Page 123 Meme

I've been busy letting my blog slip into oblivion but Tom in Ontario tagged me with an interesting meme (apparently several days ago -- I'm slow lately).

So the deal is:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.

Here it is:

Corn farmers can benefit from locking in a sale price while their corn is still in the ground--or even before they plant it. Might the farmers get a better price by waiting to sell the crop until harvest? Absolutely.

Wow, with scintillating reading like that, I can't believe I've managed to stay silent so long. ;-)

I don't do tagging, so just enjoy.

Proclaiming Truth and Justice

There was an interesting piece on NPR yesterday (via BBC radio) about the crisis in Kenya. The BBC had a bishop from a Pentecostal church in Kenya as their guest and various other guests and callers were questing him as to the role of religious leaders in recent events.

What I found interesting about this was that the other Kenyans addressing the bishop were basically asking why the religious leaders (Christian and Muslim) weren't proclaiming truth and justice but were instead calling for dialogue. The bishop said that they were being pragmatic and seeking long term solutions. It seemed like a very reasonable response. What was less clear was whether it was properly a Christian response. Is it the role of the Church to seek pragmatic, long-term solutions? Or is it the role of the Church to proclaim truth and justice?

I am obviously very far removed from the situation in Kenya. I don't know what any of these people are facing. It sounds as if the religious leaders would be putting themselves in a very precarious position if they openly proclaimed truth and justice. They lack freedom of speech. I cannot judge them.

What I can do is try to apply the lessons I observed to my own situation. It was breathtaking to hear the voice of the people crying out to a representative of the Church, asking him to proclaim truth and justice. The American mainline protestant denominations are very big on seeking social justice these days. The question remains as to what the Church's role should be in seeking justice. What I saw yesterday is that it is not our place to enter into political compromises and negotiation. Our place is to proclaim truth and justice in word and deed.

I was reminded of a story Jim Wallis tells about Martin Luther King Jr. King had just returned from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and was meeting with Lyndon Johnson. Johnson told King that he didn't have the political capital to push for voting rights legislation. He told King to wait. King responded that he could not wait. He went to the streets and proclaimed truth and justice. The Voting Rights Act was passed the next year.

The Onion on Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance

I thought this was really funny.

Christ Present in the Church

A number of years ago I was at a men's retreat and the Saturday evening schedule featured a presentation on the Four Spiritual Laws by a man affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ. This being a retreat sponsored by a Lutheran church, I was aghast. (If this story sounds familiar, it's because I've blogged about it before.)

After the presentation, I went up to the man (who happens to be a graduate of a theological school in Germany) and said, "That doesn't sound very Lutheran." He responded, "No, it isn't, is it?" He went on to explain how the Lutheran "strategy" for evangelism revolves around the sacraments. We faithfully offer the sacaraments in church, and baptize anyone who happens to wander in. But what about the people who don't wander in? How do we reach them?

This event has really stuck with me, but the importance of the gentleman's question didn't really sink in with me until today. This morning I was reading chapter 3 of The Evangelizing Church wherein Richard Bliese talks about the Babylonian captivity of Word and Sacrament. Bliese highlights the Lutheran tendency to use the slogan "word and sacrament ministry" as a way to avoid the work of being an evangelizing church. If sermons are being preached in our communities and we're baptizing our children, then we're being faithful, right? But we've forgotten (or, could it be, not noticed) that the gift of salvation is also a call (the point of Kelly Fryer's chapter 2 of the book).

So what do we do? Do we simply turn to the Four Spiritual Laws as the man from CCC suggested? Or can we actually stick to our guns regarding word and sacrament while still becoming an evangelizing church? Those who know how I feel about the Four Spiritual Laws can guess my answer.

The key to retaining what is of value in our Lutheran heritage while still reaching out to a lost world lies in recognizes the truth that is at the heart of our theological position on Word and Sacrament. In the preaching of the Word and the practice of the Sacraments, Christ comes to us.

We've all heard this before, but I wonder if the depth of it sinks in. I've even said it before. In a post titled What if the Gospel? I wrote two years ago I said, "To me, the Gospel is that in the person of Jesus Christ the kingdom of God has begun to break into this world. In Christ Jesus, God has begun to fulfill his promise of new heavens and a new earth." And yet, when I read last night the definition of the gospel offered in The Evangelizing Church it struck me like lightning from heaven, as if it were something I'd never heard before. Never mind that I had read these very words several times before. Listen:

The heart of evangelical theology and preaching is that Christ is present among us--concretely and unmistakably. Jesus' word and presence are real, direct, graspable, and available for us--today! If faith means anything, it means grasping hold of a sermon or a forgiving word from a friend and declaring, "Amen, I believe these are Jesus' words for me." Clarity on this point is vital for evangelizing. We do not act as if Jesus Christ were present in the Christian community. The gospel message is that Jesus, actually, is alive and is really present with us in Christian community as he promised. That's the good news. It's the great gift of salvation.

Did you notice the emphasis here on "Christian community"? If you look at the history of the Christian church at nearly any time and place there will be a whole lot of very visible public figures acting as if the gospel is something different than this entirely, but the gospel of Jesus' presence survives -- not because of a core group of people preserving this as a minority position, but because it's true. Because Jesus really is present in the Christian community the Church lives on and accomplishes its work.

But here's a last thought. By our actions, by the way we organize and conduct ourselves we can either tap into the power of Jesus' presence or be an obstacle to be overcome. Bliese writes, "The church needs to be evangelized in order to evangelize the world." If we want to bring Christ to the world, we must begin by bringing Christ to each other.

The Silence of the Blogs

I read an article a few months ago about how there are nearly twice as many abandoned blogs on the web as active blogs. Apparently most blogs have a very short lifespan. I have had a dead blog for some time (besides this one), though I mean to get back to it some day. This one hasn't actually been dead. It's just been very ill. That is, I haven't had anything to say. (My own health has been good, BTW.)

My last post was an introduction to a series of post about Old Testament quotations in the gospel of Matthew. It was part of my preparation for a class on that topic. As it turned out, I put off the blogging too long, and the momentum of the work for the class overtook me. The class went really well, but I didn't have time to blog it. If anyone really wants to see what I was going to say, let me know and I'll try to pick it back up sometime. In the meantime, I made the foolish move of committing to teach back-to-back classes, and I'm now in the midst of leading a class based on the book The Evangelizing Church, which I'm currently reading for, I think, the fourth time. More to come on that, unless I get distracted in the next few minutes.

Fulfillment in the Gospel of Matthew

Tomorrow I'm starting a class on the fulfillment statements in Matthew's Gospel. Since I seem to have otherwise let my blog go silent, I thought maybe I'd post here on what I plan to talk about in this class. I'd appreciate any feedback.

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The gospel readings in the lectionary for the coming year are from the Gospel of Matthew. One of the most prominent features of Matthew's gospel is the way it presents Jesus' life as a fulfillment of Old Testament scripture. Ten times in the gospel Matthew uses a formula of the form "this was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet...."

On the surface, these quotations appear to be taken completely out of context. In many cases, the passages he's quoting don't look anything like Messianic prophecy. And in all cases critical reading seems to indicate that the prophet was talking about something else. If someone were using scripture like this today, it would be labelled as "proof-texting" and looking down upon. Is it possible that Matthew a hack?

I don't think so.

The earliest Christians were convinced that Jesus Christ was at the heart of the Old Testament. They didn't just believe that a few passages predicted specific things about Jesus' life. They believed that the scriptures as a whole were pointing toward Jesus.

In the case of the fulfillment statements in Matthew's gospel, a closer examination of the texts he is quoting, paying particular attention to what they meant in context, reveals the possibility that Matthew was using these passages to evoke a much richer image than is immediately obvious. To see the richness of what Matthew is doing, we have to completely immerse ourselves in Scripture.

Before I get into that I want to step back and consider what it means to have fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets.

What do you think of when you hear the word "fulfill"? When you hear it in connection with prophecy, chances are your first impression is that something happened that was previously predicted. But I don't think that's quite what Matthew has in mind.

What other uses of "fulfill" are you familiar with? You may hear that something has fulfilled its purpose, or someone has fulfilled a duty or an obligation. You might even hear that something has fulfilled someone's dreams. Now we're getting somewhere.

The Greek word Matthew uses to talk about "fulfillment" is πληροω. It comes from a combination of the adjective πληρης, meaning "full", and the suffix "-οω", meaning "to cause" (actually "I cause"). So to fulfill means to cause to be full. But look, we could have seen that from the English! I find that a lot when I get into "what the Greek means" but it often is something I hadn't realy noticed about the English word. Just like in English, Greek speakers probably didn't think about this, but this is what's behind the word.

So to fulfill the words of the prophet is to take those words and make them full of something. But full of what?

At this point, the it's useful to consider the development of Messianic expectations more generally. As Judah faced threats from its neighbors in the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. prophets arose and promised hope. Often this hope was associated with a new king coming to the throne. When that king didn't live up to expectations, rather than the people losing hope, the promise grew. The hopes developed into a general expectation of "the one who is to come" -- God's annointed. We can already see this happening in the canonical forms of the prophetic books. By the time Jesus was born, it had blossomed into full blown Messianic hope, but nothing in the original context of the prophetic words could "fill" the words interpreted this way.

But this is what Matthew is saying. Jesus "fill" the hope that had been placed in these Old Testament promises.

Sleep as a Spiritual Discipline

The pastors at my church quote John Ortberg a lot. This kind of bugs me. Is John Ortberg one of the greatest Christian thinkers of our time? Really? If the pastor is going to quote someone, I want it to be Walter Brueggeman or Wolfhart Pannenberg or someone like that. If I'm in a good mood I might even put up with Walt Wangerin. But John Ortberg?

Then recently it dawned on me just how much of a snob I am. I mean, I'd never even read one of John Ortberg's books. What right did I have to look down my nose at him? So I went on to Book Mooch and mooched one of his books so I could look down my nose at him with a clear conscience. :-)

I went with The Life You've Always Wanted because I like books about the spiritual disciplines. It had a blurb from Richard Foster saying it was an OK book, so that was a good sign. I like Richard Foster. Browsing through the book, I found some references to Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

In the preface, Ortberg acknowledges his dependence on the work of Dallas Willard, who I also like, and says his private working title for the book was "Dallas for Dummies." From what I can tell so far, that's not a bad self-assessment. So I didn't expect to find anything radically new here, but thought maybe it would be like chatting with my pastor about spiritual disciplines over cookies. Maybe I'd pick up a tip or two.

Here's the first great tip I've come across: sleep is a spiritual discipline.

This is something I actually should have noticed before. Last year I took a retreat at Mount Angel Abbey (which happens to be one of my favorite places in the world). I had no plan for the retreat -- no program. I took my Bible and a couple of books. I planned to just read and attend prayer services. But as I sat down in my guest room to read, I found myself nodding off. So I decided to just go with that. I ended up spending about half my time sleeping during that retreat. It turned out to be one of the best retreats I've experienced!

But I didn't learn the lesson. I needed to read it in a book a year later. Maybe now I'll remember.

Paul on the Cross, take 2

I've just finished David Brondos' Paul on the Cross. I have to say I'm really enamored with it right now. I think I conveyed a generally positive attitude about it in my previous post, but right now I feel like I sold it short.

The tagline on the back cover says "Drawing the theological consequences of current scholarship on Paul". I'm pretty sure that sells it short too.

Admittedly, I have only limited knowledge of the New Perspective on Paul, but I'm pretty sure Brondos' work goes beyond of the typical edges of even the New Perspective, though he's definitely in that tradition.

My impression is that the New Perspective scholars have, for the most part, tried to keep one foot in the traditional church and keep the New Perspective in touch with and to some extent compatible with traditional doctrine, even as it points out the fallacies that led to the formulation of the traditional doctrine. Brondos, near as I can tell, harbors no such sacred cows.

And that's what I think is such a remarkable achievement in this book. Although he is certainly building on the substantial groundwork of the New Perspective, he has managed to produce a fresh reading of Paul's writings, disentangling himself from all of the traditional meanings that have been attached to the key terms and phrases in Paul and reimagining Paul's meanings in terms of the story he thinks Paul is telling. It's a breath-taking accomplishment.

Brondos says that the early Christian story of redemption, envisioned as a fulfillment of the general Jewish story of redemption of the time, was this: Israel was awaiting a Messiah who would vindicate them and their God and bring about a new age of peace and general well-being. Israel's God, being all powerful, could make this happen at will. There were no obstacles preventing God from accomplishing this redemption (no required sacrfice, no justice to be meted out). It was strictly at the will of God. However, God was seen as waiting for something. Typically, the idea was that God was waiting for the people of Israel to be living out the Torah. Enter Jesus. Jesus is God's promised Messiah, and he has come not because the Torah is being fulfilled but in order to gather to himself a community whom he will teach to keep the Torah, according to the spirit rather than according to the letter. Jesus' way of acting and committing himself entirely to fulfilling the will of God brings him into inevitable conflict with the authorities, but Jesus chooses obedience over safety. God raises Jesus from the dead as a sign and seal of approval on Jesus' mission. Finally, God pours out the Holy Spirit upon the community to enable them to live out Jesus' teachings.

That may not be exactly the traditional interpretation of Jesus' life, but I don't think anything there is particularly novel there. A lot of scholars see it that way, I think. But it doesn't seem to fit the traditional interpretation of Paul where Paul's thought is broken (even in the New Perspective) into the two categories of sacrificial/cultic language, where Jesus died for our sins, and participatory language, where we find salvation by being "in Christ," neither of which map to the story above. What's remarkable about Brondos' book is the way he uses the early Christian story of redemption outlined above and works it into both the sacrificial language and the participatory language in Paul.

Jesus died for us in that he was willing to give his life in obedience to the work that he had to do as teacher of the Torah and gatherer of the community whom he would make righteous. We are "in Christ" when we also commit to obedience, following the teaching that Christ has given us and living as he lived. You're probably not buying this without hearing a serious explanation of an awful lot of individual texts. Read the book! He may not be exactly right, but I think he's definitely on to something.

I'm actually very anxious to re-read this book very soon, which I hardly ever do. I would be going back into it again right away to try to absorb the ideas more fully except I've committed to teaching a class on the fulfillment texts in Matthew during Advent and I need to get me attention focused on that. Expect me to return to this in January.

Paul on the Cross

The thing that began my long-standing love affair with theology was trying to find an answer to the question of why Jesus had to die. Growing up in a Lutheran church, I don't recall ever hearing any answer to this question. Then one evening I asked my father-in-law, who I knew to spend an inordinant amount of time in Bible study. He said he didn't know. It's just so foundational that a lot of people don't even question it. Poking around to see who did have an answer to this question, I very quickly met St. Anselm, and yes I even read Cur Deus Homo.

Now perhaps I was very sheltered before this. I may be the only person in the last 500 years to have read Cur Deus Homo before becoming familiar with the satisfaction theory of the atonement in its modern form. It was extremely fascinating to me to see the way Anselm reasoned. I was particularly taken with his claim that humans are being redeemed to make up the number of fallen angels so that there will be a perfect number of worshippers in heaven. I didn't think he was right, of course, but I was charmed. I've been in love with theology ever since.

While I've found in the years since then that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be as pointless and counter-productive as debating theories of the atonement, I've never quite been able to let this question go.

With that background, when I saw David Brondos' Paul on the Cross announced on the Fortress Press web site, I bought it immediately. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of buying books faster than I can read them, so this one has been sitting on the bookshelf for nearly a year. Finally last week I started it.

I should've read it sooner.

I'm not sure yet if I buy his argument, but Brondos' suggestion is nothing less than revolutionary. He builds on the New Perspective on Paul, but goes beyond it, I think, and critiques the key scholars involved in the New Perspective.

Brondos begins his book by making a sweeping survey of atonement theories from Irenaeus to Barth and Bultmann, rejecting all of them. Then he presents a reconstruction of the first century Jewish story of redemption and a reconstructed early Christian story (i.e. pre-Paul as echoed in the gospels). In the second half of the book he argues that Paul's story of redemption is essentially the same as the early Christian story and that expressed in the gospels.

The upshot of all this is that, according to Brondos, the search for a "theory of the atonement" as we typically think of it is misguided because they all think of salvation as something the follows "mechanically" from Jesus' death and try to explain how the atonement "works." Against this Brondos claims that Paul, in agreement with other earlier Christians, is proclaiming a gospel where Jesus as God's Messiah is bringing about redemption of Israel through his obedience to the will of God primarily in his life and teaching, with his death being a consequence of this obedience and the resurrection being God's seal of approval. I'm only halfway through my first reading, so I might be misrepresenting a lot of this, but I think that's the gist of it.

I don't know what the academic community thinks of Brondos' ideas. The only review I've been able to find was by D.A. Carson who, predictably, thinks he's wrong. It seems to me that Paul doesn't talk enough about Jesus' teaching for this idea to hold (at least as I've understood it), but it does have the very great merit of bringing Paul and the gospels into much better harmony than the standard reading of Paul would have them. I think I'm going to have to try re-reading the New Testament from this perspective.

Let's Talk About Paul

Are you interested in the New Perspective on Paul? Do you like to talk about biblical interpretation? Hey! Me too!

Anyway, experimenting with the new format on Beliefnet, I just started a discussion group to talk about the New Perspective on Paul. I don't know how well it will fly, but I know if a few of the smart people from the blog world stopped by it would make for better conversation.

If you're interested, come check it out at http://community.beliefnet.com/paulperspective

The Dishonest Steward

I've been thinking recently about the parable of the dishonest steward. This parable is one of the most curious parts of the Bible. It gives us an example of a man doing something that would be almost universally viewed as wrong, and then commends him for setting such a fine example. The only thing I can conclude is that Jesus wasn't a capitalist.

When it comes right down to it, we value fair play more than we value mercy, and so this parable just doesn't sit right with us. The steward forgives a portion of some large debts. This may have made an immense difference to the debtors. It may have saved the family farm. "But the debt wasn't owed to him," we say. "It's not right!" Reading the parable, I can't help but think that maybe Jesus just doesn't care about that.

I was curious to see what the Church does with this, so I looked to see where it falls in the lectionary. (I think we ought to start viewing the Revised Common Lectionary as if it were inspired by God, because those people made some fantastic pairings.) The Old Testament reading paired with this parable is from Amos:

Amos 8:4-7
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat." The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

We want to make money, and we don't want religion getting in the way of that. This must be one of those cases I've heard so much about where the prophet was inspired to see beyond his own time and offered a message for people living in North America in the early 21st century.

The psalm paired with the parable in the lectionary is Psalm 113. It ends like this:

Psalm 113:5-9
Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the LORD!

Why should it surprise us to find Jesus praising a man who cheats a rich business man and helps out the rich man's debtors? Why do we need to allegorize it?

There's something else curious going on in this parable. In Luke 16:9, Jesus says, "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." The logic here is nearly heretical. Drawing a lesson from the parable, just as the dishonest steward helped out his master's debtors so that the debtors would provide for him in his time of need, we should help people with our wealth (interpreters seem to universally agree that Jesus means the poor) so that when it's gone (which I take when we're dead) they will welcome us into eternal homes!
How many images of the pearly gates have you seen that picture the poor as gatekeepers?

I was looking for some interpretations of this and I happened on one that was quoting the NIV. The NIV translation of this verse reads:

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

Strange, I thought, is the NRSV taking liberties with the translation? Or maybe it's a textual variant? Now it happens that I have an NIV-based reverse interlinear, complete with parsing information. So I looked up this verse, and under the word "received" I find "dexontai" parsed as third person plural aorist middle subjunctive. Hmmm...third person plural = "you will be welcomed"? Somebody's got a theological bias.

Looking further, I found St. Augustine trying a different spin on it. He says that if we use our wealth to help the poor, Jesus will receive our help in the person of the poor (Matthew 25). Closer, but the parable still says "so that...they may welcome you...."

Am I reading too much into this, or is Jesus teaching us something here?

God Talk

In the opening chapter of The Word is Very Near You Martin Smith asks the readers to pause at the threshold as it were and consider why they are reading a book on prayer. He suggests that one reason must be that they desire God. Smith says many people will naturally shy away from this suggestion.

He writes:

Many of us have never received any encouragement to recognize or honor within ourselves the desire for God. The expression seems too sublime to be applied to the faint movements of our own spirit. To speak to most others about having a desire for God would cause embarrassment or even invite ridicule. No one talks like this in "normal" life.

I think he's onto something here. I've seen this in myself, particularly the not wanting to talk that way. I've got these things going on inside me that are definitely somewhere on the road to mysticism, but I don't want to talk like that even with other people in my congregation because they don't talk like that.

And yet, isn't this a basic requirement for religion? If religion can be talked about in the language of "normal" life, is it really religion?

One of the best books I've read in the past couple of years is The Evangelizing Church, written by a team of thinkers from within the ELCA. One of the surprising conclusions of this book is that a critical step to becoming an evangelizing church (and not just a church that does evangelism) is getting the members of the church to talk to one another about the things of God.

At the same time, I think there's something reasonable in this reticence to talk about the movement of the Spirit. At some level it's a mark of humility. If I go to my neighbor and say, "God spoke to me," my neighbor may be right to look askance at me.

It seems to me that the right balance would be to speak boldly about the work of God in our lives within the Church but to speak to the world as the world speaks. Too often, I think, this gets reversed.

Thrown Out

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
-Matthew 5:13-16

In response to last week's Parable of the Pub Owner, Dan raised the objection that perhaps the problem isn't that we aren't out on the streets talking to people. Perhaps the problem is that people really don't want what we're offering. I'm reinterpreting. Correct me, Dan, if that isn't what you were saying. To quote directly, Dan said (in the terms of the parable), "In the circles I move in, nobody wants beer at all, even when given to them in the public square or on the street. These people were raised on beer, already know what it tastes like and just don't want it anymore - cheap or refined."

Now I've heard of the surveys claiming that most people would come to church if asked, and I know that a lot of churches are growing and those people have to be coming from somewhere, but sooner or later we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who do know what Christianity is about and just don't want anything to do with it. What do we do about this?

Part of the problem, no doubt, is that the public face of Christianity isn't always a pretty one. Another part of the problem, I think, is that people just don't find church all that appealing. God they like. I'm certain we could sell them on Jesus too. But church? A lot of people just don't see the point.

What if they're right?

We do not read in the Gospel that Jesus said, "Go therefore and build big buildings. Get people to gather weekly to sing songs and have coffee afterward." Isn't it possible that we could fulfill the Great Commission without getting people to come to church?

Let me go off on a tangent for a second. The place where I work is gray -- all of it. We have gray walls, gray carpets, gray cubicles, gray desks, gray cabinets, gray chairs. I'm not making this up. About a year ago someone got the brilliant idea that maybe all this gray wasn't good for morale, so after a vote on what color to use, they painted one wall red. Again, I'm not making this up. More recently, it was decided that more drastic steps needed to be taken. We're running a pilot program on my floor where the entire workspace is being radically remodeled. According to our VP, they're taking it "down to the studs."

A day or two after reading Dan's comments mentioned above, I read Matthew 5:13: "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot." It made me think of the remodeling project at work and the words "down to the studs."

Do we need to rethink the Christian mission? I'm not saying we don't need churches, but as Kelly Fryer has often said, church is so not the point. What's essential? What should we be sharing with people?

The problem with stripping our churches down to the studs, of course, is that no two people agree about what's a stud and what isn't. And maybe that's part of the problem. We're all pack-rats. We've got too much that we won't let go.

Jesus said, "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." He did not say "so that they may see your beautiful liturgies" or "so that they may see your sound doctrine" or "so they may hear your inspirational sermons." Have we put our light on the lampstand, or have we put something else there?

A Parable of the Mainline Churches

A certain pub owner served nothing but the finest beers -- Guinness, Smithwick's, Samuel Adams, Widmer, Rogue -- his selection was exquisite. Many years of prosperity had made him very wealthy, but as his clientelle aged his business was no longer thriving. Reflecting on this, he decided that he missed the packed houses and lively conversations more than he would miss his money, so one night he went out and posted a sign: "Free Beer". Still the crowds did not come.

For many nights he sat at his bar and puzzled over this. He discussed it at length with his remaining patrons. They didn't understand why people wouldn't rush to accept this generous offer.

One day he left his establishment and went out for a walk. He was amazed to find that his competitors had people in the streets handing out free beer to anyone who would take it. People in the public square chased after passers-by trying to convince them to try their beer. A sign announced a free beer festival in the park that weekend. He went to one of these competing businesses and found that they were serving Pabst Blue Ribbon and Milwaukee's Best, but the place was packed.

He returned to his own pub to consider what he had seen. His competitors, he reasoned, must be just as desperate as he was, having also resorted to giving out free beer, but they, having less money and more customers, couldn't afford to give away quality beer as he did. So he sat back and waited. Eventually the people in the streets would come to him.

But he waited and waited, and the crowds did not come. He decided that perhaps the common people lacked the refined taste to appreciate his beers. The beers his competitors offered must have more appeal to the common folk, he thought. So he put out a sign announcing a "PBR Night" once a week. A few new faces came in, and a few of them became regular customers, but he didn't draw the crowds he had hoped for.

Eventually, the man grew old and died, never having recaptured the great crowds he remembered from his glory days.

Spending Time With Socrates

One of the things that stands out most vividly from my high school education was talking about the death of Socrates in my 10th grade world history class. My history teacher loved Socrates, and he made the story come alive. I met Socrates again in college as I studied Plato in a philosophy class, but aside from being able to make general discussion of the Allegory of the Cave, the biggest impact the college class had was that it put The Dialogues of Plato and The Republic on my bookshelf.

All in all, like a lot of the education I received during that time in my life, these things have perhaps had the unfortunate effect of giving me the impression that I knew something about Plato without my having actually read much Plato -- kind of like seeing a movie and concluding that you don't need to read the book.

This week, as I was rummaging about my bookshelves for something to read, I came across the Dialogues and thought I'd give them a try. Seventy pages in, I'm really liking it.

It turns out my general knowledge was pretty reasonable. If I had discoursed on these dialogues with someone who had actually read them, I wouldn't have seemed like a total dolt. But, of course, the real enjoyment has come in the details. I've relished the simple pleasure of listening to Socrates debating. I've marveled at seeing ideas that are echoed in the New Testament (Socrates' discussion of the wisdom of God vs. the wisdom of men, for instance). I was intrigued by the dialogue with Euthyphro on the nature of the holy, though there were many questions I'd have liked to have put to Socrates.

And now, in reading "Phaedo", I've just come to the place where Socrates discusses philosophy as the practice of death and dying. Christianity could naturally make a similar claim, so it's very interesting to see how Socrates' development of the idea differs from (and yet has obviosuly influenced the development of) the Christian idea.

A Dilemma

Tuesday a car turned in front of me unexpectedly. I hit the brakes hard and flipped my bike. While I was in the air, I hastily exclaimed, "Help me, St. Anne. I will become a monk." I ended up with only minor injuries. Am I bound by this oath?

Miracles

My daughter spoke up this weekend and admitted that she had trouble believing the miracles in the Bible. "They seem like magic," she said. My wife frowned at me and said, "She is your daughter."

I was thrilled about this on several levels. One, she recognizes the unreality of magic. (She's crazy about Harry Potter, so I wasn't sure.) Two, she's thinking about the Bible. Three, she's questioning things. Four, she's talking to me about her doubts. How long can I hope that will last? My two biggest fears as my daughters develop in their faith are that they won't question anything and that they won't talk to be about the things they question.

So, we talked about it and I did my best to leave things open-ended enough for her to think about it and come to her own conclusion. Frankly, I'm not sure what I think of miracles.

But today, as I was thinking back on this conversation, I formed this fanciful mental image of a lost scene from the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Delmar: I just don't see how all them things coulda happened the way it says in the Bible.
Everett: Well, Delmar, many people believe that the universe is possessed of a kind of sensitivity such that it reponds to the presence of goodness and justice, and so when a purely righteous man comes into the world, nature itself is at his beck and call.
Pete: What about that story of Elisha causin' them she-bears to maul a bunch o' boys?
Everett: The Bible's just a dusty old book written by superstitious people. What do you expect?

Sanctos

As a parent, I usually rush past gumball machines as quickly as I can. It saves me a few quarters and keeps the family car from filling up with useless plastic junk. Today, we had lunch at a local Mexican restraunt (El Indio) and before we even got up from the table my nine-year old daughter made a pre-emptive strike, asking if she could look at the machines on the way out. We did, and very quickly I was asking my wife how many quarters she had. One of the gumball machines had tiny figurines called "Sanctos".

I got San Antonio, Papa Juan Pablo and la Virgen de Guadelupe. I was hoping for San Francisco, but Gina wouldn't give me any more quarters.

Richard Dawkins and a Personal God

Lee at A Thinking Reed set off quite a storm when his claim the Richard Dawkins doesn't exist drew the attention of Joe from A Human Blog, who like me writes from the godless Pacific Northwest.

The manifest dispute was over whether or not Dawkins' line that he wouldn't need to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns has any merit, meaning he doesn't need to be well-read in theology to criticize belief in God. What's behind this, I think, is one of the standard Christian lines of defense against atheism. We ask, "Which god don't you believe in?" with the intention that we would follow-up saying, "I don't believe in that god either."

But there is an elephant in the room. A lot of Christian do believe in the God Dawkins is arguing against. In his letter to The Independent which started this discussion, Dawkins addresses Peter Stanford's objection that he "caricatures all church-goers as simple-minded fundamentalists" by saying:

Of course the churchgoers Stanford or I meet socially are not simple-minded fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are heavily outnumbered, especially in the most powerful country on earth, where nearly half the people believe the universe began after domestication of the dog, and a slightly smaller proportion yearns for a Middle East Armageddon when they'll be raptured "up" to Heaven.

Let's face it, Tim LaHaye's God cannot be defended by reference to Paul Tillich's theology. But there's more than that going on here.

Before today I hadn't read anything by Dawkins, but following the hints in his aforementioned letter, I checked out this excerpt from his The God Delusion. I have to admit, I'm impressed.

Dawkins here lays out a sort of nature mysticism that many people would like to connect with belief in God, but then he shows how what he's talking about isn't belief in God. This is good stuff. I have a definite affection for the sort of wonder at the natural universe he describes. I like how it goes beyond a dry, mechanical view of the world and sees more there. At the same time it's frustrating, because I have to admit that as much as I want to think of my theological view as sophisticated and plausible, I must still finally admit that my faith with its view of a personal God who cares about the fate of the world, falls under Dawkins' condemnation.

I suppose the thing that frustrates me is that he says so much I can agree with, but just when I want him to go that one step further with me and consider the possibility of a personal God, he turns on me and mocks me, leaving me ashamed.

Dawkins' main distinction is between the natural and the supernatural, but it strikes me that there are some parallels here to the old theological debate between God's immanence and God's transcendence, except that Dawkins is on the extreme of the immanence continuum and wouldn't use the term "God" for what he's describing.

Dawkins writes:

Let's remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

It's kind of ironic that after spending much of this excerpt showing how theists are wrong to claim Einstein for their side, Dawkins makes this bold move to claim pantheists for his side. I have to say I bristle at the statement that "pantheism is sexed-up atheism."

But let me go back to the immanence/transcendence idea, as it relates to Dawkins' concern about natural/supernatural. In the past I've taken issue with the way immanence and transcendence are played against each other in Paul Laughlin's writings. Laughlin treats them as opposite extremes on a single spectrum, with some caveats about weak forms of either. Against this I maintain that Christianity has often tried to take a position that doesn't fit on a linear scale between these two extremes.

But who says that immanence and transcendence are opposites? What happens if instead we map them out on separate axes? Thinking through this, it occurred to me that I'm not quite talking about immanence and transcendence as such anymore. I need new terminology. So I propose one axis that maps God's being organically present versus God's being wholly external, and a second axis that maps God's being ontologically distinct versus God's being ontologically identical with creation. Both of these scales could be described as mapping transcendence versus immanence, but notice that they are actually concerned with two very different things.

Here's my proposed map:


I've tentatively labelled the lower left quadrant as "atheism". That is, "God" is seen as ontologically identical with the universe, but not present -- atheism. I think that works.

It may not be clear what I mean by "organically present". Considering that I am proposing this as an analog of immanence might help. Basically, I mean a God who is part of the system so to speak -- not external and also not present as a visitor from the outside. I might be able to say "one with creation."

But if I make that last statement, you might start scratching your head, looking at my diagram and asking "How can God be both organically present and ontologically other?" That's a good question. If you have a substance-based ontology, it isn't possible, but if you have a relationally-based ontology (as suggested by John Zizioulas, for instance) then this is the only quadrant of my diagram that is possible. That is, if God's being is a being-in-relationship, then God cannot be other than organically present, and it is wholly natural for God to be personal.

God-Covered

The opening lines of the Isa Upanishad in Swami Parminanda's translation read, "All this, whatsoever exists in the universe, should be covered by the Lord....We cover all things with the Lord by perceiving the Divine Presence everywhere." Since I read this I've been mulling it over, trying to bring it into my Christian perspective with the aid of some ideas of Gerard Manly Hopkins that I found by way of William Short's book on Franciscan spirituality.

According to Short, Hopkins has the idea that all things bring forth Christ into the world by doing what they are. "The grape grapes, the star stars, a volcano volcanoes. Each, doing this, is being itself: doing what it is. Hopkins calls this 'do-being'. This do-being is doing Christ." Of course, Hopkins being who he was tended to say it more like this:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
Christ - for Christ play in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

So I've been trying to get in touch with this sort of view of the world. And so as I was riding to work today, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking how it's easy to see trees, for instance, as being God-covered or even the flow of traffic or a well-made road. But what about the trash on the side of the road. Does trash trash, or is this a defilement of its nature? How can trash on the side of the road be God-covered?

And this led me to wonder, can sin be God-covered? Naturally, the verbal cues here took me to the Atonement as I thought how all sin is covered by the blood of Christ, but that didn't really meet what I was looking for.

Then I connected this with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The man who fell among robbers has a certain affinity with the trash along the side of the road, and the Samaritan made him God-covered by bringing God into the situation through compassion.

And so I thought how there must be a distinction to be made between sin and what is despoiled by sin, but then I thought that likely God doesn't see it that way. Doesn't God see the robbers as creatures despoiled by sin as much as their victim? And here I met an obstacle. There's a clear class of villians in the Bible. Jesus has compassion on sinners and tax collectors, but he has strong words for the Pharisees, and beyond them we have the larger shadow of Caesar and Rome. How do they become God-covered?

My intuition is that Jesus' primary response to them is to allow himself to be crucified, but I haven't worked out how this fits.