In the Wake beneath the Dust and Blood of the Crucified God #progGod

There are a million questions to this question, and I don't think one can even begin to do them justice in the spans of a thousand or two words. For myself, I would consider myself a moderate to conservative evangelical so this is a bit of a brain teaser.

Why crucifixion?

Adam as the one formed from dust (or earthling, as a former prof once explained) is the one for whom the spiral out began. This Adam is from the earth, as a created being, from humble roots (pun possibly intended) and offered the world. However, through actions unlike what God desired, the world as we know it began a spiral towards death.

Why crucifixion?

Adam died in the wake of a falling creation and Eve died alone, with her children in disarray. All they knew was death apart from anything good. Genesis doesn't mention how Adam and Eve died, but it wouldn't be far to assume that it was of old age and of broken hearts.

Why crucifixion?

Paul states in Romans 5 that through the one human death came into this world, and through the one man we are all justified. In a cosmic sense, maybe Jesus had to die in such a way as opposite of Adam and Eve. Maybe he couldn't go up and ascend in wonder and glory via old age, but instead he had to die at the hands of certain emperors and certain Jewish leaders.

Maybe it is to showcase the failings and the abundance of grace, and that the pain of old age is a wonderful gift (in it's own right) as opposed to a political execution.

In the wake beneath the dust and blood of the crucifixion, maybe Jesus' death reveals that in spite of the hope for a life of old age, that life is cruel and callous and that this hostile universe needs to be revealed. The political and the social and the redemptive are summed up in a crucifixion. Maybe Christ's life was too important to drag out. Maybe the adage "a young life" is wasted, but even that is subverted.

Why crucifixion?

Dying a political death at the hands of an evil empire seems to be a universal addendum, in that there will always be martyrs and kings, blood and pain, until beyond the eschaton.

To quote my favorite church father,

When Christ 'shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father' , then those living beings, because they have been before this been made part of Christ's kingdom, shall also be delivered up along with the whole of that kingdom to the rule of the Father; so that, when 'God shall be all in all', they also, since they are a part of all, may have God even in themselves, as he is in all things.

Origen, On First Principles, pg65.

All in all, I don't really know. But it is fun to sit and think about such things on a Saturday afternoon.

--Nick

Tony Jones & the Progressive Christian Blog Challenge

Jones:

I’ve been writing recently about the problems with liberal Christianity, and I had a thought this morning. It was prompted by a recent phone conversation I had with the managing editor of a major publishing house, combined with my faithful listening to the Theology Nerd Throwdown podcast, and the silliness of all the hand-wringing about Chik-fil-A.

These have prompted me to think that progressives have a God-talk problem. That is, progressives write lots of books and blog posts about social issues, the church, culture, and society. But we don’t write that much about God. That is, we don’t say substantive things about who God is, what God does, etc.

You might say the same thing about conservative Protestants (i.e., “evangelicals”). But the thing is, their people pretty much know what they think of God. It’s well-known and on the record.
Progressive/liberal/mainline theology, on the other hand, has a PR problem. We might think that people know what we think about God, but they don’t. It’s clear in the comments on this blog and elsewhere.

It really struck me yesterday, when listening to a recent edition of the TNT podcast, in which Tripp repeatedly and forcefully said things about who God is and how God acts. He didn’t relativize those statements with qualifiers, and he didn’t cowtow to political correctness or academic jargon. That was jarring to me because it so rarely happens.

Thus, I have a challenge:

I challenge all progressive theo-bloggers to write one post about God between now and August 15.

For me, I'm quite curious to see what my progressive brothers and sisters come up with. As someone who doesn't really consider himself progressive, I'd love to see how this would unfold. What attributes of God are de/emphasized, etc. Should make for an amazing discussion.

Oh course, why should progressive bloggers have all the fun? ;)

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

Tony Jones, Guns, Satan and the Batman

JONES:

I imagine that I will write about Satan at some point, as some readers have asked in response to yesterday’s post. However, we should also talk honestly about guns. Guns are everywhere in America, as Bill Moyers notes:

There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, over the last 30 years, “the number of states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38.”

Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
So why do we always act so surprised?  Violence is our alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.

In The New Christians, I recounted a similar fundamentalist response to the one I found from Greg Stier yesterday:

In the days following the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre, Pastor Ronnie Floyd posted extensively about the tragedy on his blog, “Between Sundays.” He warned the American church to “get serious” and to “WAKE UP!!!” Thirty-three persons had died, he wrote, and they each went to heaven or hell. He then urged his readers to get busy with evangelism because “death is real,” and the job of Christians is to “bring others to Christ” so that they won’t go to hell when they die.

In Floyd’s blog posts about the Virginia Tech shootings, there was nary a word about Seung-Hui Cho’s ready access to guns and ammunition. No comment about the epidemic of clinical depression in our country. Not a mention of the prevalence of hurting people in our culture, often adolescents who are shrouded in anonymity, lost on college campuses with tens of thousands of other students. In other words, Floyd said nothing about the systemic issues that become acute to many of us during times of tragedy.

Floyd’s question is not how this young man’s mind became so twisted in his own mental illness, how he fell through the cracks of our societal net, or how he was able to purchase two handguns and hundreds of bullets with no more than a driver’s license. The question was about whether he and his victims had invited Jesus into their hearts before they died.

So critics can crow about me being insensitive for pointing to Stier’s comments, but he is simply one in a long line of conservative Christians who would rather supernaturalize these tragedies that deal with them in reality, where the rest of us live.

For the entire article, click HERE.

--Nick

Jones, "Bonhoeffer & Christianity"

I liked this. Quite eye-opening.

Tony Jones:

Everyone wants to claim Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Liberals like his political action on behalf of an oppressed people. Evangelicals love his “religionless Christianity” and his critique of his students at Union Seminary in New York. That he is a complex historic figure is currently on display, brought to a head by Eric Metaxas.

Metaxas, an accomplished author and unapologetically conservative firebrand, wrote a popular biography of Bonhoeffer that was met with plaudits by fellow conservatives, winning Book of the Year in 2010 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. Metaxas got another jewel in his crown when he gave the plenary address this year at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The problem? Metaxas’s account of Bonhoeffer’s life has been almost universally derided by Bonhoeffer scholars. They say that he simply took bits and pieces of Bonhoeffer’s biography — all cribbed from earlier books — and pasted them together to make his point that Bonhoeffer was actually a conservative cultural warrior who repudiated liberal Christianity and considered fundamentalists in America to be in the same plight as German Jews.

In the Association of Contemporary Church Historians Quarterly, for instance, Victoria J. Barnett of the US Holocaust Museum writes,

There are two central problems here. The first is that he has a very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the period. Hence he has pieced together the historical and theological backdrop for the Bonhoeffer story using examples from various works, sometimes completely out of context and often without understanding their meaning. He focuses too much on minor details and overlooks some of the major ones (such as the role of the Lutheran bishops and the “intact” churches). The second is that theologically, the book is a polemic, written to make the case that Bonhoeffer was in reality an evangelical Christian whose battle was not just against the Nazis but all the liberal Christians who enabled them.

 For the rest of the post, click HERE.

--Nick

Tony Jones, "A Better Atonement" Free Today!

Well, I've been a follower of Tony for over a year now, and he's releases his e-book "A Better Atonement" for free off Amazon today. June 8th. Go. Go get it. Free book. Shoo.

Tony:

For today only, I’m running a Just Because Sale on my book, A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin. In fact, it’s not just on sale — it’s free!

It’s only available for the Kindle — but even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can read Kindle books on just about any device. Go here to download the Kindle software for your device. Free Today!

And stay tuned, because I’m going to release a revised and updated version of A Better Atonement next Ash Wednesday. If there are oversights in this version, or topics you’d like me to cover in that version, please leave a comment here or contact me through my website. While there, you can check out my other books.

Oh, and this is post 300 for me. Thanks for your time and effort. ;)

--Nick

"What's at Stake in the Doctrine of Creation?"

Tony Jones:

A week from now, I’ll be canoeing through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with ten Fuller DMin students, Brian McLaren, Courtney, and a couple guides from Boundary Waters Experience. Our conversations will center on Christian Spirituality and the Doctrine of Creation.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about the doctrine of creation in preparation, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the doctrine of creation is like an onion: you peel away one layer, and you find an equally significant layer underneath. Another metaphor is dominoes: knock the first one down, and lots more begin to fall.

I’m so intrigued by this that I think my next book after Why Pray? will be on creation. And I see my thoughts falling under these major categories:

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

Tony Jones, "What Religion Is"

Jones:

I’ve had several conversations recently with friends and acquaintances about what religion is, and I’ve read a couple book manuscripts about it.

Those who are pro-religion tend to refer to religion as a root system. It’s like the bulb of a plant, and from that bulb grows our spirituality. Without roots, our faith is unhinged from anything. We become spiritual-but-not-religious, New Age syncretists.

Religion is not this.

But this isn’t religion. I think, instead, that God is the bulb, the roots. It is from God that our experiences of God grow.

Those who are anti-religion say that religion is an exoskeleton that is meant to protect our experiences of God. But instead it suffocates our spirituality. They say that we should ditch religion, get out from under the exoskeleton, and let our spirituality live.

Religion is not this.

But this is not religion. Religion can become this, but the proponents of this view tell us that we can have spirituality without religion. That’s naive, because it’s not possible.Modern religious bureaucracy is a suffocating exoskeleton, but that is not religion.

Here’s what religion is: religion is a trellis.

Religion is this.

We have experiences of the Divine, and we attempt to communicate our experiences of the Divine to other human beings. We use symbols to do that communication: words, images, bodily postures, etc. This is “culture;” that is, it’s how we cultivate our experiences of the Divine — how we take the messy field of experience and plow it into rows that we can work.

And it turns out that others have done this before us. Many others. They have used words and images and bodily postures to cultivate and organize their experiences of the Divine. And others have seen that and thought, “Hey, my experience of the Divine is like that. Let’s throw in on this together.” And they do. And there you’ve got religion.

Religion is the trellis that our experiences of the Divine climb on. The handholds, if you will, by which we organize our experiences of the numinous.

God is the bulb.

Your experience of the Divine is the vines and fruit.

Religion is the trellis on which those vines and fruit grow, on which they thrive, and on which they reach heights that they could never otherwise reach.

Jones/Religion

--Nick

Tony Jones, "Evangelical Colleges and Their Gay Students"

In my neck-o-the-woods, Bethel University‘s provost recently held an open conversation with gay students and allies, where they were able to talk openly about their experiences at a college that officially discriminates against them.

At one of my alma maters, Fuller Theological Seminary, a campus-wide conversation about sexuality was recently held. Heteronormativity was ultimately upheld at each of these institutions, but here’s what I think: As soon as you give LGBT persons a voice, they are humanized. And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time before discriminatory policies begin to collapse.

At HuffPo, Ron Davis writes about a similar debate being held at his alma mater, George Fox University:

Like many evangelical colleges, the school requires students and staff to sign a lifestyle agreement which, among other things, requires them to refrain from nonmarital sexual activity and proscribes homosexual relationships. A group of LGBTQ and allied alumni called OneGeorgeFox presented the administration with an open letter. The letter challenges the University’s policy, and disputes LGBTQ stereotypes, invoking gay student’s desire to have families and demanding their Christian community’s support.

The University responded to the letter with characteristic civility, affirming everyone’s dignity, and acknowledging the need for improved communication, but ultimately reiterating its heteronormative theological position. Less characteristically, the administration has told its faculty that, although they can facilitate discussions among students, signing the letter or otherwise publicly advocating for a position at odds with the University’s policy violates their employment contracts.

Consequently, a passionate, ideologically diverse faculty’s signatures are notably absent. This is egregious. Universities exist, in large part, to encourage truth-seeking, and the faculty form the backbone of this pursuit. That a Quaker university could display such gross epistemic hubris strongly suggests the administration has lost sight of these guiding principles. (Read the rest: Ron Davis: Evangelical Universities, Gay Students and Faculty Freedom.)

I am an adjunct professor at Fuller, and I can say that, to Fuller’s credit (most notably,Kurt Frederickson‘s and Rich Mouw‘s credit), they have never attempted to silence me. They have simply asked that while I’m teaching a Fuller class, I respect their Statement ofCommunity Standards. That seems completely reasonable, and I happy to comply with that request.

Tony Jones

--Nick

An Arminian Egalitarian 'Heretic' Defends John Piper?

Let me be clear -- I am not a complementarian. I am not a calvinist. I am -- in general -- not a fan of John Piper as a person or as a theologian. I think someone needs to step up and say something about much of what he says. But, here, I think Piper is not only taken quite strongly out of context but is done so with spite and not love. So, today, I side with John Piper.

Tony Jones, a theologically progressive Christian and titan within the Emergent Church movement, today blogged about John Piper's recent interview with The Christian Post. In it, Piper made several comments and Tony has taken exception with several of them.

But first, here is the entire question and answer:

Should a pastor continue in ministry if one of his sons, arriving at a mature age, proves to be an unbeliever? 

Well, as you know, that hits close to home. So maybe the best thing I can do is tell you the way the elders at Bethlehem managed this, because that's me. 

When that happened, I went to the elders and I said to them, "Here's the situation. I think my son needs to be pursued by the elders as far as you can, and then he needs to be excommunicated if he doesn't respond." He was 19 years old. 

And so for I forget how many months they did this. Maybe six months or so. And I said, "I am willing to step back and go on a leave of absence, or resign, or whatever you think appropriate in this situation." They never faced this before with any theological thoroughness. 

So for those months they were pursuing him, talking with him. He was working for one of the elders at the time, and they had some conversations. And we were studying the issue, because it says in Titus 1:5-6 that the children of elders should be pista (faithful). Tekna is the neuter word for "children" in Greek, and pista agrees with it. So it is "faithful children."

Now if you just absolutize that as "they must be believers" then not only would I have had to resign, but every pastor would have to resign until his children become believers. (I'm giving you one of the arguments against it. Children become believers, they're not born believers-unless you have a very unusual view of baptism as an infant baptizer.) 

So the idea would be that you can't be a pastor until they become believers-say, nobody with children under six should be a pastor. Or another take would be that if they profess faith and then walk away from it you have to leave the pastorate. 

Well the elders studied that through and they wrote a paper. It was just a two page thing that said that a pastor shouldn't resign on account of an unbelieving adult child. [Editor's note: This paper isn't available, but you can read another similar one by Justin Taylor.] 

And so they let me press on, but we did follow through with the discipline. And God was merciful to, I believe, use that letting go to awaken and restore. And I'm thankful for it.
So I don't think the point of those stipulations in 1 Timothy and Titus is to lead to the quick resignations of pastors, but to discern whether a man has a maturity and a giftedness to lead a well-ordered family. That's what it's for. 

How can you manage the flock if you can't manage your household? And good management doesn't mean perfect outcome. It didn't for God, and it doesn't for us.

Certainly, there are sections of this that ought to have been said in a more careful tone. These days, it is very easy to provide critics with one decent soundbite to incite global nuclear war. But, that is beside the point.

Tony quotes Piper and responds to several sections of the interview. 

Piper: Well, as you know, that hits close to home. So maybe the best thing I can do is tell you the way the elders at Bethlehem managed this, because that’s me.

When that happened, I went to the elders and I said to them, “Here’s the situation. I think my son needs to be pursued by the elders as far as you can, and then he needs to be excommunicated if he doesn’t respond.” He was 19 years old.

Tony: I don’t know what’s more shocking, that Piper was ready to excommunicate his 19-year-old son, or that his son’s sin was that he was (is?) an “unbeliever.”

I think a closer examination will show quite the opposite. I do not, for an instant, think Piper would excommunicate his son if he thought there was ANY chance of his son repenting. I could hardly imagine a father casting his son aside in such a way. To do so not only seems unjust, but anti-salvation.

I do not think Piper is saying what Tony thinks he is saying. Piper, to me, seems to view this as something to be viewed as a last resort. If anything, the notion begins with attempted reconciliation. I'm not entirely convinced that it is the job of the elders to chastise Piper's son, but regardless, the aim of Piper was first and foremost to help his son, not cast him out.

I think Tony is focusing on the latter part, and not on Piper the father. Though Piper has said some things in the past that makes an Arminian/Egalitarian like myself cringe and jump up and down on my sofa, he has said nothing here to merit the "shock" from Tony. 

The second part that Tony address is thus. His words are in blue. Piper's are in italics:

What’s happened to Piper is that he got caught up in his own biblical hermeneutic. The Bible says this:


Piper: I left you behind in Crete for this reason, that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you: someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious.

What’s an inerrantist pastor to do when one of his children turns out not to be a believer? Well, step down immediately, of course. Right? I’m sure that’s exactly what Piper said and did. Let’s go to the tape:

Now if you just absolutize that as “they must be believers” then not only would I have had to resign, but every pastor would have to resign until his children become believers…


Well the elders studied that through and they wrote a paper. It was just a two page thing that said that a pastor shouldn’t resign on account of an unbelieving adult child.

Well, well, well. Isn’t that interesting? It seems that the Bible doesn’t mean exactly what it says. It seems that the Bible has to be interpreted.


I think Tony is -- again -- missing the point. I do think, if one takes that passage to be rigidly literal, then yes. Piper would have to resign and so would many people. But Piper is instead referring to restoring his son. Tony is quite to jump the gun and fixate upon certain select instances of text instead of the bigger picture. John's purpose in this is to help. We could argue about whether him using excommunication it a good way (and I'm not certain it is) but we should have a decent dialogue about this.

Everyone takes the Bible literally when they think it supports their view. Everyone. This is not the best way to do exegesis, but to chide Piper on this is not only uncharitable, it is an example of a tendency many Christians, regardless of affiliation, are quick to do. I do it all the time. I'm making a stand right now. No more. So, frankly, the time has come to stop. Stop behaving like this is elementary school. This is not a call for tolerance or forced agreement. This is a call to act like adults.

Tony's crack at the end about Piper's 'interpretation' of the passages addressing homosexuality smacks of self-righteousness and polemics, not a scholarly attitude.

And, yes, the Bible has to be interpreted. What an absurd comment. Everything Scripture says requires some form of interpretation. And, to take it at face value is a form of interpretation. Disagree and say it is a *bad* form but it is still a form. I do not agree with Piper's interpretation of much of Scripture, but enough is enough.

If the Emergent Church wants to be taken seriously, then it should take others seriously.

According to the original link, it is an edited transcript. I'm not certain we're getting the entire picture here. Anytime a pastor says something that been noted and edited and comes across as naive, we ought to step back and think a bit more.

Piper answered in a way consistent with his theology, for better or worse. I expect Tony to do better than "Farewell John Piper."

Tony Jones

I end this on a quote from a wise friend named James:

"Disagree with someone if you want, but unsubstantiated disagreement is problematic in academia, regardless of who you disagree with."

God bless. And if I am incorrect in anything, let me know. I plan on debating with John and Tony in the afterlife, so getting things right now is pretty important.

;-)

--Nick

"Santorum & Christendom" according to Tony Jones

First, I do not think America is or ever really was a Christian nation. I think it looks nothing like the example given to us in Jesus Christ. I think we potentially shame Him by attributing our nation to His example.

Second, I almost expect the governing body to enforce tolerance/intolerance as they see fit. For them not to do so would be a healthy reminder that cynicism is poisonous to my self-esteem.

Third, the separation of church and state is often touted by many to exclude religious convictions from the public office. I do not see this as possible, nor even necessary. What I interpret the First Amendment to say is that there must be no state run church, see England's Monarchy from which we "fled." Meaning, Rick Santorum cannot start up the "Church of Santorum" but he certainly has the ability to act upon his convictions.

Fourth, I do not think the American Rick Santorum believes in exists. I do not prescribe to idealism within the cesspool of politics for the same reason I do not promote the forcible inhaling of legos through one's nasal cavity.

Fifth, nor do I prescribe to Tony Jones' perspective on american government and politics, and I think he is inconsistent with whom he supports and doesn't support. This, of course, is entirely relative to my own positions. ;-)

Onto the brief responses offered by Tony Jones.

Here’s the thing: the rights afforded us by the First Amendment are sacrosanct, at least in a non-religious sense. But, as a religious person, I abdicate some of my rights when I submit to living in a country with laws. If my religion dictates that I smoke weed, or that I sacrifice cats, I don’t get to do that. My religious rights are not absolute — they are relative, because they are judged in the relative weight with the good for society.

I'm not certain utilitarianism ought to be the guiding principle here. In fact, I see utilitarianism itself as possible relative. So I'm not convinced Tony has quite made his point, even if I think I know what he is getting at.

I would rephrase his comments as "my religious rights are absolute, but how I act upon them is relative to society and the /possible/ damage that can be done to others."

But neither are First Amendment rights absolute. You don’t get to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and you don’t get to post kiddie porn on the internet. Again, the good of the society trumps your individual rights.

I think I agree.

That’s why Santorum’s views on contraception, for instance, are reckless. He may be personally appalled that men and women use contraceptives, and he can use his bully pulpit to promote those views. But to impose those personal views on the rest of us is the equivalent to Mitt Romney forcing us all to wear sacred undergarments, or Barack Obama making women wear burkas.

I'm not certain where the leap in this comes from. Santorum acting upon his conscience is no different than the President authorizing partial-birth abortion. We elect people BASED on their personal views and how they will (or say/lie) enforce them. Many of us knew what we were getting when we elected Barack Obama, and in a way, most/all of us know what we will get if we elect Rick Santorum. At least we have that going for us. . . . . .

I would argue that Tony is operating out of an idealistic view of government when history ought to dictate the reality of government and the opinion and policies of individual people and how they act towards their constituents. Contrast Hitler with Barney. One preached utilitarianism from a TV screen and one was purple. ;-)

To impose those personal views upon people is simply how government works in the mind of a cynic, and dammit Jim, what is more recklessly American then that?

Tony Jones/ Rick Santorum

--Nick

Christians & "Strange Flesh"

Tony Jones offered this post in support of same-sex marriage. I don't agree with a lot of his theology or politics, but I always value an alternative opinion to my own.

Tony Jones

Not certain about the exegesis. At all. Thoughts?

Another possibly related point. Many folks exegete the 'homosexuality' passages in an odd way, saying they are about abuse. I'm not certain this works, but I'm glad now I have an excuse to be proven wrong.

Another thing, many folks appeal to Jesus's very words, of which there seem to be none, in support of the homosexual lifestyle. However, that's an appeal to silence I think.

Sigh. I guess I just need to knuckle down and do the research.

To the future!

--Nick