Marginal Christianity

  ON  JUNE 25, 2020  BY  MICHAEL PAHL You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to get more out of your Bible reading. Ideally, sure, we’d all be reading the Bible in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek with a full understanding of the relevant ancient cultures—but we all know that’s not going to happen. So, here are a few tricks of the trade—a few “Bible reading hacks”—to help you maximize your English Bible reading. Beware, though, you might find this actually revolutionizes your Bible reading—and radicalizes your faith in Jesus and his way of love. Read “Jesus” as “Jesus of Nazareth.” We as Christians tend to think about Jesus in generic sorts of ways, or we domesticate Jesus so he fits better with who we already are. Reading “Jesus” in the New Testament as “Jesus of Nazareth” reminds us that it’s not just some generic Jesus whom we trust and obey, but a very  specific   Jesus : a first-century Jew from rural Galilee who lived in certain ways and taugh...

  “If I were a doctor and I were allowed to prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, it would be choked to death with noise, it would not be heard because there is no silence. Therefore, create silence.” —Søren Kierkegaard  

  Rowan Williams defines these three forms of theology as “celebratory,” “communicative” and “critical.” “Celebratory theology”:  is the “attempt to draw out and display connections of thought and image so as to exhibit the fullest possible range of significance in the language used.  It is typically the language of hymnody and preaching,” but it can also be found in the church’s creeds and iconography. [i] “Communicative theology”:  is “theology experimenting with the rhetoric of its uncommitted environment.” [ii]   What Williams is referring to here might also be described as apologetic theology.  It is the effort to “persuade or comment, to witness to the gospel’s capacity for being at home in more than one cultural environment, and to display enough confidence to believe that this gospel can be rediscovered at the end of a long and exotic detour through strange idioms and structures of thought.” [iii] “Critical theology”:  arises out of the s...

Surprisingly, I have never gone through 1 Corinthians in a systematic way as any times as I've explored this passage or that or this issue or that in the letter. So, no time like the present to do it (I'm not getting any younger, as my body reminds me every day!) I will read this letter with two primary companions: Richard Hays in his Interpretation commentary on 1 Corinthians and Brian Tucker's recent "Reading 1 Corinthians." I want to be as brief as the texts and issues addressed allows. I also want to add some reflection on what Paul says in addition to trying to explain it as best I am able. I guess I'm trying to sayu there is brevity and there is brevity and one person's brevity may not be another's. This is mine. Introduction (1) Purpose Written in Ephesus in the early 50’s a.d. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians seeks to help this young Christian movement sort out their identity, ethics, and ethos in a social world dominated by an identity,...

The Cathedral of Baseball and its chapel across the river, the Polo Grounds

  Dear Franklin Graham, I suspect God keeps his distance from both political parties and their conventions. God is sovereign over both, to be sure, committed to none, to be equally sure. His name on their lips or in their platforms is meaningless if not blasphemous. He uses and judges both according to his own wisdom - not by polls. electoral results, pastoral declarations or natural disasters.   God's Wisdom and Word are seldom what we think best or believe we need. To identify our needs and desires as a political party with His Wisdom or Word is idolatrous. The Cross and the Crown are competitors not compatriots. Indeed, for Christians the Cross is the Crown, the undoing of our politics, our perceptions and practices of power, the prevaricating we accept as coin of the political realm, and privilege and position we vest with meaning and significance.   If you want to find God at work in either party, I suggest you read Dr. Seuss' fable "Yertle the Turtle." For...

Proposition 12 Liberal Pussiance is not the Goal Christians live not in a controlling way (political dominance from the top down) but in an out-of-control way owing to the fact that we follow a Messiah without a Messianic-complex who wants only to foolow God even if to a cross. Reasons the church does not dominate politically in a top-down fashion: -“ultimate and radical liberty provides the ground of Christianity . . . -and   . . . must also characterize any and all means of the spread of Christianity.” (Kindle Loc.1987) This rules out any violent means of coercion in the practice of the church. God allows his people and indeed all people the freedom to reject him and go their own way (not without consequences, of course). Nevertheless, it seems both God and Israel used some violent and coercive means. “This appears to be true,   at a minimum, because Israel was founded as a geographically bounded nation. Given that Israel’s God was committed to Israel’s fl...

 “We must not support high and important things while ignoring the practical, daily stuff of life. Indeed, decision is something truly great; the life of eternity shines over decision. But the light of eternity does not shine on every decision. Decision may be once and for all; but decision itself is only the first thing. Genuine decision is always eager to change its clothes and get down to practical matters. The real significance of decision is that it gives us an inner connection. Decision gets us on our way, and here there are no longer little things. Decision lays its demanding hand on us from start to finish. Cowardice, on the other hand, wants only to concern itself with the really important, big things, not in order to carry something out wholeheartedly but to be flattered by doing something that is noble and great. Yet hiding behind the exalted is nothing but an excuse for not conquering all the little things one has omitted, simply because they were little.”

 Cowardice wants to prevent the step of making a decision. To accomplish this it takes to behind the thought it likes best of all: the crutch of time. Cowardice and time always find a reason for not hurrying, for saying, “Not today, but tomorrow”, whereas God in heaven and the eternal say: “Do it today. Now is the day of salvation.” The eternal refrain of decision is: “Today, today.” But cowardice holds back, holds us up. If only cowardice would appear in all its baseness, one could recognize it for what it is and fight it immediately.

 How big is your Bible? If your Bible is the New Testament, with a really long prologue, your Bible is too small! If your Bible is about the salvation of humanity but not the renewal of creation, your Bible is too small! If your Bible informs the mind but does not transform the heart, your Bible is too small! If your Bible is a record of past revelation but not a revealing vision for the present, your Bible is too small! If your Bible tells you all you need to know about God, without putting you in touch with God, your Bible is too small! If your Bible conveys truth primarily in principles and propositions, your Bible is too small! If your Bible gives clear-cut answers to complex ethical problems, your Bible is too small! If your Bible cannot generate new ways of thinking in response to new questions, your Bible is too small! If your Bible speaks more about boundaries than bridges, your Bible is too small! If your Bible is a weapon to divide, rather than a word ...

“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do…What good would it do me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? Must not the truth be taken up into my life? That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.” Royal Priests I’m not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But I know who you are and what you are to do with your life. Let me say that again: I know who you are and what you are to do with your life. And if you’ll give me 10 minutes I tell you. That’s all, 10 minutes. I’m not selling anything or asking you to support anything. I want only 10 minutes of your time. If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, fine. Go on your merry way. But if you’ve spent any time won...

 PROPOSITION 11 Christianity Is Not a Religion; Christianity Is a Politic Liberalism construes the world this way:  (a) religion is a privately held set of beliefs pertaining to God or the afterlife or some such, and religion must be protected as an individual right so long as religion stays out of the realm of the public. (b) Christianity is a religion. (c) Therefore, Christianity is a private matter and is not, must not be, political.   Camp has devoted this book to rebutting this liberal paradigm. “ The primary task of the church is to embody and bear witness to the end of history, an all-compassing reality that has already broken into the world. The primary task of the church is to be an alternative politic.”   Admittedly, good reasons for being suspicious of claims that religion is political exist. And other good reasons exist for people to claim Christianity ought not to be partisan.   For the former, they need t...