Gottes unter einem von mehreren Aspekten, nämlich unter dem der »<i>Freiheit</i> zur Gemeinschaft» auslegt. Wobei für ihn die Urgestalt aller <i>mit</i>menschlichen <i>Gemeinschaft</i> die des (nicht bloß «ehelichen», sondern des ganzen natürlichen) Gegenübers von Mann und Frau ist.<br />
<br />
2) In diesem Zusammenhang erscheint ihm nun die Homosexualität ihrem <i>Wesen</i> nach als eine Gestalt von <i>unfreier</i> Gemeinschaft - bzw. als ein Verhalten, in dem sich der Mensch seiner Freiheit zur Gemeinschaft verschließt und entzieht. Sie dürfen aber gewiß sein, daß diese seine Meinung zu diesem Punkt als solche für ihn prinzipiell keine Erlaubnis zur «Diffamierung», geschweige zur (ja unsinnigen) juristischen «Bestrafung» der Homosexuellen (jedenfalls soweit sie nicht Andere «verführen» oder «belästigen») implizierte und impliziert. Für wirklich schlimm hält er nicht sie, sondern vielmehr den emotionalen Pharisäismus, der - sei es mit degradierenden (zudem oft nicht mit gleichem Maß angewandten) Gesetzesparagraphen, sei es im verächtlichen Flüsterton gegen sie einschreitet oder Stimmung macht. So auf keinen Fall!<br />
<br />
3) Prof. Barth ist mit seinen damaligen beiläufigen Äußerungen heute - angesichts der seit ihrer Niederschrift eingetretenen Wandlungen und neuen Erkenntnisse - nicht mehr ganz zufrieden und würde sie heute sicher etwas anders abfassen. Man darf also denken, daß er <i>gerade</i> auf dem Hintergrund des Zusammenhangs, daß Gottes Gebot grundsätzlich auch als «Freiheit zur Gemeinschaft» wahrgenommen und befolgt sein will, - im Gespräch mit Medizinern und Psychologen - zu einer neuen Beurteilung und Darstellung des Phänomens kommen könnte.<br />
<br />
Das würden Sie natürlich jetzt gern von ihm hören. Dazu hat er, der sich als über 82jähriger allerlei Beschränkungen gefallen lassen muß, aber nun nicht mehr die dazu erforderliche Zeit. Sie meint er mit den ihm verbliebenen Kräften auf die Arbeit an ihm gegenwärtig noch wichtiger erscheinende Themen und Aufgaben verwenden zu sollen. Haben Sie bitte freundliches Verständnis dafür!<br />
<br />
In seinem Auftrag grüßt Sie ergeben<br />
Eberhard Busch<br />
<br />
<br />
Dear Mr. Italiaander!<br />
<br />
Professor Karl Barth took note of your letter on June 10 and is pleased that, in your planned anthology on the issue of homosexuals and their social status and recognition, you thought to give space to his voice.<br />
<br />
In fact he has already once expressed himself on this issue (Kirchliche Dogmatik III/4, 1951, 184f.)—though in a sense that probably would not be appropriate and suitable for that section of your anthology. Lest you view the predominantly negative attitude toward homosexual relations in that passage in a false or exaggerated way, the following was briefly mentioned:<br />
<br />
1) That one has to understand and appreciate what is expressed there—only <i>incidentally</i>—against the background of the whole <i>context</i> of that passage: a context in which Karl Barth interprets the <i>command</i> of God given to human beings as creatures and in their creatureliness under one of several aspects, namely under the “<i>freedom</i> for community.” For him the original form of <i>inter</i>personal <i>community</i> (not merely “marital” but all natural community) is the counterpart of man and woman.<br />
<br />
2) In this context homosexuality in its <i>essence</i> appeared to him as a form of <i>unfree</i> community—namely, as a behavior in which one closes oneself to and withdraws from one’s freedom for community. But you can be sure that his opinion on this point did not and does not imply as such a license for “defamation,” let alone for the (nonsensical) legal “punishment” of homosexuals (at least insofar as they do not “seduce” or “harass” others). For he does not consider them actually wicked but rather he considers it emotional Pharisaism when, on the one hand, there is a degrading of the articles of the law (though often not carried out to the same degree), but on the other hand in contemptuous whispers people take actions against them or create a hostile environment. By no means!<br />
<br />
3) With respect to his former incidental remarks—in view of the changes and new discoveries that have occurred since its writing—Professor Barth is today no longer entirely satisfied and would certainly today write them somewhat differently. One may think, therefore, <i>precisely</i> against the background of the context in which God’s command fundamentally wants to be perceived and followed as “freedom for community,” that—in conversation with doctors and psychologists—one could come to a new evaluation and presentation of the phenomenon.<br />
<br />
You would naturally now like to hear this from him. But having endured eighty-two years of all kinds of limitations, he now no longer has the time required for this purpose. They say that he should make use of his remaining strength to work on those themes and tasks that presently appear more important to him. We ask for your kind understanding!<br />
<br />
Greetings on his behalf,<br />
Eberhard Busch<br />
<br />
German text in: <i>Offene Briefe 1945–1968</i> (Gesamtausgabe 5.15), 542–43.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-77185988532101994012016-05-23T16:00:00.000-05:002016-05-23T16:39:26.903-05:00Theological Pluralism at the End of the MainlineEighteen years ago <a href="https://www.smu.edu/Perkins/FacultyAcademics/DirectoryList/Abraham">William J. Abraham</a> published a dire warning about the future of the United Methodist Church in <i>First Things</i>: <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/06/002-united-methodists-at-the-end-of-the-mainline">“United Methodists at the End of the Mainline.”</a> The article has been shared recently in light of the current social media firestorm surrounding the 2016 United Methodist Church General Conference (#UMCGC). Abraham in 1998 saw his denomination facing a “breakdown of a working consensus.”<br />
<br />
The problem, he argues, is that the United Methodist Church is composed of three groups—the liberals, radicals, and conservatives—with the liberals in leadership. The liberals have a policy of inclusion and pluralism, but they have excluded those who do not share their pluralistic vision and principles. <b>The result is the old cliché: liberals are tolerant of everyone except the intolerant.</b> Abraham sees the liberal position as inherently unstable and incoherent. The conservatives and radicals, by contrast, are defined by being explicitly exclusionary: the conservatives exclude those who are confessionally out-of-bounds, while the radicals exclude those who are politically out-of-bounds. Abraham is clearly sympathetic to the conservative camp and defends their position in the rest of the article. He clearly appreciates the liberals for being able to hold the three groups together for so long, and he seems to blame the radicals for undermining this “working consensus” by forcing the liberals to take a hard stand against certain conservative factions.<br />
<br />
What interests me here is his case against theological pluralism. Here is the heart of his argument:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It has long been agreed that United Methodism is a coalition of diverse conviction and opinion, having been formed under the banner of theological pluralism. Church leaders took the view in the 1970s that the core identity of United Methodism, if there was one at all, was located in commitment to the Methodist Quadrilateral (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience), and that this not only permitted but in fact sanctioned and fostered doctrinal pluralism. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Doctrinal pluralism, despite its intellectual incoherence, will work so long as something akin to Liberal Protestantism is held by the leadership of the church and so long as those who are not Liberal Protestants acquiesce. In fact pluralism is part of the intellectual structure of Liberal Protestantism. If you believe that Christian doctrine is essentially an attempt to capture dimensions of human experience that defy precise expression in language because of personal and cultural limitations, then <b>the truth about God, the human condition, salvation, and the like can never be adequately posited once and for all; on the contrary, the church must express ever and anew its experience of the divine as mediated through Jesus Christ.</b> The church becomes a kind of eternal seminar whose standard texts keep changing and whose conversation never ends. In these circumstances pluralism is an inescapable feature of the church’s life. Pluralism effectively prevents the emergence of Christian doctrinal confession, that is, agreed Christian conviction and truth; and it creates the psychological and social conditions for constant self-criticism and review. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The incoherence of this position is not difficult to discern, despite its initial plausibility. On its own terms it cannot tolerate, for example, those who believe that there really is a definitive revelation of the divine, that the church really can discern and express the truth about God through the working of reason and the Holy Spirit, and that such truth is necessary for effective mission and service. Hence pluralism is by nature exclusionary. Thus it is no surprise that pluralists readily desert their pluralism in their vehement opposition to certain kinds of classical and conservative theology. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pluralism is at once absolutist and relativist. <b>It is absolutely committed to the negative doctrine that there is no divine revelation that delivers genuine knowledge of God; it is absolutely committed to a radically apophatic conception of Christian theology, so that no human language or concept, no product of reason at all, can adequately express the mystery of the divine</b>; and it is absolutely committed to using theology to articulate Christian doctrine given the needs and idiom of the day. But it is relativist in its vision of what constitutes the material content of Christian doctrine at any point in history. Doctrine for the pluralists is the expression of Christian teaching as worked out by some appropriate theology and expressed in terms adequate to the culture of the day. To them, Christian tradition constitutes a series of landmark expressions of the faith which are worth exploring, but which must change to incorporate new insights and new truth. On this analysis tradition is seen to be a relatively benign, if not strictly binding, phenomenon.</blockquote>
I am not interested in the internecine squabbles within the UMC, so I will mostly ignore the rest of his article. What concerns me is the characterization of pluralism in this piece. Abraham thinks that the pluralist position is rooted in apophaticism, that is to say, the notion that we cannot have definitive knowledge of God. Because our language does not actually refer to God, our God-talk is merely about human experience. And since human experience is pluriform and constantly changing, our theology must necessarily be pluralistic and provisional.<br />
<br />
The liberal position as Abraham describes it makes a crucial—and, to my mind, erroneous—presupposition. It assumes that one cannot confess a definitive revelation of God <i>and</i> hold to a pluralistic and provisional understanding of God-talk. <i>If</i> we have knowledge of God, <i>then</i> doctrinal pluralism is impossible. Whether this is Abraham’s own position or simply the position of the UMC liberals he describes is beside the point. What matters here is that this is not the only option available to us.<br />
<br />
<b>Theological pluralism is the necessary consequence of faith’s knowledge of God’s revelation.</b> That is because pluralism is grounded not in a pragmatic attempt to address human diversity but in a theological conviction about the very being and action of God. Pluralism is valid because God embraces sociocultural multiplicity within God’s own being. Revelation is not objectifiable in a text or historical occurrence but is and remains a divine event that confronts us in history. <b>This event of divine self-revelation—insofar as it is concretely defined by the Christ who transgresses cultural boundaries and the Spirit who brings cultural strangers into emancipatory coexistence—is inherently translatable</b>, and thus God is perpetually in the act of translating Godself into a multiplicity of contexts.<br />
<br />
The result is that we can affirm each of the three factions that Abraham describes:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>In agreement with the <b>liberals</b>, revelation “def[ies] precise expression in language because of personal and cultural limitations,” doctrine “can never be adequately posited once and for all,” “the church must express ever and anew its experience of the divine,” and the church must engage in “constant self-criticism.”</li>
<li>In agreement with the <b>radicals</b>, this revelation is an emancipatory event that stands on the side of the marginalized and disenfranchised, those who have been oppressed by the unjust distribution of power and the enslaving system of neoliberal capitalism.</li>
<li>In agreement with the <b>conservatives</b>, this revelation is grounded in a definitive revelation of God in Jesus Christ and is thus the norm and criterion for genuinely confessional claims about God, the world, and the church.</li>
</ul>
<br />
By grounding the liberal project in the being-in-act of God, one can thus move beyond Abraham’s charge of incoherence. The liberal project is, properly understood, not inclusion and pluralism for the mere sake of pluralism and inclusion. <b>Instead, inclusion is grounded in and follows from a particular understanding of <i>God</i>, and since this God has a very particular character the inclusion that follows from revelation has certain limitations.</b> It is not pluralism for pluralism’s sake. It is pluralism as the expression of God’s constant going-beyond-Godself in the action of Christ and the Spirit in the world. Certain positions are necessarily excluded as being unfaithful to <i>this</i> God.<br />
<br />
In other words, conservative positions that attempt to stabilize doctrine as timeless and universally valid are in fact <i>denying</i> the truth of the gospel. Positions that attempt to establish certain gender and sexual norms as permanently valid on the basis of creation are in fact <i>opposed</i> to God’s revelation. Positions that do not take matters of oppression and liberation into account <i>fail</i> to follow the way of God in the world.<br />
<br />
The charge of incoherence is only plausible where one does not probe the underlying basis for theological pluralism. Once we do, we begin to see that it is possible—nay, necessary—to develop what we might call a <b>radical liberal evangelicalism</b>. Such a position insists on a genuine knowledge of God that makes possible meaningful God-talk. But such a position equally insists that the God we come to know is a God who does not stand still, who is perpetually in movement, who does not put up with being made a stable object for our observation and inquiry. Moreover, this God is in movement on the underside of history, breaking in among those who have been systemically silenced and subjugated. <b>The most genuinely <i>conservative</i> theology is thus the most genuinely <i>radical</i>: a theology that hears and speaks of God in revolutionary action.</b><br />
<br />
My forthcoming book, <i>The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch</i> (Cascade, 2016), is an initial attempt to outline what a theology of this nature looks like. In that work I propose what I call an <b><a href="http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2011/03/beyond-binaries-response-to-mark-galli_18.html">orthoheterodoxy</a></b>: theology must always speak <i>differently</i>, but in the <i>right</i> way, namely, in accordance with the norm of God’s translatable event of revelation. You can see the table of contents <a href="https://www.academia.edu/25468765/The_God_Who_Saves_-_Table_of_Contents">here</a>. Stay tuned for more details.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-33479095031767874182016-05-05T12:23:00.001-05:002016-08-09T10:03:18.776-05:00Dialectical Theology and Mission: A Response to Martin Westerholm<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVAIAKV2qXwz8vYOj_SseHET_za0FV9S0o3BdjsNYHZL2KqB2ldNj8_HHvc76yXfUMBg39sxt28tDfB82ZL7un365fXM255pshtPqwP4VI2OUZU7OXdHyxEdbRiFn6N_QxO2y/s1600/Congdon+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVAIAKV2qXwz8vYOj_SseHET_za0FV9S0o3BdjsNYHZL2KqB2ldNj8_HHvc76yXfUMBg39sxt28tDfB82ZL7un365fXM255pshtPqwP4VI2OUZU7OXdHyxEdbRiFn6N_QxO2y/s320/Congdon+cover.jpg" width="214" /></a>I am grateful to Martin Westerholm for his generous review article on my book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451487924?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1451487924&linkCode=xm2&tag=thefireandthe-20">The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology</a></i> (Fortress, 2015), which he places alongside Kevin Hector’s new work, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198722648?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0198722648&linkCode=xm2&tag=thefireandthe-20">The Theological Project of Modernism: Faith and the Conditions of Mineness</a></i> (OUP, 2015). The article is in the latest issue of the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijst.12149/abstract"><i>International Journal of Systematic Theology</i> (18, no. 2: 210–32)</a>. On the whole I think Westerholm has done an admirable job summarizing and exploring the key themes of my work. In this post I want to address some areas of critique that he raises and reflect on what this reveals about the state of the conversation.<br />
<br />
I.<br />
<br />
Westerholm understands well the structure of my argument. He recognizes that it is framed in concentric circles leading, at its heart, into the program of demythologizing. The argument is not primarily that demythologizing itself has been completely misunderstood—though in some respects it has been—but that the program needs to be placed in the proper context: “Rehabilitating this hermeneutic does not mean changing its basic definition, but rather constructing a new framework around it that changes the terms on which it is understood. Congdon’s book is long because it not only describes its object but also reconstructs the theological and historical world in relation to which the object is judged” (218). The new framework I provide is a new understanding of dialectical theology (DT), one that does justice to the theological concerns and historical trajectories of both Barth and Bultmann. Westerholm examines my tripartite definition of DT as soteriological, eschatological, and missional (I use “missionary” in my book, but “missional” captures the same meaning).<br />
<br />
Westerholm focuses his main critique around the third term and here it is worth taking a closer look. He writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The fly in the ointment is the addition of mission as the third constitutive feature of dialectical theology. The addition appears to be crucial, for Congdon wishes to argue that it is the ‘missionary logic’ that ‘governs’ dialectical theology that demythologizing ‘extends’ into hermeneutics; but the association between dialectical theology and mission is a soft spot in his argument. At the most conceptually consistent moments in the work, Congdon depicts dialectical theology as a soteriological-eschatological form of thought that has implications for mission; but we are in the sphere of fallacy if we name the essence of the thing according to its implication, and stronger claims regarding ‘essence’ typify the book. Congdon seeks to secure these claims through a reinterpretation of Barth’s development that depicts concern for mission as a decisive factor in moving Barth towards dialectical theology; but, in a book in which the historiographical work is generally thorough and rigorous, the evidence provided for Barth’s missional interest is strikingly thin, and even were the interest well substantiated, we should again be guilty of fallacy were we to treat genetic factors as constitutive of essence. (219–20)</blockquote>
Westerholm has a long footnote in here where he attempts to review all the places in which I cite mission appearing in Barth’s early writings (220n38). Readers are encouraged to read the note for themselves. All I want to say here is that he seems to have misunderstood the point of this historiographical section. The point was not to document every appearance of mission in the early Barth. When he says that “mission is then largely absent from Barth’s writings between 1910 and 1914,” that is because I chose not to discuss those years in order to hit the main highlights. Parenthetically, the recent publication of Barth’s 1911 sermons shows that mission was indeed a concern on his mind during that time. Westerholm concludes the note by stating: “No evidence that Barth engages with the theme after 1915, when he actually began working out his dialectical theology, appears, a lack that stands in sharp contrast to the frequency with which other spheres in which a separation between kerygma and culture has implications – social, political, economic – are mentioned.” But again, that is because I largely chose to conclude my investigation with Barth’s turn to DT—though, strangely, Westerholm ignores section 3.3 (esp. pp. 295–303) where I document the way this missionary theme plays out explicitly in 1932. Others, especially John Flett, have already commented on the importance of mission to Barth’s later theology, and I did not want to retread the same territory in a book focused on Bultmann.<br />
<br />
But there is a more important issue here. Westerholm seems to think that only explicit mentions of mission count in favor of my argument that there is a missionary logic in DT. This connects with his charge that I have confused <i>essence</i> and <i>implication</i>. Perhaps this is something I should have been clearer about in my book. When I speak about mission as part of the “essence” of DT, I am referring to the “missionary logic” (a term I use frequently and that Westerholm quotes) of DT. When I speak about “implications for mission,” I am referring to the way DT has practical applications for how we think about and practice mission today. I claim both as true, but the former does not require explicit reference to mission. And this is where I think Westerholm misunderstands a key piece about my overall argument.<br />
<br />
Westerholm finds my “interest in mission” to be a “liability” because “the emphasis appears in important senses to have been unnecessary to the larger argument.” He writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Congdon depicts mission as a third term that is needed to connect dialectical theology to demythologizing; but the most parsimonious form of the claim that demythologizing extends the principles of dialectical theology into hermeneutics bypasses mission entirely and presents demythologizing as the hermeneutical application of the eschatology of dialectical theology. A thesis of this kind would say that dialectical theology is marked by separating human realities that are put under judgement from the event of revelation, and that demythologizing applies this separation to hermeneutics. (220)</blockquote>
Actually, this does not bypass mission at all but is in fact deeply interwoven with it! Here is the real heart of the matter: Westerholm seems to have missed a crucial part of my book’s argument, something I state very clearly in the introduction, namely, that DT is fundamentally about reconstructing theology within modernity and <i>mission is the logic that makes this reconstruction possible</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
How is it possible, to use Cahill’s phrase, for Christianity to “be subject to creative transformations?” The only satisfactory answer to this question is one that understands the logic behind such creative reconstruction as <i>internal</i> to Christianity. Understood appropriately, <i>mission</i> is this logic. It is what makes the transformations of Christian faith possible, insofar as mission is essentially the pursuit of vernacular modes of Christian existence. Mission is the daring venture of theological reconstruction. It articulates the possibility and process of (re)interpreting the faith for a new time and place. (<i>The Mission of Demythologizing</i>, xxii)</blockquote>
Westerholm focuses so much of his time in the trees that he misses the forest. DT as a whole is a project in theological reconstruction, an attempt to rethink Christian theology from the ground up within a modern context. This reconstruction is another way of describing mission. Mission, as I define it in the opening pages of the book, concerns the recontextualization of the Christian kerygma. My book is then an attempt to investigate the condition of possibility for this reconstruction/recontextualization. That involves getting at the missionary logic underlying DT.<br />
<br />
What I argue is that DT was a contextualization project from the very beginning. It articulated the norm for missionary contextualization—namely, the eschatological event of salvation—and contextualized this norm in response to a missionary situation in 20th century Germany. I argue that, despite the changes in Barth’s theology, his work is a consistent attempt to recontextualize this kerygma in response to present missionary demands. Bultmann extends Barth’s project by reflecting on the methodological basis for this contextualization. Demythologizing articulates DT’s implicit hermeneutic.<br />
<br />
To put all of this in another way, what Westerholm misses is the importance of <i>culture</i>. As I state, “the field of mission studies or intercultural theology examines the relation between ‘gospel’ . . . and ‘culture’” (<i>The Mission of Demythologizing</i>, 524). Westerholm seems to think that DT in its original form can be reduced to eschatology, but this eschatology cannot be understood if we do not recognize the way it functions to criticize a certain (liberal-colonialist) collapse of gospel and culture and, conversely, to authorize a more open and free relation between gospel and culture. The point of my review of the early Barth is to show that the gospel-culture relationship is front and center in his mind. Surely Westerholm would not dispute that Barth was responding to a problematic conflation of Christian truth with German culture. My point is simply this: responding to this conflation is already to engage in missionary thinking. <br />
<br />
Westerholm is correct to say that “dialectical theology is marked by separating human realities that are put under judgement from the event of revelation, and that demythologizing applies this separation to hermeneutics,” but these “human realities” are <i>cultural</i> realities and thus to engage in this “separation” is to engage in missionary contextualization. Westerholm seems on the verge of making this very point. He says that “Barth’s eschatology implies that no human reality is identical with the movement of God, and so the kerygma cannot be identified with the constructs of a particular culture,” and he adds that “the kerygma must be distinguished from all cultural constructs.” All of this “is, for Congdon, the essence of a missional form of thought.” So why then does he spend so much time questioning the place of mission in my argument? There is an odd disjunction between his summary of my argument and his later assessment. Mission seems essential in the former but then appears unnecessary in the latter. This remains perplexing to me.<br />
<br />
II.<br />
<br />
Westerholm concludes the article by evaluating the continuity of my position with the classical Christian tradition. Here again mission is at issue:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mission is invoked at points in Congdon’s work as a criterion of theological propriety; yet that which is significant for us is the recognition that mission must itself be normed by a prior account of Christian teaching, for the missionary work of intercultural translation hinges on concrete judgements regarding the essential content of the message that the translator seeks to convey. . . . On these terms, mission depends on prior judgements about the essential content of Christianity, and is thus normed before it is norming. (228)</blockquote>
Before going on to assess his evaluation of my account of the norm, let me pause for a minute to examine this statement. Westerholm sets up a relation between gospel and culture that I explicitly critique in my book, that is to say, one in which the gospel contains the “essential content of Christianity” that mission <i>then</i> translates for a specific context. This is precisely the view of mission that Barth adopts in his later theology and that I criticize by drawing on the resources of Bultmann and contemporary work in intercultural theology, especially Theo Sundermeier. The point is that the kerygma, insofar as it is given linguistic expression, is already contextual, already situated within history, and thus grasping the message itself is already a missionary endeavor. The kerygma as norm is a divine event that is prelinguistic and preconceptual. DT recovered this understanding of the kerygma in its focus on the eschatologically transcendent word of God.<br />
<br />
Westerholm wants to argue that Barth abandoned this early eschatological norm because he realized it was theologically inadequate. He challenges my claim that “the choice for <i>Barth</i> is necessarily at the same time a choice for <i>Bultmann</i>” (<i>The Mission of Demythologizing</i>, 9). First, let me clarify this claim. I am responding to those who think that <i>Bultmann</i> is the one who departed from DT, so my claim is simply that if you accept that Barth was a dialectical theologian then you ought to accept that Bultmann was as well. Westerholm takes my statement in a stronger sense that I did not intend and that is actually contrary to my argument: namely that to be on the side of the <i>later</i> Barth is also to be on the side of Bultmann. On the contrary, I show in my book why that is not the case.<br />
<br />
Having said that, while Barth certainly abandons the version of DT he held in the 1920s, I <i>do</i> want to affirm a continuity between the early and later Barth. In this respect I remain the student of Bruce McCormack. If one accepts my argument that DT is fundamentally about mission—about a missionary distinction between gospel and culture—then I believe it is eminently possible to see continuity between the early and later Barth, and thus between Barth and Bultmann. This does <i>not</i> mean that the later Barth and Bultmann represent the same position; rather it means they share a fundamentally consistent norm, even if this norm is fleshed out in contradictory ways. This explains the significant points of contact between their later writings.<br />
<br />
But Westerholm does not seem nearly so sanguine about the claim of Barth’s consistency. He states his agreement with Przywara and Balthasar’s criticisms of the early Barth (229), he defends Balthasar (229n71), and his reference to McCormack is tepid: “If, with Bruce McCormack, we define dialectical theology in terms of the concepts that cluster around Barth’s understanding of the formal structure of revelation, then we may perhaps say that Barth always remained a dialectical theologian” (231). Westerholm seems to be of the opinion that the later Barth breaks with the early Barth in a fundamental way. If that is the case, then he is certainly correct that my claim about continuity between Barth and Bultmann cannot be sustained. But my work assumes McCormack’s thesis about continuity between the early and later Barth and only asks what that continuity suggests about Bultmann. Westerholm cannot fairly criticize my claim that “the choice for <i>Barth</i> is necessarily at the same time a choice for <i>Bultmann</i>” without acknowledging this presupposition of my work. By not doing so he shifts the goalposts and then criticizes me for not sharing his own take on Barth.<br />
<br />
III.<br />
<br />
In closing, I wish to express my genuine appreciation to Westerholm for taking my work seriously. It is an honor to be read so carefully and to be placed in conversation with Kevin Hector, whose work I admire greatly. I found it curious that Westerholm does not mention that Hector and I were both students at Princeton Seminary and both had McCormack for our <i>Doktorvater</i>. I initially assumed this was the reason he evaluated our books together, but he never mentions it. He also does not mention that I have a section in my book where I critically evaluate Hector’s first book, <i>Theology without Metaphysics</i> (see 7.4.2.6).<br />
<br />
Westerholm’s overall point of critique is that Hector and I affirm a modern Christianity. To that I must say: guilty as charged! We do not see any intrinsic tension between modernity and the Christian faith. A modern reconstruction of Christian theology is not only possible but even necessary. Westerholm questions whether such a reconstruction “is continuous with the broader Christian tradition” (228). This is a common rejoinder, but it reflects a disagreement over what counts as <i>tradition</i> and thus what counts as <i>continuity</i>. Bultmann reflects on this issue in his own writings. His position is decidedly Protestant in his view that tradition is only genuinely tradition if it “is actually a part of the event which it preserves, celebrates, laments, or even merely describes” (<i>Faith and Understanding</i>, 191). The tradition has to “speak to me” and confront me with the same address and summons. Only insofar as it communicates this kerygmatic event does it actually count as tradition. In other words, the tradition does not stand as an independent norm for evaluating translations of the kerygma. To treat the tradition in this way is already to abandon the tradition—that is, to abandon the gospel itself.<br />
<br />
I have said before that the challenge Bultmann poses is whether we are willing to affirm that modernity is a valid context within which to translate and articulate the Christian kerygma. Over the past half-century the tide within the church has turned against Bultmann (and DT for that matter). Today it is a widely held opinion that modernity is in key respects antithetical to the gospel. In our own ways Hector and I disagree with this opinion. For the sake of clarity and honesty I hope that future engagements with our work explore this issue in more depth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-71879472934440625212016-01-23T15:00:00.002-06:002016-01-23T15:00:45.376-06:00New website<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim0Sigr4QMJTjxpX3kzgb0GItD-GEjMv-JOIBN6PtRrMlqz1Q7HmpSmFzTIAvK8B1jyVKtMKT5FUQzfjCmuRrzRQvOL0i-KI1Af7lp2qyrB9Tr-_x4AEe0oMBWn8VM5P4MqN0G/s1600/Congdon1NEW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim0Sigr4QMJTjxpX3kzgb0GItD-GEjMv-JOIBN6PtRrMlqz1Q7HmpSmFzTIAvK8B1jyVKtMKT5FUQzfjCmuRrzRQvOL0i-KI1Af7lp2qyrB9Tr-_x4AEe0oMBWn8VM5P4MqN0G/s320/Congdon1NEW.jpg" width="211" /></a>For those looking for a current list of my publications (including articles available for download) or an update on my research and writing, you can now consult my personal website: <a href="http://www.dwcongdon.com/">http://www.dwcongdon.com</a>.<br />
<br />
There you will find my CV, descriptions of my books, lists of my articles and book chapters (including download links), and a statement about my current areas of research and writing.<br />
<br />
Thanks for visiting!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-13727134664528853952015-11-11T08:05:00.001-06:002016-01-23T15:01:37.131-06:00A New Introduction to Rudolf Bultmann<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGCvIKjNGBjbfYK4ZdOjMwG_s4cXAn4h2Ius5KJ_Ci46kSt9q9UiN-IRIDmSlHv6R0cLGHA-V2pPlCowszM7ya9xHse-pDEGCPBM0stLQnu9jE7jX9Thy8GwCjjL9FveIrr2Ni/s1600/CongdonBultmanncover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGCvIKjNGBjbfYK4ZdOjMwG_s4cXAn4h2Ius5KJ_Ci46kSt9q9UiN-IRIDmSlHv6R0cLGHA-V2pPlCowszM7ya9xHse-pDEGCPBM0stLQnu9jE7jX9Thy8GwCjjL9FveIrr2Ni/s400/CongdonBultmanncover.jpg" width="250" /></a>In the months after I finished my Fortress Press monograph on Rudolf Bultmann’s theology, <i><a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/mission-demythologizing-rudolf-bultmanns-dialectical-theology">The Mission of Demythologizing</a></i>, I began working on a short introduction to his thought for undergraduate and lay readers. The result was published this week by Cascade Books as <i><a href="http://wipfandstock.com/rudolf-bultmann.html">Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology</a></i>. <b><strike>The book is on sale through November 15 for 40% when you use the code: Bultmann.</strike></b><br />
<br />
With this work I wanted to give people the tools they need to read Bultmann profitably. While all introductions to Bultmann (apart from readers) are now out-of-print, one of their main drawbacks was a focus on the sources of Bultmann’s theology. They would discuss Heidegger, Herrmann, Barth, form criticism, and other influences, with the expectation that knowing the historical background and source material would enable the reader to dive into Bultmann’s texts.<br />
<br />
The problem is that Bultmann is a highly synthetic theologian. He is not simply a composite of various influences. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.<br />
<br />
For this reason I opted instead to approach Bultmann thematically. My guiding question throughout was: <i>how does Bultmann himself think theologically? </i>My aim, in other words, was to discern the nuts and bolts of his thought, to distill his interdisciplinary and wide-ranging work to its essence.<br />
<br />
I ended up with ten chapters on the following themes:<br />
<ul>
<li>eschatology</li>
<li>dialectic</li>
<li>nonobjectifiability</li>
<li>self-understanding</li>
<li>kerygma (see a sample from this chapter below)</li>
<li>history</li>
<li>myth</li>
<li>hermeneutics</li>
<li>freedom</li>
<li>advent</li>
</ul>
<div>
In terms of order, the key decisions are to place eschatology up front and advent at the end. <b>I am convinced that the only way into Bultmann’s theology is through the question of eschatology.</b> This is how he begins his <i>Jesus Christ and Mythology</i>, and there is a reason for that: eschatology is both the problem that theology attempts to answer <i>and</i> the norm by which theology develops the answer. Eschatology is the theological nodal point at which the various streams and layers of Bultmann's thought converge to form a coherent image.</div>
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Advent is the pastoral and practical counterpoint to eschatology. In that concluding chapter I survey Bultmann's sermons to see the centrality of and the development in his discussion of Christ's advent. As I have argued on <a href="http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2011/12/rudolf-bultmann-theologian-of-advent.html">this blog before</a>, Bultmann is the modern theologian of advent <i>par excellence</i>. <b>His entire theology is suffused with eschatological expectancy. I argue in this final chapter that he is a theologian of “perpetual advent.”</b><br />
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Bultmann is a challenging theologian. His thought is scattered among various short essays. He ranges across a number of different disciplines and methodologies. He is what Barth would call an “irregular” theologian. For this reason, there is a need for a guide to his thought that brings systematic clarity to his body of work. This is what I have aimed to provide.<br />
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<b>A selection from chapter 5, “Kerygma” (pp. 71–74):</b><br />
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Bultmann presents the question regarding the essence of the kerygma . . . most clearly in the passage from his letter to Heidegger in 1932 quoted above. The letter continues as follows:<br />
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It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that the central problem of New Testament theology is to say what the Christian kerygma actually is. It is never present simply as something given, but is always formulated out of a particular believing understanding. Moreover, the New Testament, almost without exception, does not directly contain the kerygma, but rather certain statements (such as the Pauline doctrine of justification), in which the believing understanding of Christian being is developed, are based on the kerygma and refer back to it. What the kerygma is can never be said conclusively, but must constantly be found anew, because it is only actually the kerygma in the carrying out of the proclamation.<sup>1</sup></blockquote>
According to Bultmann, the NT does not “directly contain” the kerygma, but rather the statements in the Bible are based on and bear witness to the kerygma. The distinction here between kerygma and scripture corresponds to Karl Barth’s distinction between revelation and scripture. In his doctrine of revelation, Barth presents what he calls the “threefold form” of revelation as the word of God revealed (Jesus Christ), written (scripture), and proclaimed (contemporary preaching).<sup>2</sup> Barth’s point is that God’s self-revelation, definitively actualized in Christ, is qualitatively distinct from the written and spoken testimonies to it. The sovereign freedom of God precludes the collapse of revelation, as the act of God, into scripture, preaching, or theology as the human witnesses to revelation—scripture being the normative and authoritative witness over church preaching and teaching.<br />
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Like Barth, Bultmann refuses to collapse kerygma and theology, and he does so for similar reasons: God’s otherness and nonobjectifiability, the lordship of Christ as the eschatological judge, our absolute dependence upon God’s grace. However we articulate it, the distinction between God and the world means that the kerygma—if it is truly the <i>event</i> in which Christ speaks to us today and so communicates God’s justifying grace to you and me—cannot be conflated with any single human articulation or interpretation. The distinction between kerygma and theology is a distinction between <i>direct</i> and <i>indirect</i> address: “We have made a distinction between christology that is kerygma as direct address and christology that is indirect address and is the theological explication of the new self-understanding of the believer, a critical-polemical explication made necessary by Paul’s historical situation and carried out with the use of a contemporary conceptuality.”<sup>3</sup> In the kerygma, God addresses us directly; in theology, we speak and hear <i>about</i> God’s direct address. This speaking and hearing about the kerygma takes place in a specific situation. The terms “historical situation” and “contemporary conceptuality” are Bultmann’s way of saying that every presentation of the kerygma occurs in a particular cultural context—what Bultmann elsewhere calls a “world-picture” (<i>Weltbild</i>)<sup>4</sup>—and this context always involves a certain language or conceptuality. Every presentation of the kerygma, including those within scripture itself, is therefore already an interpretation:<br />
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When, therefore, the science of New Testament theology seeks to present faith as the origin of the theological statements, it obviously must present the kerygma and the self-understanding opened up by it in which faith unfolds itself. And that is just where the problem lurks! For both the kerygma and faith’s self-understanding always appear in the texts, so far as they are expressed in words and sentences, already interpreted in some particular way—i.e. in theological thoughts. Although there are single statements in the New Testament which can be designated as specifically kerygmatic, even they are always formulated in a particular theological conceptuality—take, for instance, that simplest sentence, “Jesus, Lord” (II Cor. 4:5), for it presupposes a particular understanding of the concept “Lord.”<sup>5</sup></blockquote>
This means that no presentation of the kerygma can be given universal significance or validity. Though Bultmann does not state so explicitly, scripture itself confirms this judgment by containing an abundance of kerygmatic translations that bear witness to the diversity of cultural contexts out of which the biblical texts and traditions arose. If this is true of scripture, it is even truer for the later creeds and confessions of the church, which are attempts to make sense of the church’s proclamation within a different historical situation. None of these texts can presume to offer timeless and universal truths. They are translations of the truth into a specific cultural-linguistic form. But if we bind the kerygma to any single form, we bind God’s act of revelation to a single cultural context, thereby implying that God does not speak to other contexts and communities. Insofar as Christianity presupposes that the gospel can be translated to every culture or language, it follows that the kerygma “can never be said conclusively” but has to be discovered ever anew.<sup>6</sup><br />
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<sup>1</sup> Bultmann and Heidegger, <i>Briefwechsel</i>, 186.<br />
<sup>2</sup> <i>CD</i> 1.1:98–140<br />
<sup>3</sup> Bultmann, “Christology,” 280–81, rev.<br />
<sup>4</sup> Bultmann, “New Testament,” 1.<br />
<sup>5</sup> <i>TNT</i>, 2:239, rev. This passage is from a 1950 essay on “The Problem of the Relation of Theology and Proclamation in the New Testament,” included as an epilogue to his <i>Theology of the New Testament</i>.<br />
<sup>6</sup> Bultmann and Heidegger, <i>Briefwechsel</i>, 186.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-90414221926915877632015-06-01T21:29:00.000-05:002015-06-02T14:17:41.607-05:00The Mission of Demythologizing is now available<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjap1SuY_5TunZLv2QrgZ9aWQFJTk9Psca0Zxf5Qwa0X70U0GnfOj6BhecWxYUwe-ajoopfvL5845-CTAQD29aHN3H7TP1QzjVyOHYsE-9LrWftsQett9PFbawkKmB5Za-lKq/s1600/Congdon+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjap1SuY_5TunZLv2QrgZ9aWQFJTk9Psca0Zxf5Qwa0X70U0GnfOj6BhecWxYUwe-ajoopfvL5845-CTAQD29aHN3H7TP1QzjVyOHYsE-9LrWftsQett9PFbawkKmB5Za-lKq/s320/Congdon+cover.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
My book, <i>The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology</i>, is <a href="http://fortresspress.com/product/mission-demythologizing-rudolf-bultmanns-dialectical-theology">now available</a> from Fortress Press. The book is an expanded version of my dissertation. My thesis is that, even in his later hermeneutical work, Bultmann never abandoned the dialectical theology he shared with Karl Barth in the early 1920s. I argue that the famous program of demythologizing is the hermeneutical fulfillment of dialectical theology. Bultmann’s program of existentialist interpretation is the extension of Barth’s theology into the realm of hermeneutics.<br />
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Here is a selection from the opening chapter where I set up the problem, what I call the “myth of the whale and the elephant.” Attentive readers will notice that this is a play on a section from Bultmann’s programmatic essay, “New Testament and Mythology” (compare the paragraphs below with <i>New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings</i>, ed. Schubert Ogden [Fortress, 1984], 1–9).<br />
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The theological world-picture of the relation between Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann is a <i>mythical</i> world-picture. According to this picture the world is a two-part structure, with Barth on one side and Bultmann on the other, incapable of meaningful communication. Barth is, to some, the champion of the gospel against the errors of modern liberalism, while to others he was an important figure early on whose theology eventually lapsed into yet another ossified dogmatic edifice. Bultmann is, for a select few, the one who made the gospel meaningful within the modern world, while for most others he was the liberal exegete par excellence who eviscerated the kerygma of any meaningful content. According to the dominant perspective within this picture it was Barth who rescued theology from the clutches of extrabiblical presuppositions and so-called natural theology, while Bultmann was the one who made anthropology—and an individualist, existentialist anthropology at that—the starting point for theological discourse, thus subordinating theology to philosophy. All of this is mythological talk, and the individual motifs can be easily traced to the mythology of Anglo-American neo-orthodoxy. Contemporary Christian academic discourse is therefore confronted by the question whether, when it discusses these two figures, it is really Barth and Bultmann who are under discussion or whether it is in fact asking people to acknowledge a <i>myth</i> about them in place of an actual understanding of their theologies. It has to face the question whether there is a truth about Barth and Bultmann that is independent of the mythical world-picture, in which case it would be the task of responsible theological discourse to demythologize the received message about these two theologians. </blockquote>
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It is the claim of this author that there is indeed such a truth, and that we are charged with the task of demythologizing the myth of the whale and the elephant. Bultmann himself always insisted that demythologizing is not the elimination of myth but rather its interpretation and translation. Our task today is to demythologize the relation between Barth and Bultmann, and thus to hear again their joint witness to the gospel within a new theological situation. Moreover, it is impossible to repristinate an earlier world-picture, in which the world was a single story with Barth and Bultmann in a joint alliance against liberalism. We must address the mythical world-picture by <i>going through</i> their later writings, not by ignoring them. Such a task cannot be carried out by simply reducing the amount of mythology through picking and choosing which aspects to demythologize. We cannot, for example, reject the notion that Bultmann abandoned dialectical theology and still retain the view that he subordinates the kerygma to Heideggerian existentialism, nor can we reject the claim that Bultmann subordinates theology to anthropology and still retain the idea that Bultmann denies that God acts in history. We can only completely accept the myth of the whale and the elephant or completely reject it. If the genuine theological insights and contributions of Barth and Bultmann are to remain valid for us today, there is nothing to do but demythologize this myth. (12–13)</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-29964303790440027382015-04-14T13:02:00.000-05:002016-08-09T10:05:40.611-05:00My Forthcoming Book: The Mission of Demythologizing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCWToLB44MJCcMM_4O4r8Dn1agsnnW8PrT2pU0yEHt8gu_LKPlzZNH_TCQlXXGbopl_a6_RrCuC3NOjAF1Ih2P03_oFlILfNK-qu-wb1EK5tFEUMedqbEwQJywglKTtvRT8b1W/s1600/Congdon+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCWToLB44MJCcMM_4O4r8Dn1agsnnW8PrT2pU0yEHt8gu_LKPlzZNH_TCQlXXGbopl_a6_RrCuC3NOjAF1Ih2P03_oFlILfNK-qu-wb1EK5tFEUMedqbEwQJywglKTtvRT8b1W/s1600/Congdon+cover.jpg" width="214" /></a>My nearly 1000-page study of Rudolf Bultmann’s theology and hermeneutics is nearing publication. <i><a href="http://store.fortresspress.com/store/product/20501/The-Mission-of-Demythologizing-Rudolf-Bultmann-Dialectical-Theology">The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology</a></i> is scheduled for release on June 1 from Fortress Press.<br />
<br />
<b><strike>You can preorder the book now for 40% off the list price, so pick up your copy now!</strike> [Update: the 40% discount is over for now.]</b><br />
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Here are the endorsements for the book, for which I am most grateful:<br />
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“In this substantial work, David Congdon has produced the most creative and scholarly study of Rudolf Bultmann’s theology for more than a generation. In refuting the standard charge of a capitulation to modernity, he shows how Bultmann’s demythologizing project is rooted in a robust set of convictions about God as subject and the act of faith as existential and practical. This reassessment of Bultmann as a dialectical theologian is long overdue. In an increasingly secular culture which too readily dismisses Christian faith as ‘believing six impossible things before breakfast,’ Congdon’s work promises to rehabilitate Bultmann as an important resource for theological understanding.”<br />
—David Fergusson, University of Edinburgh<br />
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“<i>The Mission of Demythologizing</i> systematically deconstructs the slogans with which New Testament scholars have long caricatured Rudolf Bultmann's hermeneutic. Yet this is no mere demolition job, as David Congdon replaces the stereotype with a Bultmann fully invested in a missiological hermeneutic on behalf of dialectical theology. This book and the discussion it generates will be with us a long time.”<br />
—Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Baylor University<br />
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“This is a quite remarkable volume. It seeks to overturn two generations and more of scholarship on the theology of Rudolf Bultmann, not only revisiting and reconceiving the relationship between Bultmann and Karl Barth, but also revisioning and rehabilitating Bultmann's program of demythologization. The bold trajectory of argument which Congdon advances arcs round the central claim that Bultmann’s dialectical theology and demythologising programme represent a fundamentally missionary endevaour. To evidence this ambitious claim, Congdon engages with the full diachronic range of Bultmann’s corpus, and thereby interacts with the full range of attendant issues, including the crucial relationships between <i>kerygma </i>and <i>hermeneia</i>, objective and subjective, and mission and liberalism. The result is a painstakingly researched and lucidly presented work that is both compelling and a joy to read, one which evidences the kind of depth, insight, and passion that are the hallmarks of the very finest research in theology. This volume will make an immediate and significant contribution to the reception of the work of Bultmann (and of Barth); but more than this, the constructive and generative agenda which it sets suggests that the work of Protestant theology is far from done and that tales of its demise may be somewhat premature.”<br />
—Paul T. Nimmo, University of Aberdeen<br />
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“David Congdon's work is essential reading for anyone interested in Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth, or Christian theology in the modern period. Meticulously researched, lucidly written, and brimming with constructive energy, this is a work of enormous sympathy, intelligence, and creativity.”<br />
—Adam Neder, Whitworth University<br />
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“This book is one of the most important and perceptive studies on Rudolf Bultmann and his often misunderstood program of <i>Entmythologisierung </i>(demythologizing) ever written in English.”<br />
—Michael Lattke, Emeritus, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia<br />
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“For two generations theology has ‘gone around’ Bultmann rather than through him. This evasion has led either to scholarly retreats into the false securities of the old historicism or to circling the wagons of Christian traditionalism. In this brilliant book worthy of its subject, a voice from the youngest theological generation now presents a fresh understanding of Bultmann’s daring missional program. David Congdon urges the church to look outward and forward by interpreting the news of Jesus Christ on the shifting frontiers of an emerging world.”<br />
—James F. Kay, Princeton Theological Seminary<br />
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“Comprehensively researched and clearly written, this volume provides a convincing reinterpretation of Bultmann’s thought as well as a compelling account of its constructive significance for the future of missional theology and hermeneutics. This is an impressive interdisciplinary contribution to the literature of modern Christian thought by one of the most promising young theologians at work today.”<br />
—John R. Franke, Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, BelgiumUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-83594295132671465582015-01-28T21:48:00.000-06:002015-01-28T22:18:59.521-06:00The Top 50 Albums of 2014<div class="MsoNormal">
I found it hard to keep up with the music in 2014. It was a busy year, to say the least. I defended my dissertation in January, signed four book contracts, had three journal articles and three book chapters published, submitted three other articles to journals, submitted a 900-page manuscript for publication, gave a conference paper, finally saw published the book I coedited with Travis McMaken on Karl Barth, and made serious headway in writing two more book manuscripts. And that is all on top of the dozens of books I edited for publication with IVP Academic. So I’ve had a lot on my mind in 2014. Unfortunately, my music listening suffered.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That being said, I still listened to many albums this year—many <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very good</i> albums. A number of these albums are by artists who are known for a particular instrument: Arve Henriksen on trumpet, Owen Pallett on violin, Ernst Reijseger on cello, Hauschka on piano, and James Blackshaw on guitar. 2014 was the year I discovered both Henriksen and Reijseger, and I suspect they will feature on future lists. Many of my favorite albums—Henriksen, Richard Reed Parry, David Lang, Reijseger, Hauschka, Blackshaw, Glenn Kotche, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Barnett + Coloccia, and Golden Retriever—could be classified as experimental or contemporary classical, which is a growing area of interest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With that said, here is my list of the best albums of 2014.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b>1. Arve Henriksen, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chron + Cosmic Creation</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Nature of Connections</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World of Glass</i> (with Terje Isungset)</b></h2>
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Picking Henriksen for #1 is not merely penance for overlooking his <i>Places of Worship</i> on <a href="http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-top-50-albums-of-2013.html">last year's list</a>. Any of his 2014 albums would be worthy of this spot – and all of them together make for a stunning output in a single year – but the release of <i>Chron </i>and <i>Cosmic Creation</i> is the clear highlight. This is daring, eye-opening experimental music. But do <i>not</i> miss <i>World of Glass</i>, where all of the music is played on instruments <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqnuOtcQ2Uo">made out of glass</a>.<br />
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<b>2. Flying Lotus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’re Dead!</i></b></h2>
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<b>3. Owen Pallett, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>In Conflict</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>4. Richard Reed Parry, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Music for Heart and Breath</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>5. Perfume Genius, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Too Bright</i></b></h2>
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<b>6. D’Angelo, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Messiah</i></b></h2>
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<h2>
<b>7. Ibibio Sound Machine,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Ibibio Sound Machine</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i></i></i></div>
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<h2>
<b>8. Hundred Waters, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Moon Rang Like a Bell</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2>
<b>9. FKA twigs, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">LP1</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i></i></i></div>
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<h2>
<b>10. David Lang, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Fail</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2>
<b>11. Ben Frost, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A U R O R A</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2>
<b>12. Clark, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Clark</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>13. Ernst Reijseger, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feature</i></b></h2>
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<b>14. St. Vincent, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St. Vincent</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>15. Caribou, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Our Love</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<h2>
<b>16. Brian Eno/Karl Hyde, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Life</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>17. Lykke Li, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Never Learn</i></b></h2>
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<b>18. Aphex Twin, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Syro</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<h2>
<b>19. Run the Jewels, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Run the Jewels 2</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>20. Arca, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Xen</i></b></h2>
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<b>21. Lost in the Trees, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Past Life</i></b></h2>
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<b>22. Future Islands, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Singles</i></b></h2>
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<b>23. Marissa Nadler, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">July</i></b></h2>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>24. The Antlers, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Familiars</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>25. Museum of Love, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Museum of Love</i></b></h2>
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<b>26. Kate Tempest, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Everybody Down</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>27. Hauschka, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Abandoned City</i></b></h2>
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<b>28. Lone, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reality Testing</i></b></h2>
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<b>29. Todd Terje, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s Album Time</i></b></h2>
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<b>30. Strand of Oaks, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HEAL</i></b></h2>
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<b>31. Death Vessel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Island Intervals</i></b></h2>
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<b>32. James Blackshaw, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Fantômas: Le Faux Magistrat</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>33. Lyla Foy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mirrors the Sky</i></b></h2>
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<b>34. Spoon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They Want My Soul</i></b></h2>
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<b>35. Grouper, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Ruins</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>36. Jess Williamson, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Native State</i></b></h2>
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<b>37. Glenn Kotche, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adventureland</i></b></h2>
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<b>38. A Winged Victory for the Sullen, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Atomos</i></b></h2>
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<b>39. Lockah, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yahoo or the Highway</i></b></h2>
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<b>40. CEO, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Wonderland</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>41. How To Dress Well, </b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>“What Is This Heart?”</b><o:p></o:p></i></h2>
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<b>42. Mark McGuire, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Along the Way</i></b></h2>
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<b>43. Mr Twin Sister, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr Twin Sister</i></b></h2>
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<b>44. Shabazz Palaces, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lese Majesty</i></b></h2>
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<b>45. Barnett + Coloccia, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Retrieval</i></b></h2>
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<b>46. Golden Retriever, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seer</i></b></h2>
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<b>47. Sun Kil Moon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Benji</i></b></h2>
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<b>48. Against Me!, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Transgender Dysphoria Blues</i></b></h2>
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<b>49. The War on Drugs, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost in the Dream</i></b></h2>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;">50. Landlady, </span><i>Upright Behavior</i></b></i></h2>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-12840167968212765552014-12-24T15:20:00.002-06:002016-08-09T10:05:03.480-05:00Bultmann on the light that shines in the world<div class="p1">
Rudolf Bultmann, <a href="http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2011/12/rudolf-bultmann-theologian-of-advent.html">the theologian of Advent</a>, gave a sermon in Marburg on December 16, 1931, regarding what it means to expect the arrival of the one who has already come. The text for the sermon is John 3.19–21. Here is an excerpt I translated today. May it be an edifying reflection during this time of joyful expectation of Christ’s coming.</div>
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We prepare ourselves for the coming one in the time of advent, the time of coming, of arrival. . . . But is this not a game of fancy? Are we not placing ourselves artificially in a mood of expectation, so that we experience the splendor of Christmas again as a surprise? . . . How can we expect the <i>coming</i> of one who is <i>already here</i>? . . . If we are serious about the expectation of the coming one, then we expect the one who <i>comes</i> to us and <i>remains</i> with us. Only then is Advent a genuine Advent. But how is it then possible that again and again we celebrate Advent annually? He <i>came</i>, and he is <i>gone again</i>? And will he repeatedly come and go? Is <i>this</i> the sad secret, out of which arises the constantly repeated celebration of Advent, that each of us must say: Yeah, well, he came, but he left. . . . </blockquote>
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The coming of the Lord, which the Christian community anticipates in Advent and celebrates at Christmas, is not at all primarily his coming to the individual, his entering into the soul, but rather his coming to the <i>world</i>. 'The eternal light comes in, giving the <i>world</i> a new appearance' (Luther). . . . God's word is . . . that the Lord <i>has</i> come, that the eternal light <i>has</i> given the world a new appearance. This coming, which ought to comfort one, is not something which the soul ever and again experiences; such a comfort quickly vanishes. Rather it is the coming of the Lord in the world; it is the word that the Lord <i>has</i> come and <i>is</i> with us. If we are serious in the expectation of the coming one, then <i>we await one who has already come, who is already here</i>. </blockquote>
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<i>How</i> is he here? In his <i>word! </i>In the word that promises peace and joy, which grants us grace and peace 'from the one who is and was and is to come.' And <i>how</i> is this word the light that gives the world a new appearance? . . . 'The light shines in the darkness' (Jn 1.5). 'The eternal light comes in, giving the world a new appearance.' The message of Christmas resounds as a message of joy. But it is a genuine message of joy only when we do not forget the other word next to it: 'And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world.' </blockquote>
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Why is it <i>judgment</i>? Does the light not dispel the darkness? . . . Are we not people who walk in darkness? Do we not yearn for the light? Yes, that is the decisive question, whether we ourselves truly yearn for the light! Why is it judgment that the light has come into the world? Because people loved the darkness more than the light. . . . Yes, we all yearn for light for our desires and plans! . . . How do we love the darkness? Whether we truly love the light and not the darkness shows itself by whether we come to the eternal light, to the true light. For this light does not illuminate the way of our desires and plans; it does not illuminate the world the way we would like to see it, or the way we try to illuminate our own desires and ideals with dim lights, but rather it gives the world a <i>new</i> appearance.</blockquote>
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Rudolf Bultmann, <i>Das verkündigte Wort: Predigten, Andachten, Ansprachen 1906–1941</i>, ed. Erich Grässer and Martin Evang (Tübingen: Mohr, 1984), 239–42.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-57892819216357143842014-10-10T15:34:00.002-05:002014-10-10T15:34:31.495-05:00New publications on Bultmann, Barth, and JüngelIn the past few months I have had three journal articles and a book chapter published. The topics include: Bultmann's hermeneutics in relation to the church, the origins of Barth's dialectical theology, the question of Barth's universalism, and Eberhard Jüngel's pneumatocentrism. Hopefully there is a little bit for everyone—at least everyone interested in modern German theology. <div>
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Rather than summarize the arguments of each essay, I am just going to post a teaser from each. Those interested in learning more about them can contact me or track down the publication.<div>
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<b>1. “Kerygma and Community: A Response to R. W. L. Moberly’s Revisiting of Bultmann.” <i>Journal of Theological Interpretation</i> 8, no. 1 (2014): 1–21.</b></div>
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It is not so much the church that is included within the event of Jesus Christ, but rather Christ himself who is present within the event of the church. This is, in fact, the very point Bultmann goes on to make in his 1960 address on the historical Jesus. “Faith in the church as the bearer of the kerygma” means that “Jesus Christ is present in the kerygma.” This statement “presupposes that the kerygma is itself an eschatological occurrence; and it means that Jesus is actually present in the kerygma, that it is <i>his </i>word which meets the hearer in the kerygma.” . . . It is for this reason that, in 1929, Bultmann says that the communication of the church “<i>belongs itself to what is communicated</i>,” since it is not a “mere conveying” of facts but rather a word that addresses each person. While it may come as a surprise to some, Bultmann affirms that the church’s teaching “has the character of <i>tradition</i>, which belongs to the history that it narrates. The tradition belongs to the event itself.” The fact that ecclesial tradition is internal to the kerygmatic event of Christ’s proclamation explains why the church can seem absent from Bultmann’s theology. His theology is thoroughly kerygmatic and christological, but precisely <i>because </i>it is so focused on Christ it is also at the same time focused on the ecclesial community as the bearer of God’s word and the medium through which Christ speaks to us today.</blockquote>
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<b>2. “Dialectical Theology as Theology of Mission: Investigating the Origins of Karl Barth’s Break with Liberalism.” <i>International Journal of Systematic Theology</i> 16, no. 4 (2014): 390–413.</b></div>
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Barth perceived the capitulation of liberal theologians to German war fever, along with the confusion of God’s will with the culture’s will for colonialist power, as a <i>missionary </i>problem. To be sure, it was not <i>only </i>a missionary problem, but mission was indeed at the heart of the issue. Dialectical theology, as a response to this problem, can be understood as a way of addressing the dispute between the pseudomission of Germany (or any other nation) and the genuine mission of God. . . . Though a full interpretation of his theology as a theology of mission is beyond the scope of the present article, we will simply suggest here that Barth’s career can and should be understood as the consistent attempt (a) to critically oppose the church’s capitulation to a culturally-captive Christianity and (b) to construct a positive alternative account of knowing and following God that is not liable to such captivity and is, for that reason, a theology of mission. Put another way, a theology is genuinely <i>missionary </i>if it makes the crosscultural movement of the gospel internal to its message and logic – that is, if it funds the freedom of the gospel for new situations. Seen from that perspective, Barth is a profound theologian of mission from the beginning.</blockquote>
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<b>3. “Apokatastasis and Apostolicity: A Response to Oliver Crisp on the Question of Barth’s Universalism.” <i>Scottish Journal of Theology</i> 67, no. 4 (2014): 464–480.</b></div>
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Oliver Crisp raises a number of important questions in his discussion of universalism in Barth’s theology. As an analytic theologian, he correctly discerns the universalistic logic of Barth’s soteriological claims. However, it is this same analytic rigor that leads him to miss Barth’s understanding of the existential and missionary nature of theological speech. The result is that Crisp can only see incoherence where Barth sees a necessary respect for the concrete historical location of faithful human witness. Barth affirms vocational, pastoral, and doxological aims more basic than analytic philosophy’s prioritization of logical consistency and propositional clarity. That is not to say there are not times when Barth simply contradicts himself. But it also means that not every appearance of incoherence is an actual instance. In the case of universalism, he insists that we cannot speak in advance and in the abstract about the historicity of each person’s subjective participation in the election of Jesus Christ. It is not enough to say that Jesus is victor if we do not also say that the event of his victory is one in which we are called to participate as a faithful witness.</blockquote>
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<b>4. “The Spirit of Freedom: Eberhard Jüngel’s Theology of the Third Article,” in <i>Indicative of Grace – Imperative of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Eberhard Jüngel in his 80th Year</i>, edited by R. David Nelson, 13–27. London: T & T Clark, 2014.</b></div>
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Toward the end of his career, Barth reflected on the possibility of a “theology of the third article,” that is, a theology of the Holy Spirit. He first proposed this idea in a 1952 letter to Bultmann as the condition under which he could understand his old friend and adversary. He returned to the notion repeatedly in the years following. In 1957 he applied the notion to nineteenth-century theology in general, in October 1962 he discussed the idea with the editors of Evangelische Theologie, and in 1968 he suggested it as a way to interpret Schleiermacher. Despite these suggestions, we find the following remark in his Table Talk: “I personally think that a theology of the Spirit might be all right after A.D. 2000, but now we are still too close to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is still too difficult to distinguish between God’s Spirit and man’s spirit!” Jüngel did not wait until 2000 to supply a theology of the third article. Over the last thirty years, he has published three sets of theses on the Spirit that reinterpret soteriology from the perspective of pneumatology.</blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1