Marginal Christianity

One can certainly be excused for assuming that violence is an intrinsic part of all life in our world. Nothing and nobody is free of its taint and corruption. Well, almost nobody. Jesus of Nazareth, a 1 st century a.d. Galilean peasant and prophet, acclaimed the Messiah of Jewish expectation and Lord and world ruler by Christian faith, seems to have lived free of its taint and even its allure. And therein lies the nub of the problem investigated in this study. How do we understand this Jesus, and the God he worshiped and served, and the books of the Bible that witness to him? Especially since the latter, and the God they present as the “Father” of this Jesus, his “Son,” seem as “bloody, brutal, and barbaric” as the world in which it arose and to which it claims to witness to a redemptive nonviolent alternative reality and possibility for human life on this planet. The Bible itself testifies to the near ubiquity of violence in the life of our planet. Most of its content is ...

First, live as though in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated into the world and the outcome of history has already been determined. (Quit worrying) Second, love people as the very image of God and resist the temptation to improve them. Third, refuse to make economics the basis of your life. Your job is not even of secondary importance. Fourth, quit arguing about politics as though the political realm were the answer to the world’s problems. It gives it power that is not legitimate and enables a project that is anti-God. Fifth, learn to love your enemies. God did not place them in the world for us to fix or eliminate. If possible, refrain from violence. Sixth, raise the taking of human life to a matter of prime importance and refuse to accept violence as a means to peace. Every single life is a vast and irreplaceable treasure. Seventh, cultivate contentment rather than pleasure. It will help you consume less and free you from slavery to your econom...

I have been doing a little digging in Tertullian’s work The Five Books Against Marcion the last couple of days. The five books cover an astonishing amount of ground (creation, hermeneutics, prophecy, goodness, Christology, etc.), which makes sense once you consider what a convoluted mess Marcion’s theology actually was. They didn’t call him the “arch-heretic” for nothing. One important area is his treatment of divine anger. Mark Sheridan has touched on the issue of the Fathers’ handling of Biblical anthropomorphism in  Language for God in Patristic Tradition and shown how the different strategies involved were concerned with making sure we were reading the Bible in a way that is “fitting” to God’s dignity and majesty. Obviously, the Marcionites thought attributing anger or wrath to God was unfitting, which partially motivated their rejection of large portions of the Old Testament and New. Read more at: https://derekzrishmawy.com/2017/07/17/do-not-prejudge-divine-things-from...

Written by Branson Parler on February 24, 2014 Print PDF The problem If you’re a proponent of nonviolence, you will definitely hear the question: what about the conquest of Canaan? How does this fit with the call to nonviolence? How does this “violent” God fit with the nonviolent Jesus? Numerous books have engaged this issue and the problem of God’s violence, often focusing on the Old Testament (usually meaning the conquest recorded in Joshua). These questions must be answered carefully because the answers given have far-reaching implications and not simply for our view of nonviolence. My contention is that Christian pacifists must affirm certain points of continuity between Joshua, Jeremiah, and Jesus—conquest, exile, and cross—or else they may undermine the central logic of the biblical narrative and, along with it, our doctrine of God. Conquest One popular answer is that the conquest narratives record Israel’s projection onto God rather than God’s actual instruc...

How should we respond when we discover passages or ideas in the Bible that mystify, offend, or scandalize us? Discussions of violence, God, and the Old Testament over the last few years keep the issue on the front burner. Should we reject the whole thing? The parts that offend us? Or grit our teeth and refuse to jettison these parts hoping that somehow we can find a way to live with them? There may be other options but these three are the major ones so I’ll go with them for now. Just a few comments from my seat in the peanut gallery. Obviously, one’s view of the Bible will in large part determine which way you go. If you don’t think God’s involved with it in any way that appends his authority to what it says, you’re free to go any of the three ways I mentioned above, though usually the first two ways will appeal more to you. If you do think God is involved with and gives a special authority to these writings, you are probably not free to take the first option. You could go wi...

Old Testament scholar Stephen Chapman from Duke writes in the book Holy War and the Bible: “Warfare in the Old Testament, as indeed all killing in the Old Testament needs to be recognized within Christian theology as a strictly circumscribed divine concession to the brutal reality of human sin (Gen.9:3-6). However, someone still might ask, ‘Couldn’t God design a world in which war wasn’t necessary?’' The appropriate theological response is that God in fact did so (Gen.1-2), but human sinfulness spoiled it precisely by generating violence (Gen. 6:11-13). Someone might push further and say 'Even with the advent of human violence, couldn’t God have devised a strictly nonviolent method for dealing with it?" Here again the theological response is that God did just that in Jesus Christ, but in order for Christ to appear in the fullness of time (Gal.4:4) it was necessary for God to elect and preserve the people of Israel. And apparently - this is the hard part - God was not ab...

This is another topical post rather than from one of the remaining Chronicles . Another recurring criticism of the stories is that they are too violent for children. There is plenty of fighting and war in them. If your standard is that any violence is too much, that children should not be exposed to such material, then, yes, Lewis’ stories are too violent for children. But is this reasonable or even possible in our world? Taking possibility first, I doubt anyone would think that a child raised in the West today can be shielded from violence. It hardly seems possible even if one deems it desirable. This seems to me self-evident. For good or ill violence sells and whatever sells hits the media. And what’s in the media gets into our homes, heads, and hearts. No matter how vigilant we as parents may be. Even if we could block our children from every hint of violence, is this a good thing? I don’t think so. Unrestricted abundance of violence is surely bad. And not just for chil...

Ch.2: Wrestling with the Cross, Then and Now           One of the chief claim NTW advances is that atonement must be congruent with eschatology. That is, the means (atonement) God uses must be congruent with the ends (eschatology) toward which he is working. How we conceive God’s goals determines how we will understand his works.           Medieval Catholicism bought into an eschatology of individual salvation from sin and life with God in heaven forever. This its theory of penal substitutionary atonement was congruent with this eschatology.           Luther and Calvin challenged the excesses that Medieval Catholicism developed but never challenged the Heaven-Hell schema that determined its eschatology nor the assumption that the cross had to do with pacifying God’s wrath. They could not, therefore, see the biblical eschatology of new creation...

1.     God’s purpose and design for creation is divine-human communication/communion/community with humanity on this earth (pictured in Gen.3 by God walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden). In other words, God always intended to come among us and be with us as one of us. It was always his plan to send the incarnate Jesus Christ into the world to effect his purpose. 2.     God’s strategy was incarnational: to identify and enter into solidarity with his creatures in ever more intimate ways as his purpose unfolds through history. Development, change, and deepening were always to be features of this history. The principle: God meets the people where they (takes history seriously) and takes them on in the direction he wants them to go. 3.        After the Fall, this strategy is complexified. God now has to deal with the problem of sin and its distorting effects in his world to achieve his purpose. Violenc...

Larry Hutardo May 3, 2016 Prompted by a recent guest lecture on the Book of Revelation given here, I pondered to myself again how unusual the book is. We (scholars) typically associate Revelation with a body of ancient texts that we classify as “apocalyptic” writings. But, actually, Revelation stands out in a number of interesting features that may signal something historically significant. Typically, for example, “apocalyptic” texts are pseudonymous, fictively ascribed to some ancient figure such as Abraham, Moses, Enoch or Ezra. And typically, the texts pretend to be revelations given to such a figure about events that were “future” for him, but are actually recent/past events for the real readers.  Examples include the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Book of Jubilees, 4 Ezra, 1 Enoch , 2 Baruch, and a few others. But perhaps the most well-known example is the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, especially Daniel 7–12. The intended message in these texts see...

What might it mean to follow Jesus"put your sword away" in a world where groups like ISIS exist? Richard Beck reflects, controversially to be sure, but in a solid Christian way. Of course, I don't have the answers to these questions. But what follows is a bit of my answer to Mike. First, I said, we are creatures that live within history and we have to appreciate the tragic nature of history. If, for example, we bomb ISIS that's not something to cheer about. It's horribly tragic. Plus, that bombing will simply create more violence as those affected by the bombing will most likely become radicalized and come to hate the US. Bombing, even if you think it's "the right thing to do," is tragic and just leads to the next round of violence within history. And if we don't bomb and ISIS goes into a village, beheading and raping, that's also tragic. It's tragic all the way around. Use the sword and it's tragic. Put your sword away, e...

Russell Moore | February 25, 2016 | 10 Comments         Brian McLaren, the liberal “emergent” evangelical activist, re-emerged last week to announce that he is rewriting the hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The hymn is too warlike, he writes , as is much of evangelical hymnody, in his view. Our hymnody should be, he writes, “refocusing on the teaching of Jesus about peacemaking,” steering clear of warlike imagery. He’s wrong. McLaren believes that hymns with war imagery can lead to hatred and violence. In “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” for instance, McLaren finds “ambiguous” language about the “foe” against we should fight, “which could (in the minds of some) refer to our neighbors outside the church.” Well, I suppose, “in the minds of some” there might be confusion that “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” refers to Spanish soccer star Jesus Navas, but such a reading would be ignorant of both the context o...

  19th January 2016 By Matt Lynch   When preparing to teach on violence in the Old Testament recently I was reminded of a book review I once read. The reviewer recounted his neighbour’s efforts to remove a grease stain from his garage floor. The neighbour dumped a few gallons of gasoline on the floor and scrubbed. It worked beautifully . The stain disappeared completely. Job done! However, there was a slight problem. The gasoline fumes filled the garage and were eventually ignited by his boiler’s pilot light. The great conflagration that ensued ended up burning his entire house to its foundations. This story offered a warning that stuck with me: Turn off your mobile phone at the pump, you ask? Yes, but also, beware of solutions that too easily resolve. They might be highly combustible! Read more at: http://theologicalmisc.net/2016/01/how-to-burn-down-your-house/

Written by Nijay Gupta on December 11, 2015 By now most of us are quite well acquainted with the Dr. Jerry Falwell Jr.’s comments concluding a convocation service at Liberty University last week. Seth Richardson first wrote about these comments here at Missio Alliance in his article, “ How Jerry Falwell Jr. Helps Me Repent .” Pastor Rich Villodas also offered some Advent-oriented reflections on this episode in his article, “ Advent, Herod, and Liberty University .”  Yet there is another angle from which it’s important to consider these comments, given how Falwell and others have sought to defend them. This has to do with biblical interpretation, and the relevant lines from his address are these: “I’ve always thought if more good people had concealed carry permits we could end those Muslims before they walked in… Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.” And what lesson would that be? And is that lesson a Jesus-lesson? This takes us back to WWJ...