Marginal Christianity

Theology thrives and best fulfills it purpose in wrestling with pronouns and prepositions more than with propositions. It can’t do its work without propositions but unless they are directed and seasoned by pronouns and prepositions their work will remain barren.   -the guiding pronouns are we and ya’ll. Me is only truly found in We – not a faceless collective but a teeming throng of difference; no individualism where we find our identity and vocation by standing out from and over against the We, turning it into a They and Them (the third person is deathly to theology) but rather an individuality and vocation birthed in the womb of connected and relationality which calls forth who we are and what we are to do. Ya’ll is the truly genuine language of theology. Ya’ll is self-involving rather than selfish, relational rather than transactional, committed rather than instrumental. Ya’ll is constituted by communication, communion, and community. The singular has its place in...

What is theology? This question cannot be answered once-and-for-all time, a template and corpus requiring merely competent internalization and reproduction. This way of thinking about theology can take two main forms. -theology as a flotation device: here theology is used to distance and separate believers from the world and its hurts and struggle. It centers one’s interest on a God whose interest is to “save souls” from a world gone wrong and now destined for destruction. Theology in this mode spawns an inner-focused spirituality looking upward to return to God in heaven at death or at Christ’s return. Focused on a God somewhere else interested in getting us somewhere else for some other kind of existence (non-bodily), the believe “floats” above the life and the earth he or she had been freed from with little concern for that world and those left in it, save for their “souls” which needed saving. -theology as a belt: here theology is used to secure the believer in faith as a be...

Our culture is often likened to whitewater rapids - ever-changing, unpredictable, dangerous. It would be hard to gainsay the analogy. Experienced rafters know the key rules for successfully negotiating the whitewater rapids. I suggest these rules give us some critical guidelines for navigating our cultural/social rapids. I've tried to translate them into biblical/theological guidelines for just such a purpose. The Nature and Purpose of Theology Theology is the work of the church that evaluates and directs its journey into and through the unpredictable and treacherous rapids. According to Karl Barth this means that theology -is contextual and conflictual : an instrument of the “ ecclesia militans” (Church Militant) , theology guides the Church of a specific time to address and/or contest the needs and hopes of that time. ( Church Dogmatics 1.2, 841) -is communal and missional : “...theology . . . can be put to work in all its elements only in the context of the ...

Our culture is often likened to whitewater rapids - ever-changing, unpredictable, dangerous. It would be hard to gainsay the analogy. Experienced rafters know the key rules for successfully negotiating the whitewater rapids. I suggest these rules give us some critical guidelines for navigating our cultural/social rapids. I've tried to translate them into biblical/theological guidelines for just such a purpose. The Nature and Purpose of Theology Theology is the work of the church that evaluates and directs its journey into and through the unpredictable and treacherous rapids. According to Karl Barth this means that theology -is contextual and conflictual : an instrument of the “ ecclesia militans” (Church Militant) , theology guides the Church of a specific time to address and/or contest the needs and hopes of that time. ( Church Dogmatics 1.2, 841) -is communal and missional : “...theology . . . can be put to work in all its elements only in the context of the ...

Karl Barth, in my judgment, best describes the heart of theology and its work. According to him, theology is - contextual and conflictual : “theology is expressly an instrument of the  ecdesia militans (Church Militant) ,  in the conviction that the Church of a specific time cannot be anything but an  ecclesia militans,  i.e. the Church of a specific time with its needs and hopes. (CD 1.2, 841) - communal and missional : “...theology . . . can be put to work in all its elements only in the context of the questioning and answering Christian community and in rigorous service of its commission to all men.” (HG, 63) - scriptural and critical : Under the rubric of the  Hearing Church,  theology's role . . .   is to invite "the teaching Church to listen again to the Word of God in the revelation to which the: Scripture testifies" (CD 1.2, 798). - contested and tempted : After all that has befallen it, church dogmatics will not become "chu...

By J. Scott Jackson - June 01, 2017 The Deserter by Boardman Robinson (1916). (PD-1923, via Wikimedia Commons) Reading some of the sermons Barth delivered in Safenwil, Switzerland, in 1914 yields a few tantalizing surprises. I found some of these in his homily from October 18, an almost uncanny meditation on the principalities and powers. A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth’s WWI Sermons , Trans. & Ed. B y William Klempa (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2016). Barth's sermon text was Romans 8:38-39, the culmination of one of the most profound and perhaps one of the most perplexing passages in the New Testament. Having pondered the groans of a creation eagerly awaiting liberation from the bondage of death, Paul writes: I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God ...

August 27, 2012August 26, 2012 Marc Cortez Featured , Theology [W]hy do heroes ride off into the sunset? Wouldn’t it be better if they stayed? Who wants a hero who skips town as soon as the crisis is over? The hard stuff is what comes next. Sure you beat up the big bad guy, but what about all the little ones? What about all the problems you didn’t fix? What about the daily grind of living in a broken world? Look at you on your cool horse. Who do you think is going to clean up all that poop it left behind? Forget the sunset. I want a hero who sticks around, not one who takes off. But isn’t that exactly what Jesus did? His people waited thousands of years for him to come. And finally, the Messiah arrived. Then….bam! He’s gone. One minute he’s there with the disciples, and then “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). He ascended. He left. I can just picture the disciples standing there, staring into the sky lik...

Most Christians Agree Theology Is Important, but Can't Articulate Why. These Reasons Can Help. David W. Congdon and W. Travis McMaken / October 27, 2016 W ith recent polls showing a declining awareness and interest in theology among evangelicals, we thought of ten reasons why theology matters to every evangelical beyond simply avoiding heresy. Theology matters… 1. Because even evangelicals need evangelizing. There is much handwringing today over what it means to be evangelical, and the temptation is strong to define an essential evangelicalism—to pin it down to one particular form. Theologically, the problem with this response is that “taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) is not a once-and-done proposition. It is a task that has to be taken up anew again and again. Just like God’s grace, this fundamentally theological undertaking is “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23). Evangelicalism is not a fixed and secure religious form or doctrina...