and

For nearly as long as the church has existed so have Creeds.  Creeds are the “I/we believe . . . ” statements of the people of God.  As with all text, once it is “written”  and made available(whatever the medium) the text takes on a life of its own. 

So it doesn’t take the church too long to begin encouraging people recite creeds, or to incorporate them into worship praxis, or to demand that people sign creeds to show that they are part of the the community of faith, recite or die, etc.  Surely many aspects of creedal engagement are very useful for communal life. 

One of the beauties of the living body of Christ is that as groups - in concert with the Holy Spirit - focus on creedal statements other faith communities prophetically arise to speak of the limitations of those same Creeds.  This may sound like an unnecessary battle, on the contrary, it is this dance that keeps the church alive; maybe its like the dance of the red blood cells, the white cells and platelets.

Often those most concerned about churches’ uses of Creeds have centered around the idea that Creeds are not sufficient for faith; its not enough to recite a creed to be “in”; they ask for more than mental assent or a signature at the bottom of such a document.

Anyway, I have begun to think of “Creeds” as Working Communal Thesis Statements.  They are working in that they must be revisable.  If we assume that our knowledge is finite and that God is infinite then we must always be open to more of God.  They are communal in that as soon as the statement is uttered it generates relational engagement which shapes the “text” itself.  It is a thesis in that it is making a claim that is not proven or in some cases entirely unprovable (empirically speaking).  And as a statement it is located belief; meaning that nearly every statement we utter is a belief statement inseparably linked to the particulars of time, space, community, personal narrative, etc.

“I don’t know for certain, but but as best as we can discern in community I am in the process of believing . . . “

peace, dwight

Sheryl raised some great questions in her reply to my Dec 28^th post.

The claim is often made that “truth is truth” with the assumption that such a claim stands on its own.  Why should we expect it to?  For followers of Christ truth is best understood as God revealed in Christ by the power of the spirit (or something along those lines).  Thus we often state that “Christ is the Truth” or “Truth is a person”.  An understanding of Truth as a person immediately raises questions regarding the nature of “absolutes.”  What is a person? 

Given this Christian construct of truth, how we understand “personhood” will shape our understanding and experience of truth.  From Descartes until the 20th century the dominant metaphor for understanding person was mechanical and atomized.  Our understandings of the world have and are changing:  For instance, Trinitarian theology is helping us see God perichoretically relating with Godself and creation dynamically and lovingly; the postmodern turn to philosophical relationality has opened the doors for social constructivism which says “We are therefore I am”, and for systems thinking/network theory/etc which says that all that is, is interconnected and interanimating and relationally self-constitutive.

Thus, if truth is a person and our understanding of person has and is changing then our understanding of truth must change.  The “essential self” (person) of modernity is now largely seen as a myth, today, to be a person is to be relational. A person is seen as dynamic, always changing in and through interactions with any and everything. 

If truth is a person, truth cannot be objective in the modern understanding of objective.  Truth becomes relational and dynamic.  Static understanding of truth which can lead to arrogance such “my truth is better than your truth” which is characteristic of fundamentalism of every stripe are being invited to dance with a dynamic relational constructs – and yes Modern Christian absolutes stand in this theological intersection scratching its head. 

My bottom-line, as best as I understand it at this point, is that following Christ invites faith because we don’t have objective truth.  God gave us living relational truth in Jesus Christ, and invites us by faith to journey in God’s presence relationally linking with any and all.  I don’t need to conceive anyone of my “absolutes” rather I embody the living truth of Christ in self-emptying love in the service of the other.  And as we dialogue with another (with a sense that we does in conjunction with the Holy Spirit) truth happens. 

On first hearing these words one might be concerned with potential erosion of “Christian truth” however I believe that this construct raises the bar on discipleship.  It would no longer be enough to intellectually know dogma but to live and speak truth as it may have never been lived/spoken before.  Do we trust God’s Holy Spirit enough to guide us into truth?  Dogma has typically answered “No.” 

Dogma can be a form of distrust of God. 

peace, dwight

I write to discover what I’m in the the process of believing.

“When I say ‘I believe,’ I am not merely describing an inward feeling or experience: I am affirming what I believe to be true, and therefore what is true for everyone.  The test of my commitment to this belief will be that I am ready to publish it, to share it with others, and to invite their judgment and - if necessary - correction.  If I refrain from this exercise, if I try to keep my belief as a private matter, it is not belief in truth” (Newbigin, 1989, 22).

I don’t think I believe anything until I tell someone.  I must articulate it, and the moment I do, it becomes truth and the moment it becomes truth, the truth wants to become dogma and the moment it becomes dogma, truth dies.  If however, I can continue in the process of “truth making” by dialogging with those other than I, the possibility of living truth becomes more likely. 

…but I fear too much, i fear.  And so I tend to feel at home in my dogma.  God grant me the courage to engage the other, becoming “us” and living truth as Christ is Truth.

peace, dwight

I’ve been battling a cold for about a week and yesterday afternoon around 3, I lost.  A foggy head - where everyone sounds like they’re speaking into a barrel, nasal congestion, that achy feeling, and just a hint stomach-unease.  To top it off, I could not sleep last night.

So, I worried, prayed, watched TV, paced, caught up on some emails, worked on my dissertation, got a drink of water, and mostly tried to fall asleep.

My brain started fogging over about an hour before Thinking Theologically 1 (one of the courses I TA).  We’ve been exploring theories of the atonement.  And had walked through the ten atonement articulations highlighted by Leanne Van Dyk in Believing in Jesus Christ. Dr. Bryan Burton grouped students to reflect on possible contemporary metaphors for the atonement.  When Bryan drew the students together eliciting responses from the groups, well… let’s just say that my foggy brain kicked in (or “out” depending how you look at it).  As TA I don’t usually contribute in the same way students do, but for some inexplicable reason I started thinking-out-loud.  I started yammering about how sexual intercourse (though “love making” would have been better language) maybe one of the better metapors of “at-one-ment” - bear in mind I hadn’t thought this all through when I began “thinking-out-loud” and my foggy mind was less than sharp. 

I had enough sense about me not to say that may the Cross could be viewed as humanity’s rape of God.  A rape in which humanity takes the Incarnation (God’s grand wooing move toward an intimate I/Thou creation of Us) and satisfies itself and its quest for dominance, treating God like an expendable object.  A rape which God, in Christ, receives and submits to - out of love for the rapist - always lovingly seeing the rapist as a person (I/thou) and offering genuine forgiveness and the gift of Self in the midst of the horror.

And since I couldn’t shut-up I went on to mumble, almost incoherently, that maybe atonement is like a sponge, absorbing all the evil, (and yes, the sponge metaphor was connected to the rape metaphor, though I’m not sure I made that clear). 

I never got this far in my confused state, but maybe grace would be the absurdity of rapists living into the love ever extended by the Raped One; or something like that.

I think I need sleep - and maybe a upgrade for my internal editor. 

peace, dwight

Ryan Pettit wrote a thoughtful response to my “Christianity maybe an antichrist” entry of 12/4. He graciously critiques my post, offering seasoned rational for his claims. 

Ryan began his response by offering three definitions of religion, these are useful.  He stresses his third definition as the most precise, as it positions a person for thoughtful engagement with the religions of the world.  Religion, he writes is: “a system of ideas and behaviors that assist participants in relating properly to their God and the rest of the world.”  That feels pretty solid.

The Second Movement of his response began with the powerful statement, “Religion is your friend, Christian.”  I returned to his definition of religion, and I thought, “ok, I can mostly buy that.”  From my perspective in laying out his rational for the Christian defense of religion he almost underscores my initial post.

What is the religion that God accepts according to James? 

I want to be clear that I am not trying to throw out History, or Orthodoxy.  That is not my intention.  We are who we are in large part because of “the great cloud of witnesses” that came before us.  To throw out history is to fail to know one’s social-self.  Anyone who seeks to know God in Christ by the Spirit will find themselves sitting under others who have also walked with God. 

If God wanted a religious humanity would we not see signs of religion in the pre-fallen state of the Garden of Eden?  Instead what we see is a relationship between God and humanity that is tacitly intimate without need of religion.  Or maybe we’d see signs of religion in the New Heaven and the New Earth, here again we see relational imagery in contrast with religious imagery.  Our Lord Jesus Christ makes for an interesting study for religion.  After all Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God, so if one wants to see what a “religious human” looks like, a Christian will look to Christ; and if one wants to see how God sees religion, a Christian will look to Christ.

Jesus Christ was religious.  After all, he was a Jew - a Rabbi.  Jesus didn’t walk around areligiously, he was thoroughly Jewish, in fact there was no option.  This is one of the most important aspects of the incarnation, Jesus was more radically particular than most Western Protestant Christ-followers are comfortable admitting; Christ was born into a social/cultural tradition; he was born to a specific family, etc.  Jesus did not magically appear out of thin air he was reared in such a religious context that likely he would have scarcely been aware of his religiosity (certainly not as we think of religiosity today).  Kind of like a fish being aware of water.  He lived at a time and a place where there were a handful of distinct groups; for our purposes we could say Jews of that day saw two groups: Jews and Gentiles.  

So Jesus Christ was a Jew but he was different Jesus first concern was not Judaism; Christ’s concern is better described as a passion for His Father, love for one another, and the
Kingdom of God.  What do we defend when we defend religion? 

Ryan’s hermeneutic tweaks a phrase I used.  His reworking of my statement reads, “[God] wants us to live fully human lives, and that can only be accomplished if we live according to God’s instructions.”  I find it interesting that King David breaks almost all of the Ten Commandments yet he is called a “Man after God’s own heart” while the Pharisees of Jesus’ day kept all the laws and Christ called them “white washed tombs.”  So what is God looking for?  To suggest that God is looking us to live according to God’s instructions may be to miss the point. 

Len Sweet, in his own unique voice says, “There is no point to Christianity;” there is only Christ (I hope you hear Trinity when I say Christ).  To make a point is to set up an idol. 

I loved Ryan’s emphasis on Divine narrative.  The idea that God reveals Godself to the world through history and that part of the privilege and responsibility of those walking in the Way of Christ is to live into that tradition and pass it on.  Of course tradition is never passed on without bias and emphasis; this is why prophetic voices are so important, and why religion can be so dangerous.  Religions of any stripe often kill their prophets.  The gospel which each generation receives is as tainted as the gospel each generation will pass to the next; this is not a reason to despair or give up on faith, rather, it is an act of faith - it is an invitation to live in the Spirit.

By the grace of God and as best as I am able, I love God; thus I love learning more about God.  So I study theology.  But I study theology carefully and confessionally, for the study of theology can very quickly become an I/It relationship rather than an I/Thou (see Buber).  Christian theology is the ongoing joy of the people of God.  After 14 years of marriage I still delight to discover the wonder of Lynette; to see her in new light, to be surprised by the beauty of her love.  That’s not too far from Christian theology.  Theology might be described as the perichoresis of soul, text and culture with the Spirit of God.

In passing on tradition we run into the issue of institutionalization and reification.  When I was a preteen looking forward to attending my church’s youth group, the youth group decided to hold a youth retreat.  Everyone loved it.  The next spring they held another retreat.  Well, the following year the spring retreat was a given.  By the time I entered the youth group the spring retreat had been institutionalized.  The group that created the retreat to serve the group was now serving the retreat.  This is reification in action.  Peter Berger handles this masterfully, “Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness” (Berger 1989, 89).  As a Christ-follower writing to a different audience then Berger was, I would want to stress that Christian religious tradition is not a human creation apart from God.  After all, the hope of Glory is that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.  God by the Holy Spirit is the unifying person of the social construct we call Christian religion. 

Earlier I suggested that Ryan’s “Christian defense of religion” might underscore my initial post; let me briefly unpack this.  Ryan’s defense is one that every human takes.  We return to what we think we know to be true because it feels solid.  It’s a lot like a battered woman returning to her abusive husband; a classic case of our solution being part of our problem.  Christ always comes to us and says, “Surrender your confidence in anything but me.  Trust me.” 

God in grace uses this “Balaam’s ass” we call Christian Religion.  God has used it and I trust/assume God will continue to use it until the great day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  The day when religion melts away and we see and are seen, we know and are known, and the oneness at the tail-end of Christ’s High Priestly Prayer is experienced in fullness. 

But until that time we live in the paradox of honoring our traditions while deconstructing them as an act of love.  This is a relational move of faith, trusting in the Holy Spirit of God.  It is ancient-future (to borrow from Robert Webber), but it is neither ancient nor future – it must be both.  And so I am a student of theology, who loves the church of Christ, yearns for the relational reign of God and question all of it to the Glory of the Triune God reveled in Christ and present by the Spirit.

Religion loves rules; Christ breaks them.  People rely on religions; Christ bids us to trust him.  He invites us to lay down that which we think we can and should rely on to become humble servants, hosting meals of bread and wine to a hungry and thirsty world - not religiously but out of Divine love.

Ryan, thanks so much for the gift of engagement.  Midrash is the work of the church, its the process of Orthodoxy; may God continue to give us grace as we wrestle, as we live and as we love.

peace, dwight

Christ trumps all religious systems.  Jesus Christ did not create a religion, he lived meta-religion; no religion could contain him.  Though he was a Jewish Rabbi, he didn’t teach the law, he fulfilled it.  When Christ-followers brought Christ with them into the Greco-Roman world Christ transcended Hellenistic religious systems thus Christianity was deemed a threat.  The life of Christ is a threat to any system.  Just as God’s Kingdom is too large for the church; Christ is too large for Christianity.

Christ refused to serve the religious structures of his culture instead chose to serve people, especially the people being marginalized by the religious structures.  This is one of the reasons why Christ was killed by those serving religious structures; because Christ’s life demonstrated the failures of those systems.  The way of Christ renders the “point” of religion obsolete; Christ makes all religions antichrist… including Christianity.

The “more excellent way” which the Apostle Paul describes to the church in
Corinth is Christ’s way; it is the way of love which trumps religion. 

God has no interest in creating a religion; rather God has always yearned to do life with people who simply live their tacit knowing/experience of Divine love.  God does not want Christians; God wants humans.  Christ, who is fully God and fully human invites us to live his life.  “His life” is life in the Spirit of God. 

peace, dwight

Yesterday I was talking with my brother Dallas.  And began talking about evil and the Garden of Eden.  I began to tell him that I was wondering whether evil was the move away from tacit knowledge/experience of God. 

Tacit knowing is language that Micheal Polanyi gave us.  Polanyi lays the foundation for it in his book ”Personal Knowledge” and articulates it more fully in “The Tacit Dimension.”  Both books are must reading.

Tacit knowing like the kind of “knowledge” that a fifth-generation violin maker who has made violins his whole life has; he just knows.  So this violin maker picks up two pieces of wood that look the same, but some how he knows that one piece would make a great violin while the other piece would not.  How does he know this?  Even though he has been making violins his whole life, he can not fully articulate how he knows this; but he does know.  

That is tacit knowing.  No checklist, no objective signs to lean on, simply knowing, and acting on that sense of knowing.  Like when the painter knows the painting is done.  Or when a dating couple know they are to get married.

I believe that tacit knowing of God is what we were created for. 
God created us for a tacit relationship, we were created to live within a theology-less knowledge of God. 

So maybe Adam and Eve’s articulation their relationship with God moves humanity from tacitly relating in the Divine to objectification of that relationship; they turned “just knowing” into a checklist. 

peace, dwight

A couple of days ago I was asked why I’ve named my on-line journal and. 

I desire to bridge between.  Where there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’ I want to be the and.  Where there is black and white, male and female, rich and poor, hungry and satisfied, modern and postmodern, republican and democrate… as best as I am able I will to serve as a bridge.  I  understand part of God’s invitation to me as an invitation to link; to live conjunctively.  It is my belief that part of the way of Christ is and.  And can be a form of reconciliation. 

Christ is fully human and fully God.  Christ is the bridge, the link, the And; Christ is the living conjunction making all relationship possible. This is my calling as best as I understand it. 

The problem with and is that and gets little respect - again sounds a lot like Christ.  Few people notice and, most often people focus on the what’s on either side, (i.e.: good and evil).  Between ‘the repentant thief’ and ‘the unrepentant thief’ is Christ.  And moves to correct dualism restoring holistic, missional, self-emptying service in the creation of Us which is a living reflection of the Trinitarian life of God.

BTW - There were a few things which I am aware of which converged resulting in and.  I had recently revisited Martin Buber’s I and Thou which is one of the most important relational texts written to date.  I had just finished writing an essay on hubbing leadership and at a quest gathering Michelle created an and collage piece.  Thanks Michelle, Martin, quest, and all those who contributed to the crafting of the hubbing leadership essay.

Peace, dwight

A new confession of Christ.  I wholeheartedly endorse this statement.  Thanks to Jim Wallis and the thoughtful people over at Sojourners.

1. Jesus Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, knows no national boundaries. Those who confess his name are found throughout the earth. Our allegiance to Christ takes priority over national identity. Whenever Christianity compromises with empire, the gospel of Christ is discredited.

We reject the false teaching that any nation-state can ever be described with the words, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” These words, used in scripture, apply only to Christ. No political or religious leader has the right to twist them in the service of war.

2. Christ commits Christians to a strong presumption against war. The wanton destructiveness of modern warfare strengthens this obligation. Standing in the shadow of the Cross, Christians have a responsibility to count the cost, speak out for the victims, and explore every alternative before a nation goes to war. We are committed to international cooperation rather than unilateral policies.

We reject the false teaching that a war on terrorism takes precedence over ethical and legal norms. Some things ought never be done - torture, the deliberate bombing of civilians, the use of indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction - regardless of the consequences.

3. Christ commands us to see not only the splinter in our adversary’s eye, but also the beam in our own. The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart.

We reject the false teaching that America is a “Christian nation,” representing only virtue, while its adversaries are nothing but vicious. We reject the belief that America has nothing to repent of, even as we reject that it represents most of the world’s evil. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).

4. Christ shows us that enemy-love is the heart of the gospel. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8, 10). We are to show love to our enemies even as we believe God in Christ has shown love to us and the whole world. Enemy-love does not mean capitulating to hostile agendas or domination. It does mean refusing to demonize any human being created in God’s image.

We reject the false teaching that any human being can be defined as outside the law’s protection. We reject the demonization of perceived enemies, which only paves the way to abuse; and we reject the mistreatment of prisoners, regardless of supposed benefits to their captors.

5. Christ teaches us that humility is the virtue befitting forgiven sinners. It tempers all political disagreements, and it allows that our own political perceptions, in a complex world, may be wrong.

We reject the false teaching that those who are not for the United States politically are against it or that those who fundamentally question American policies must be with the “evil-doers.” Such crude distinctions, especially when used by Christians, are expressions of the Manichaean heresy, in which the world is divided into forces of absolute good and absolute evil.

The Lord Jesus Christ is either authoritative for Christians, or he is not. His Lordship cannot be set aside by any earthly power. His words may not be distorted for propagandistic purposes. No nation-state may usurp the place of God.

We believe that acknowledging these truths is indispensable for followers of Christ. We urge them to remember these principles in making their decisions as citizens. Peacemaking is central to our vocation in a troubled world where Christ is Lord.

Peace, dwight

As I’ve continued reflecting on Orthobalance and aided greatly by those who posted comments, and a conversation I had with Bryan Burton.  I’m beginning to lean a bit more to the term Orthoparadox (in part due to Mike O’s comment of  10/14).

DanD Reminded me of Ken Wilber’s work “Integral” work.  If you haven’t seen the IntegralNaked’s website site he has helped create I’d recommend you take a peek.

This is content from Wikipedia.org site.  “The word integral means comprehensive, inclusive, nonmarginalizing, embracing. Integral approaches to any field attempt to be exactly that—to include as many perspectives, styles, and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of the topic. In a certain sense, integral approaches are ‘meta-paradigms,’ or ways to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching.”

- Ken Wilber, “Foreword”, in Frank Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought As Passion

“Also known as the integral-aperspectival stage of consciousness, the term integral has been used in a philosophical sense by several twentieth century philosophers and psychologists that is different from the mathematical sense. According to the Integral Institute’s website, integral means ‘inclusive, balanced, comprehensive.’ In the book Spiral Dynamics, Don Beck and Chris Cowen use the term for a stage of consciousness. This stage sequentially follows the pluralistic, or “green” stage. The essential characteristic of integral thought is that it continues the inclusive nature of the pluralistic mentality, yet extends this inclusiveness to those outside of the pluralistic mentality. In doing so, it is able to accept the ideas of development and hierarchy, which the pluralistic mentality finds difficult. In Integral Psychology, Wilber identifies the integral stage with “…cognition of unity, holism, dynamic dialecticism, or universal integralism…”

This content has me thinking a little bit about the “new ecumenism” which is being explored by people like Tom Oden, and Christos Yannaras and many other Christ-followers from Eastern, Roman and Protestant traditions.  We can’t leave out the vital importance of interfaith engagement. 

All that to say, I’m leaning to Orthoparadox.

Peace, dwight