Marginal Christianity

  A TIA and a seizure followed by a stint in rehab have taken me away from my Theological Journal for the last couple of weeks. I return today with a nifty outline of the Lord’s Prayer by Sam Wells in his new book with Stanley Hauerwas In Conversation . “’give us’ is about the present and ‘forgive us’ is about the past and ‘deliver us’ is about the future (Kindle loc. 266).” Life with Jesus’ Father is -totally gift -mercy not performance-based -aimed at rescue Next time you teach or preach the Lord’s Prayer, try it out!

THE PROBLEM OF FLAT EPISTEMOLOGY (A quick 7 paragraphs - looking for some dialogue) Flat epistemology – focuses on the essence of what we know – directly, as individuals, not on how what we know must be translated, and even shaped within a different language world and culture in order to be understood and lived together. It sees all knowledge as flat - from one so-called universal viewpoint. It takes many forms. Flat epistemology is uni-dimensional. It tends to focus on the foundational metaphysics of the way things are. In a flat epistemology, we tend to think about what we know as universally true before we have thought through the peculiarities of its manifestation to us in this time and place. Flat epistemology goes from the universal to the particular. There is an absence in flat epistemology in acknowledging that other dimension that the way you conceptualize what you know, and the way you live it is conditioned (even made possible) by your language and culture. My argument...

  Bonhoeffer's musical image of the polyphony of life should not be taken as merely a winsome illustration, but as a fertile way of thinking about the dynamics, the movement, the interactions, that characterize what he calls the profound worldliness of Christianity. Music generally, and polyphonic music in particular, forms synchronic and diachronic patterns in the modes of rhythms, melodies and harmonies which, though they do not follow a law-like necessity, are nonetheless purposeful and promising. It is able to incorporate discordant elements in the form of dissonance, but also looks to resolve that dissonance into what can truly be called a harmonious difference. It also moves in time in distinct arrangements of meter and rhythm, which, in collaboration with the tonal dimension, progress toward climatic endings in the form of half and full cadences, each of which in their own ways anticipate the final cadence. (fb, 10.10.20)

  One of the many differences that you can find in the gospel of Mark appears to come during the telling of the crucifixion story. An astute Bible student may notice that in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is offered wine mixed with myrrh before He is on the cross; in every other gospel, He is offered vinegar mixed with gall, both before and on the cross. This seems like a minor detail (or a major one for biblical critics), but in fact, Mark is doing something much deeper under the surface. In order to explain this, I would like to describe the coronation of a Roman Caesar. (While I heard this teaching from Ray Vander Laan, the man who did the definitive work on this was the Oxford scholar Thomas E. Schmidt.) We don’t have a comprehensive account of every coronation of a Caesar, but we do have a few. One of the best records we have is of the coronation of Emperor Nero. From the records that we do have, one could conclude that the typical coronation had nine steps: 1. The Praetorian G...

 From DB’s Ethics : “The most astonishing observation one makes today is that people surrender everything in the face of nothingness: their own judgment, their humanity, their neighbors. Where this fear is exploited without scruple, there are no limits to what can be achieved.”   We see this in Trump to the nth degree.   “Only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means—even criminal—to force the victory of their cause.”   Sadly, we are seeing this to today across the political spectrum.   “Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one’s own people.”   Ditto! ☹  

  Renewing the church isn’t complicated, but it is multi-faceted. It involves at least involve these five aspects:   1. We must recapture the missionary, sent nature of the church. The church doesn’t just SEND missionaries, the church IS the missionary. (individually and collectively) 2. We must activate ALL the people of God to engage in Jesus' redemptive mission in their local contexts. We have to diminish both the sacred-secular divide but the clergy-laity divide. 3. We must start new, smaller, simpler, agile expressions of church that are organized around mission. They pray for and engage the brokenness where they live, work and play. 4. We must cultivate a more comprehensive view of discipleship and evangelism that is more contextual, relational, communal and Kingdom/Jesus-centric. 5. We must use different metrics to measure "success" that focus on missionary behaviors and activities in the daily rhythms of life and not just what happens on Sunday morning...

  I take  1 Timothy 2:12  literally, and it says nothing about whether educated women can be  pastors  and  preachers , or not. This becomes clearer when we pull back from this one verse and look at its immediate context. In  1 Timothy 2:8-15  Paul addresses and corrects problem behaviour from various people in the Ephesian church: 1. angry quarrelling men (“men” is plural in verse 8) 2.  overdressed  rich women (“women” is plural in verses 9 and 10) 3.  a woman  or a wife (the Greek word for “woman/wife” is singular in verses 11 and 12, and the Greek “saved” verb is singular in verse 15; it is correctly translated as “she will be saved.” Cf.  1 Tim. 2:15 CSB ). 1 Timothy 2:11-12  is about a woman in the Ephesian church who needed to learn and was not allowed to teach and was not allowed to domineer a man, probably her husband. She needed to chill. Paul goes on, and in  1 Timothy 2:13-14 ...

  From Thomas Merton’s journals. An interesting meditation to reflect on as Merton, near the end of his life, is now living as a hermit on the monastery property. He’s been active in the anti-war movement and very vocal about the nuclearization of the world.   March 2, 1966   A flash of sanity: the momentary realization that there is no need to come to certain conclusions about persons, events, conflicts, trends, even trends toward evil and disaster, as if from day to day and even from moment to moment I had to know and declare (at least to myself) that this is so and so, this is good, this is bad. We are heading for a "new era" or we are heading for destruction. What do such judgments mean? Little or nothing. Things are as they are in an immense whole of which I am a part and which I cannot pretend to grasp. To say I grasp it is immediately to put myself in a false position, as if I were "outside" it. Whereas to be in it is to seek truth in my own life an...

  A Brief Alphabet of Christianity and Politics (8) Holiness – Hard to imagine two topics farther apart from each other than holiness and politics, isn’t it? Well, not so fast there, my friend. It just may be that we’ve gotten holiness more than a little wrong. At least Chris Green thinks so in his remarkable book Sanctifying Interpretation. The section on holiness is gold and demonstrates its relevance for Christianity and politics. Holiness, for Green, is defined in terms of Christ not any version of morality or goodness (or political viewpoint we might add. And Christ’s holiness, his being separated to God and for God, is cashed out not in keeping distance from humanity but rather in hospitality for and with a hurting and broken humanity. He writes, “But if holiness is understood as hospitality, then we see that ‘holy living is not about my completeness or the completeness of my love, but rather the completeness of the recipient of my love’.   The mark of perfect love...

  Christ Crucified Is God’s Power and Wisdom 18  For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  19  For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;     the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20  Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  21  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.  22  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,  23  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  24  but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of ...

  We must stop giving 19th-century answers to 16th-century questions and start asking 21st-century questions listening for 1st-century answers. -N. T. Wright (the Hermeneutical question 1) We find that the way people asked questions in the 13 th century, 16 th century or 19 th century in the West were largely determined by the questions people were asking at those times and the way they asked them. And, of course, we too are in a particular philosophical, cultural setting that sets the questions we ask and the kind of answers look for from the Bible. Yet the Bible is ancient text and its teaching as declared and taught in those ancient ways and languages are supposed to guide and direct the life of God’s people. So it is crucial we do our best to hear those ancient words, passages and images as originally given in order to ask and respond to the questions of our age in a faithful way otherwise we will be asking and giving answers to the wrong questions in the wrong way if we allo...

       In a time when self-realization or self-actualization is the norm for human growth or maturity this word is needed. For those traditions that see theosis, or divinization, as the goal of Christian existence (rightly, I think) this warning is particularly acute. “The spiritual life is sometimes spoken of as the seeking after perfection. If this be understood to mean that the man* aiming at spirituality is to set before him his own perfection as an object after which he is to strive, it is apt to lead to serious mistakes in the spiritual struggle. It is true that the development of a full spiritual life involves in its attainment man’s perfection; yet it is not precisely at this perfection that he must aim, but at God. God is the final end of man and therefore the object after which he must strain in all his spiritual and moral endeavors. ” *this article is about men, hence, the masculine language, but is true for all people “Do You Want a Better Version...

  In the world of mediocrity in which we live it is assumed that only crackpots, fanatics, and the like should be deplored as offensive, as inspired by Satan, and that the middle way is the right way, the way that alone is exempted from any such charge. What nonsense! Christ is of another mind: mediocrity is the worst offense, the most dangerous kind of demon possession, farthest removed from the possibility of being cured. To “have” religion on the level of mediocrity is the most unqualified form of perdition. The advantages and benefits of earthly life are bound up in mediocrity. But genuine religion has an inverse relationship to the finite. Its aim is to raise human beings up so as to transcend what is earthly. It is a matter of either/or. Either prime quality, or no quality at all; either with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, or not at all. Either all of God and all of you, or nothing at all! We clever humans, however, prefer to treat faith as if it were s...