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The Meat and Potatoes of Theology

Have you ever overheard two doctors talking to each in medical speak?

Ever had a plumber try to explain to you why this or that fixture/joint is not compatible with this or that coping/fitting?

Ever gone to a ‘do it yourself’ weekend-warrior class at the hardware store, then tried to rewire/retrofit that thing only to make a second trip to the hardware store?

Ever listen to someone in the military tell a story that has so many initials, codewords and acronyms that you get L.O.S.T. in the W.E.e.D.s ?

Every craft/profession has its own vocabulary, short-hand, and set of tools that are specific to that discipline. No one seems to mind this at all. Then there is theology.

When it comes to the theological endeavor, the expectations can change. MP900405058

My theory is that is has something to do with the reality that everyone – no matter age or education level – has access to spirituality.

So everyone should be able to talk and understand what is going on in theology since everyone participates in its subject.

That is how the thinking seems to go. My desire is to clarify that while it is true that religion/spirituality is the primary activity … the theological endeavor is a secondary reflection upon that primary activity.

Theology is not the thing itself. Theology is a second-tier discipline that reflects upon the primary.

[Side note: I find it helpful to break the theological endeavor into 5 main branches and acknowledge that each has sub-disciplines within that. Practical, Biblical, Historic, Systematic and Philosophic are the Big 5 then.]

Have you ever watched a cooking show where a master chef dazzled you with culinary techniques you would not have thought of if you were given 100 years to experiment?

We love that stuff!

Once in a while some ernest person who loves God and is invested in the life of the church will complain about not understanding something I posted or said. Fair enough. 

I know that the gospel is simple enough that a child could get it. I know that the kin-dom is easy enough to enter that there are no limits for economics, education or any other category.

Here is something I would like to add to the conversation: The meat and potatoes – or bread and butter analogy. These two combos are often used to try and say ‘keep it simple’ … but here is the thing:

  • If you have ever tried to grow potatoes – it takes a while.
  • If you have ever harvested an animal for meat – it gets messy.
  • If you have ever made bread – it is complex.
  • If you have ever churned butter – it is not easy work.

Also, most of those activities require specialized equipment that had to be fashioned by a master craftsman.

My point is that ‘keeping it simple’ is often the end product of a very labor intensive, messy, complex, and lengthy process.

Simply putting meat, potatoes, bread and butter on a table is no simple undertaking. That meal that is consumed in 15 minutes took hours to prepare and more than a year to cultivate.

While a sermon probably should not contain words like ontology and meta-physics or phrases like post-Derridian phenomenology, it does not mean that those pursuits are wastes of time.

Like people who know nothing about electricity or conductors just want the light to come on when they flip the switch, that seems to be the expectation of theology. You don’t want to watch the electrician work or see how the sausage is made. You want it to work.

You don’t want to be in the kitchen while the chef works – you want a filling and delicious meal.

Let’s just not pretend that meat and potatoes or bread and butter is as simple to deliver as it is to receive and enjoy.

________

I mentioned all of this in response to the first call on the most recent TNT.

I would also recommend this little pocket dictionary of theological terms – the kindle is $6

4

Doing Theology in the 21st Century. or why Aquinas is a footnote

We are going to have to agree to disagree about some things. One thing that I would ask (in my generous orthodoxy style) is that we both acknowledge those things that we agree on as well as those we don’t.

The reason that is important is because of something that Phyllis Tickle points out (paraphrase): it is not that former (and maybe dominant) expressions go away, it is that they no longer hold the prime spot and wield the kind of power that they once did. They are all still around however. MP900405058

The interesting terrain that we inhabit in the 21st century is littered with artifacts and occupied by pockets of groups – possible ones that were once in the ascendancy. This is, as I am often saying, the bricolage nature of our cultural/societal environment.

You have methodists who have no idea what the methods were. You have ‘Amish’ fireplace stoves being mass-produced and sold on TV (think about it). You have can still, more tellingly, find actual Amish folks if you know where to look.

Here are two things you need to know:

  1. I come to the theological endeavor as a contextual theologian.
  2. In my context, practical theology and its qualitative methods (interviews, case studies, ethnography) is my chosen approach.

There are several implications of these two things. Unlike Tripp, I don’t do systematic theology.* It is not that I don’t value other branches of theology. In fact, practical theology as a field is in a major renovation, at least in part, in order to join the other 4 primary branches of theology that do their own research and provide their own innovations:

  • Historical Theology
  • Biblical Theology
  • Systematic Theology
  • Philosophical Theology

As my professor Kathleen Greider says:

Practical theologians commonly assert that the primary text of our field is lived experience– diverse persons and communities that are contextually located, inextricably related, and experiencing each other through countless interconnections and interactions.

Almost invariably when I am enduring critique from a conversation partner who is more conservative than myself, it is only a matter of time before they bring up Aquinas. I don’t get the nuance of Aquinas. I didn’t distinguish between the early and late Aquinas. I wasn’t careful to appropriate this or that of Aquinas’ formulations. I didn’t read the right translation of Aquinas. (the same things with Barth and Scotus too) 

What I am saying is that we don’t need to understand Aquinas better or deeper. 

We are to do in our day what Aquinas did in his.

As a contextual theologian I don’t think that is accomplished by obsessing over Aquinas. I’m not saying that we aren’t generous or respectful … I’m saying that Aquinas lives neither where we do nor when we do. He lived in a different context and time.

Call this dismissive if you will but  The Church’s future is not to be found in Europe’s past. I say it all the time.

You may disagree with me about this. That is fine. I’m just telling you where I am coming from since our latest TNT has raised some eyebrows, questions (and hackles) both here and on twitter.

Historic thinkers like Aquinas never saw what I call the 5 C’s of our theological context:

  • post-Christendom
  • Colonialism
  • global Capitalism
  • Charismatic renewal (especially Pentecostalism in the Southern Hemisphere)
  • Cultural Revolutions (from Civil Rights in the 60’s to the ‘Arab Spring’)

Add to those 5 to pluralism, the internet and a growing environmental crisis and you have the 8 things we as theologians need to give great attention and care to. They are the context in which (and for which) we do theology in the 21st century. Go listen to our interview with Grace Ji-Sun Kim if you have questions about this. 

You may want to focus more on the christian tradition (like Augustine or Aquinas) and I would understand that – I view that impulse through a Lindbeckian tri-focal lens. I understand the work you want to do within that cultural-linguistic silo. [I’m having fun in this part for those unfamiliar with my style]

Disagree as we might about the importance of a writer in the 3rd or 13th century – I just wanted you to know where I was coming from and what my focus was.**

 I would love it if everyone would leave a comment and let me know how this sits with you. 

_________________

*One implication of that is that when I read systematic theologians I do so though mostly thought trusted secondary sources. Admittedly, I don’t major in primary sources – for reasons I hope are clear in this post. I find scholars who know their stuff like Elizabeth Johnson, John Caputo, Joseph Bracken and Stuart Murray and trust them.

** If you want to read more about my approach check out ‘After MacIntyre’ that I wrote a while ago but never put up on the blog. It will explain my concern about everything from consumerism to hipsters and the radical orthodoxy project.

0

That Liberal Label

It has been a while since I posted here and part of the reason for that is that I have embroiled in a bit of a kerfuffle. I didn’t go looking for it but it came and found me. Anyway, here is a part of my response to all of the hullabaloo.
Once is an incident. Twice is a trend. Three times is a pattern.

This the now the 3rd time this thing idea about shying away from the label ‘liberal’ has come up.

  1. I heard it for the first time almost 10 years ago: “Emergents are just cool liberals”. This came from conservative, evangelical and reformed folks who were squawking at the Blue Parakeets that were new to the yard.
  2. More recently Fitch & Holsclaw leveled the accusation in their new book Prodigal Christianity and Tony Jones took exception.
  3. Then last week the idea was suggested on a different blog that Tripp & I were really just closet liberals who where afraid of the label because of its intrinsic baggage.

I tend to bury my big point in the final quarter of every blog post. For the purpose of clarity I am going to begin putting them at the top of the post. Here is my main point:

There is nothing wrong with being liberal. It is one of many valid ways to participate in the christian tradition. If I were liberal I would be so proudly. I am not liberal. Liberal approaches do not go far enough to combat capitalism, address colonial consequences or repent of the Constantinian compromise that led to Christendom it’s subsequent horrors.

I am not liberal. While Tripp and I are left-leaning. We are progressive. We are postmodern in our approach. We are emergent in our expression. We are playfully heretical (in a good way) and we are innovative where appropriate given our christo-centric hyperTheism.

But I am not liberal. Liberalism doesn’t go far enough in addressing five of my biggest concerns:

  • Critique of Capitalism and Consumerism
  • Post-Colonial consequences
  • Continental Philosophy’s reflection on late modern thought
  • Criticism of Christendom (Western and Constantinian)
  • Our cultures’ dangerous cocktail of Nationalism and Militarism

I have written extensively about how Progressive is not Liberal and even got taken to task over at Scot McKnight’s blog for trying to make that distinction. I will say this again:

There is nothing wrong with being liberal. It is one of many valid ways to participate in the christian tradition.

If I were liberal I would be so proudly. But alas I am not.

One last thing in closing:  I understand the historic drift of the term ‘Liberal’. I know what it meant in the 1700’s (specifically as it relates to individualistic epistemology) and I understand what it has become in the late 20th century (a constellation of loyalties and identity markers). I also know about it’s demise as an impotent political approach and I get why some evangelicals are allergic to the term and thus why some would desire to shy away from it. I get all that. I even recognize the unique draw of its individualistic epistemology. 000_0008

What I am saying is that calling me a closet liberal who is afraid to be identified by the label is like saying that I don’t wear ‘medium’ sized T-shirts because I don’t like the letter M. It is to miss the point. I don’t wear medium sized T-shirts because they are not big enough and don’t cover some essential areas that I deeply care about.

i.e.  It just doesn’t fit.

 

5

What is going on IN religion when we talk about God

This weekend I will finish reading two books that we were given through the podcast (thank you publishers). The first is Peter Rollins new on The Idolatry of God and the second is Phil Snider’s Preaching After God. MP900405058

I have recently edited podcasts with both of these authors. [We put out the Phil Snider TNT last week ]

It is very clear to me that we have an emerging situation (trying not to say problem) on our hands. With the introduction of a new wave of postmodern or ‘radical’ theology [listen to the Caputo introduction here] – progressive and emergent christians are drinking in lots of innovative and challenging concepts about God that may not have a real God behind them.

This is fine IF the listener/reader knows what they are imbibing. What is increasingly concerning for Tripp and me is the consequence when people don’t know that the god of the 21st century philosophers is not exactly the god you hear about on Sunday morning.

Is there a danger in people reading a ‘how (not) to speak of god’ and then just quoting it from the pulpit like they would quote any other historical person?  Folks in the deconstruction camp are not real eager to answer this one.

I have some thoughts on the matter so I thought I would throw them out here for consideration.

 Intro: It is severely unhelpful to frame this in an either/or way. “Either God is X like the Bible/Creed/Tradition say OR Religion is the equivalent of Santa Clause &Tooth Fairy and we might as well all go home.”

That reductive approach is foolish and silly.  There is far too much going on in religion – and the Christian religion specifically – to say things like that.*

 I propose that there are – at least – 5 things happening IN the christian religion:

  • Experience
  • Formation
  • Event
  • Mystery
  • Potentially Something Real

Experience – People who were not raised in the faith convert and/or have crisis experiences that powerfully impact them.  People experience the presences of something they interpret as bigger than themselves.

We can talk about transcendence or phenomenology but what we can not deny is that people experience something in religion. As someone from a charismatic-evangelical background it is so clear to me that much of our talk about God and religion in progressive-emergent circles misses this very real component.

Is experience the whole story? NO! And those who reduce it down to that are equally as errant. It is not the main thing nor is it nothing. It does not account for everything but neither can it be dismissed outright.  People’s experience must factor into the equation.

At minimum do the Kantian thing and say that religious people’s experience is real but incomplete to understand the whole picture (noumenon) – like 6 blind people with their hands on different parts of the elephant – each thinking they are describing something unique: a tree (leg) a rope (tail) a wall (belly) and a giant leaf (ear) and an enormous snake (trunk).

Formation – I get in trouble for liking the post-liberal writing of George Lindbeck (Nature of Doctrine) but I think that this is exactly where it comes into play. The role that the christian tradition, sacred text and vocabulary plays is that forms us a people. It forms character within us as well as the way that we participate in community.

I am in dialogue with the work of Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) for this very reason. While I disagree with his solution, I think that he is spot-on in his analysis and concern. Not only does our culture live in a chaotic time – but the very ethical assumption that would allow us to even HAVE the conversation have been eroded and now we can’t even debate! At least within the Christian church there is a common vocabulary. We may debate the definition of the terms but we have an arena in which to engage each other.

In this sense, the faith functions. As Elizabeth Johnson (She Who Is) is so good at pointing out: the words that we use function in our imagination, our communities and in the tradition.

Event – John Caputo (Weakness of God) and those who follow his Derridean ways prefer to speak of the name of God as an event. There is an event housed in the name of God the beckons us – we respond to this call … and are not that concerned wether there is a caller, or if we can know that there is one.

It is undeniable that something happens when God’s name is invoked. It triggers something in us. It calls for something from us. It makes some claim or demand to be dealt with differently than other words and concepts.

I like Caputo’s illumination of this shadow world. There is something deeply insightful about his explorations. Those who want to dismiss it because it isn’t enough on it’s own, are missing the point. Something happens if ‘God’ is invoked … and that would happen even if there were no ‘God’ per se because (as I said above) the concept functions. – it does something in us,

Voltaire said,”If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” That is because ‘god’ does something in us – demands something from us.  It maybe not ripping off our customers, it may get us through a tough time or help us to sleep at night – or even face the end of life with dignity. But in the name of God is an event that lays hold of us.

Mystery – I am fascinated with the apophatic tradition. I have no interest is appropriating it … but I am mesmerized by the fact that it even exists. Describing god by what she is not? Brilliant.

I also have been looking in historic understandings of analogy. Which works for me because I do not believe in univocal speech. When we call god ‘father’ we are using an analogy – god is like our best conception of father-liness … but it saying that is also included an understanding that God is not actually a father. Our use of the word is not a 1:1 equivalence.

Elizabeth Johnson challenged us over a year ago that every time we say ‘god’ that we must say it three times.  I do this every day now!

  • God beyond us.  This is that transcendent other or Kant’s noumenal real.
  • God within us. This is the experiential component.
  • God at work all around us. This could be the event.

When I say ‘god’ I always say God beyond me – within me – and at work all around me.

 Potentially Something Real – the final component in my 5 sided web is the possibility that there really is something to all of this – more than just phenomenon or imagination or tradition or vocabulary – and that the language of religion is at least getting some of it right.

If we don’t leave open the potential that something real is really happening – that a real god is actually acting – then we may be missing the biggest part of the puzzle and thus have an incomplete picture.

___________
* Just because YOU haven’t thought of the multiplicity of layered meanings happening in the Christian expression doesn’t mean that it is an all or nothing game.Don’t be that person who says “If Santa Clause isn’t real, then Christmas isn’t worth celebrating”. Or “If Creation did not happened exactly like it is described in Genesis then the whole BIble is untrustworthy and unbelievable.”
1

America is like God – both can ask for your life

Charles Taylor, in his book Modern Social Imaginaries,  utilizes the term ‘social imaginary’ to refer to god-like capacity described by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities.  The term encompasses a threefold meaning:

  • First is the way that ordinary people “imagine” their surroundings in images, stories, and legends.
  • Second is the general acceptance and participation in the imaginary by a population and not simply the theories dominated by a small elite.
  • Third is empowerment provided from the imaginary for widely shared practices – and a sense of legitimization.[1]

One impact of this capacity to conceptualize national identity and belonging is in answer to the question “what would make someone be willing to die for their country?”

Anderson proposes a model of historic drift where sovereignty, which had previously been located in either religion or king (or both), has shifted decisively to the Nation in recent centuries. This is a dramatic innovation and recognizing nationality as a valid location for sovereignty has significantly altered matters related to loyalty, sacrifice and belonging.

Anderson proposes a definition of the nation as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The distinction as imagined comes because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them”.

Communities are limited because there must be some distinguishing demarcation outside of which are other communities (nations), which provide both competition and opportunities for cooperation. This distinction provides a vital function as classifications for the project of establishing communities.

Communities are imagined as sovereign “because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.” [2]
The dissolving social order of caste and class provided more level (if desperately unequal in reality) conception of both membership and participation for the mass of the population. This perceived leveling and opening gave rise to a new capacity for sacrifice on behalf of the imagined entity – an entity that was not solely and externally located in eternity or beyond, but in an ideal which one was associated (belonged) and participated and was thus responsible. To die for a religion (God) or a King was to reinforce that social order which established the hierarchical strata. Locating sovereignty within the conception of Nation – however dispersed and elusive – was a profound change.

In 1922 Carl Schmitt wrote his famous work Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty and claims  that

“all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”[3]

In 2011 Paul Kahn wrote an engagement of Schmitt’s work with four new chapters on the same subject where he says that the capacity for the state to ask for this kind of sacrifices, the power to pardon – which is a remnant of Kingly authority, and the symbolic notion of a flag that needed to be defended are all remnants of a religious notion. The very word sovereign is borrowed from religious vocabulary.  Kahn explains:

Political theology today is best thought of as an effort to describe the social imaginary … (arguing) that secularization, as the displacement of the sacred from the world of experience, never won, even though the church may have lost. The politics of the modern nation-state indeed rejected the church but simultaneously offered a new site of sacred experience.[4]

You can begin to see why the constitution is often thought of and talked about as an inspired document (sacred text) and why those who were responsible for it’s creation (founding fathers) are celebrated at patriarchs.[5]  If Schmitt is right – even partially – then all of these similarities are neither trivial nor inconsequential.

The power of the state to ask for death in order to preserve itself and the capacity of people to willingly offer their lives in defense of that conception is profound. The notion of the sovereign holding the power of exception goes all the way from the individual being pardoned (as referenced earlier) to modern realities impacting all of humanity. The President has the ability to launch nuclear weapons if the President was to view that the national interest was in jeopardy.

Kahn uses this to illustrate his point. What are we saying about the nation that we are willing to jeopardize human heath, the planet, and subsequent generations for its defense? What could possibly be above human health and planetary environmental conditions? The answer is ‘only something that is of ultimate concern’. 
The modern conception of the state is thus a result of religious conceptions and has replaced (in some sense) religion as the location of sovereignty one is willing to ultimately sacrifice and die for. Nation is a construct of transcendent meaning found in an imagined community.[6]

Now this is where it gets really interesting! 

Arjun Appadurai, in Modernity at Large interacts with Anderson and observes that:

Modern nationalisms involve communities of citizens in the territorially defined nation-state who share collective experience, not of face-to-face contact or common subordination to a royal person, but of reading texts together.[8]

Much of the rhetorical energies of the ruling powers are used in order to urge “their subjects to give up … primordial loyalties – to family, tribe, caste, and region” for the “fragile abstractions” called nations which are often “multiethnic … tenuous collective projects”.[9]

Only within the power of national imaginaries can one see the possibility of such a monument as a tomb left intentionally empty or holding the remains of an unidentified combatant. Anderson points out the absurdity of “a Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a cenotaph for fallen Liberals.”[10]  There is no reserve of belonging that would justify such a display. It would hold little value outside the context of national identity.

And that is how the sausage called nationalism is made!

[1] Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 23.

[2] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 8.

[3] Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, location 37.

[4] Ibid., 360.

[5] CBC Ideas podcast  ‘The Myth of Secularism’ part 5

[6] It is not difficult within this framing to view contemporary movements such as the Tea Party as merely an extreme example of a group calling for a romanticized notion of an imagined past or legacy.

[7] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 8.

[8] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, 161.

[9] Ibid., 162.

[10] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 10.

0

Moving Toward Multiplicity

Listening to Howard Zinn (author of the classic A People’s History of the United States) at a town hall meeting style presentation recorded in 2007 (you can get it on Itunes from WGBH Politics) I was struck by the need to recognize the sheer complexity of issues and multiplicity of perspectives. complexity

To state it as simply as possible: Not everything is the same. When we attempt to represent EVERYthing as if it were represented by ONE thing, we often neglect the complexity and multiplicity involved in the matter.

I will use two examples that Howard Zinn illustrated well at the community forum, then address the issues that it seemed relevant to connect to.

Zinn takes on the idea of “Family values”. Some conservative political interest say that they represent ‘family values’. But he asks “Which family?” I think it is a valid question. There are families with single moms and multiple kids, divorced dads raising a family, there are foster families, adoptive families, multi-generational families living in the same house. There are lesbian couples with no kids and gay couples with kids. My wife are were D.I.N.K.s (double income – no kids) hen she lost her job while were trying to adopt (which fell through recently) and every permeation you can imagine.

Which family is represented by Focus on the Family’s values? It is erroneous to act as if there is one kind of family and that you represent their values.

That is, unless you are saying that you value only one type of family.

That would be fair enough but you would have to stop using the phrase ‘family values’. Some families value making money or achieving success. Some value conformity. Some value religious adherence above all else. Some value military service while others value independent thinking or even civil disobedience.

Zinn says the same thing about the ‘National interest’. I am a big fan of Paul Kahn’s Political Theology and both he and Zinn talk about President’s ability to declare war or even launch the nuclear codes should the President deem it ‘in the national interest’.

But which of the many National interests? The Nation is not interested in only one thing. There are hundreds or thousands of interests. Unfortunately the reductive mono-speak is code. These buzz-words become code-words for an assume-unstated single issue that clouds the true complexity behind the language.

Zinn touched another example which has been showing up in a lot of my reading lately. The phrase ‘We the people’ is a magnificent ideal. I admire the phase and the idea behind it so much. But I think that it is worth noting that when it was written – we the people were not in the room. At the time of it’s writing, not every ‘we’ was represented.

There were no native americans in the room, no women, no blacks, no commoners. Just land-owning white males. But they had an idea – and it is that idea that we love!

I actually think that this is the exact type of trajectory mentality that we see in a progressive reading of the New Testament. When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He is doing this exact thing. He wrote in prophetic expectation using the 3 categories employed in his day were being broken with resurrection power. Barriers between nationality (or race), legal status and gender were being dissolved. My assertion is that it was not for the purpose of homogenization but for multiplicity! The former containers can not contain what it being poured out and welling up in Christ’s new life.

This is why I don’t sweat the fact that Paul appears to by anti-gay (though I argue that he was not anti-gay in the same way that those who quote him today are). You have to read Paul on a trajectory. Within the fruit of the Spirit of God is seed of liberation and transformation. So like ‘We the people’ – it looks forward to a greater reality than was present at it’s writing. Contained within the words is an ideal not yet realized. That is part of why I don’t want to conserve the reality of the time of it’s writing, but spring board off of it to be propelled to a greater one.

We can get caught up in reductive views that ignore the inherent complexity that we are dealing with. For instance, “Is the world essentially good or bad?” or “Are humans inherently evil or innately good?” That kind of simplicity is blind to the multiplicity of factors that we are dealing with in any conversation and allowing the conversation to be framed that way almost ensured that no progress will be made.

Good people still do bad things or even do good things with poor motivation. People who do bad things often love their own families.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow our media to talk about ‘the evangelical vote’ or even ‘the black perspective’ as if those parameters only mean one thing or as if everyone within designations voted the same way or believe all the same things, hold all the same values and act in unison. It is fictitious, deceptive and paralyzing.

You can’t even say ‘gun owners’ and mean one thing! Our language (and the dualism behind it) is crippling our culture.

There has been a great “De-centering” that has happened to humanity in the past 500 years. If you just look at the effect starting with Copernicus and continue to Darwin, the earth is not the center of the universe and neither are humans.

It would do us well to move from a reductive mentality (center/ order) to a dynamic interplay of emergent elements. When we recognize the complexity and multiplicity involved in the reality behind our ‘code words’, we will begin to access the real issues that face us.

0

I could not be less reductive: love, sex and faith

It has become quite clear over the past several years that the source of many arguments in my life and in our culture originate with a desire to reduce things down to their simplest components or lowest common denominator. Over the past decade I have really embraced a complexity model of things. I can illustrate it with two examples:

  •  The foundational thinking of Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias – the apologetics school I had been groomed in – began to ring hollow in a number of areas. Through that process, I came to see the advantage of conceptualizing reality as a web, anchored in several locations, rather than a building resting on one key foundation.

The foundationalist approach is scary in a shifting culture. What used to seem rock solid is in danger of falling like a house of cards if even one element is moved or compromised.

  •  I moved from a magical ex nihilo understanding of 6 day creation (it was not the theologically sophisticated one you might be familiar with) but could not buy the cold darwinian evolution that had been so demonized in my camps.  Turns out that both a fairly reductive. It wasn’t until I discovered emergence thought and the interplay of elements that I was able to move beyond the simple either-or option of creation vs. evolution.

 This move away from the reductive becomes important in three key conversations: love, sex, and faith. 

 Love – when I talk with other youth pastors or teens from other youth groups, I am frequently surprised with just how often a reductive approach is taken on the topic love. “Is love an action or an emotion?” Sometime a third option will be given: “or a decision”. 

Its not that the answer to the question is that consequential. That is easy enough to deal with. It is the thinking behind the question that is so dangerous! Of course love is an action, it comes with feelings and creates more feelings and we make decisions about that at every step along the way. Its easy enough to side step the either/or trap … what concerns me is why something as grand and essential complex as love has to be reduced down to a single element? What is the driving influence there?  It is bigger than just getting christian teens to not ‘give into their emotions’ or to show their love for God and the world by putting it into ‘action’ whether they feel like it or not.  There is something else behind that reductive move.

Sex – I am truly shocked by how often a reductive maneuver is employed by those who are a little more conservative than me when the topic of sex comes up. “While sex may be pleasurable – in the end, it is primarily about procreation” my debate partner will say. “In fact, God probably made it pleasurable so that we would want to do it more.”

I object to this live of reasoning strenuously!  Sex is about a whole myriad of things.

Our sexuality is about pleasure, connection, expression, intimacy, power, procreation and drive.  It certainly is not about just one thing.

Look, I know a heterosexual couple that can’t procreate. They have a very healthy sex life. I know another couple who did procreate (twice) and are finding that it is significantly impeding their sex life.

Sex in the 21st century is not just or even primarily about procreation. Even heterosexual couples who can procreate have sex that does not result in pregnancy.

 Faith – I have heard voices as disparate as Slavo Zizek and Martin Luther pull a reductive move when it comes to faith. Zizek has said on more than one occasion that he would like to see good deeds done for no other reason than that they the right thing to do – good on their own merit – and not because the one who does it gets anything out (like an altruistic sense of satisfaction) or believes that she will be rewarded for it in the next life. This reminds of Luther’s early wrestling with loving God (If I only love God for saving me then I have loved God for the wrong reason and it is not love worthy of God … etc.)

 I don’t get this at all!  It seems to me that whether you believe in a God (I do) or whether you subscribe to a social construction theory of morality (that as social mammals it benefits us to benefit others in a series of non-zero and reciprocal relationships) that both are best understood as essentially complex webs of meaning and relationship.

Let’s take the God road for a minute. If there is a God who wants me to do good things, then it stands to reason that I may be made in such a way that I both enjoy doing that good and benefit from it. That does not take away from the goodness itself, it is just distributed to several factors of befit. Why is it only truly a good deed if I get nothing – not even satisfaction – out of it. Even if I do something anonymously for which there can be no reciprocal or social benefit, I’m not allowed that simple satisfaction of knowing I did something good?  So the only truly good deed is done with emotional distance and internal steel?  That is bogus! It seems to me that even without God in the equation, that reductive move is limiting and harmful, even self-defeating.

A far better approach would be embrace the social locatedness of human existence and to recognize the collective pot of goodness to which we both benefit from and contribute to. A pot of common-wealth that is both relational and substantial that has made us who we are – we have been molded, shaped and groomed by it – and to which we participate that can benefit others as well as be rewarding for us.

Doing good is complex and it is essentially complicated. We don’t need to break that down and diagnose it as much as we need to embrace it and pour ourselves into it.

In the end, I see this impulse toward the reductive to be not only limiting to thought but detrimental to joy. I think we are missing out by not embracing the multifaceted and layered complexity of love, sex and faith.

-Bo Sanders 

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Certainty: the difference between emergents and fundamentalists

In chapter 7 of Predicament of Belief, Philip Clayton introduces a 6 tiered scale of epistemic certainty. Things that are nearly universally agreed upon (by the ‘community of experts’) are at a level 1. Issues like ‘Ultimate Reality’ that can not be verified but can deduced in relative certainty are at a level 2. Matters of specific religions might be a level 3. Issues particular to branches within a religion would be level 4.

Clayton has pointed out in his podcast appearances how important this type of scale is. In decades past, there seemed to be a collective ability to recognize nuance and to acknowledge differentiation between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ matters.

In the current climate of polarized animosity, we seem to have lost the ability to distinguish. Now everything is core.

The other way to say it is that instead of ranking issues in importance on a scale of 1-10 or holding to beliefs and theories at different levels of epistemic certainty, now everything is held at level 10.

Merold Westphal said the same type of thing in his podcast visit. Belief in the resurrection should not be held at the same level theories about the rapture (for instance).

The Reformers made an important distinction about matters of adiaphora and those essential to faith. Centuries later, I think we should at least start but reclaiming that distinction (at a minimum) and probably need to adopt something similar to Clayton’s scale to reflect the complexity of religious and inter-religious issues.

I was explaining this epistemic certainty thing to a friend a while ago. I said that I held Clayton’s real presence resurrection at like a 7 or 8 (out of 10). Process at a 8 or 9. Linbeck’s post-liberalism at a 5 or 6. Pannenberg’s eschatology at a 3 or 4. The virgin birth at like a 1. That the virgin birth provides a literary function in Matthew and Luke I hold at a 9 or 10.

My friend was shocked. He said “You are not a 10 on everything? I assumed that you held everything at a 10. When I knew you as an Evangelist, you sounded certain of everything. I just assumed that you were equally certain now.”

Now, he can be forgiven at several levels.

  1. We are both from a background where everything is a 10 and if you believe it, it is core. Nuance is not a part of the game.
  2. My voice is mostly the same as it was 10 years ago, so unless I specifically clarify or qualify the statement – it probably sounds identical.
  3. If you haven’t read Predicament of Belief or been exposed to a sliding scale of epistemic certainty or something similar … you may just assume matters of faith are held at a 10.

This, to me is the second biggest difference between say an emergent type and a fundamentalist. The first is willingness to engage scholarship and advancements in science.  The second is this ability to distinguish appropriate levels of certainty about things.

I think that it would be fun to add to all my future blogs an EC rating – “epistemic certainty” on a scale of 1-10. That way if I was talking about eschatology, folks would know to read it at a 2 (for instance). When we talk about Jesus walking on the water – a 4. The dipolar nature of the Process God – a 7.

This is a game-changer for many. As I get to talk to more and more people are migrating, emerging, adapting, and awakening to the multiplicity of possibilities within Christian theology,  just knowing that not everything needs to be held at a 10 is freeing and energizing.

 * I would go back and retrofit my recent posts with an EC rating – but my posts on pluralism and homosexuality have already caused such a stir, I would hate to mess with folk’s heads at this point.

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Stop Comparing Religions

I had the chance to teach adult Sunday School this past weekend as we worked our way through Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. We are up to Question 9 “the Pluralism Question”. I had looked forward to this all Summer.

Now unfortunately I did not have the time to cover some classics on the subject like:

What I was able to do is to build on the thought of folks like  John Hick. In his famous works ,such as An Interpretation of Religions, Hick provides tour-de-force in the realm of comparative religion. He is not, however, simply reporting on religions – he is putting forward a theory about religions.

Many of Hick’s fans and critics alike end up saying the same two things when talking about him. The first is about the analogy of the mountain.  The metaphor about many paths leading up the same mountain is a pluralistic classic. The second is about the blind men and the elephant. This is of course based on a Kantian dualism between the numenal and the phenomenological.

Religions are like blind men, each with their hand on a different part of the elephant and thus describing different aspects of the same reality. One has the trunk, one the ear and one the leg. They each talk as if they have grasped the whole but in reality, they have not. Though it may appear as if they are talking about very different things (a Christian from a Muslim or Hindu) they are actually all touching the same entity.

Then there a critics of Hick.  Both Mark Heim in Salvations and Stephen Prothero in God Is Not One are post-Hickian.

Critics of Hick seem to have two main critiques (I am being very general here):

The first is that analogy of ‘paths up the mountain’ is flawed. Religions are like different paths up different mountains. The mountains may all be in a range together – in that they have some similarities and are in proximity to each other – but essentially they are not all leading to the same place. Being a good Hindu, which may have some ethic overlap with say the Christian sermon on the mount, is still not the ultimately after the same thing. Religions do not all lead to the same place and so just walking on road for long enough does not guarantee arriving at the same destination.

The second concern is about the Kantian blind men and elephant. When one takes on this enlightened view, one is placed in an elevated position above the religious traditions. They think that have a grasp on the whole but in reality it is only a part (ear, trunk, leg). The Katian-Hickian at that point is in the real seat of truth. The question then, is why would anyone ever participate in any particular religion?  Why even be a Christian – for example – and only grasp the part? Why not be a generic ‘God-ian’ and recognize the whole? In this way, studying religion is a way to not actually participate in any actual religion! Ironic isn’t it?

 Here was my main point on Sunday: the problem is comparative religion itself. The very discipline that we end up being unsatisfied with contains within it (from the very beginning) the inherent problem that we end up being frustrated with.

The problem is this – comparative religion is a product of a Western approach (with its intrinsic dualism) that first imports and them imposes it categorization upon other traditions and then looks within that compartmentalization for points of similarity and contrast. This will never work.

What I ended up doing was pointing folks toward an innovative concept called ‘Comparative Theology: deep learning across religions borders’ developed by Clooney in the book “Comparative Theology”.

His point is that each tradition tells its own story – in its own words. The art then is not in compartmentalization but in humble listening. Each learning to hear each tradition-religion bring forward its own stories, teachings, practices and values we remove ourselves from being ‘over’ the religion as a judge/reporter and humbly place ourselves at the feet as a learner/listener or at the table as friend/partner.

 I love Clooney’s approach. I find the epistemology and posture refreshing. I also think that in the inter-connected, trans-national, multi-religious 21st century it is going to be ever more critical to distance our selves from approaches of centuries past.

I have written before that I don’t want to apologize for being a Christian (I truly love it) but the time for apologetics is passing into the night of history. It’s a new day and a new approach is needed for the plurality and multiplicity that we increasingly live in. Many conservative christians hide behind exclusivism to guard against the threat of relativism.  What I love about Clooney’s approach is that they are not asked to give up their internal belief as christians but are challenged to adjust their external posture toward those of other traditions.

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