Can We All Cast Out Our Delusions?

The new Atheists have said things like Christians who believe in God are delusional.  Many Christians and religious people have responded that it's the new atheists that are delusional.  There is a wish on my part that people would quit using this kind of polarizing rhetoric. Despite my concerns, I will say David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies is probably the best book to date in responding to the critics and new atheist movement.

Hart does speak of the new atheists vacuous arguments, historical ignorance, strident self-righteousness, and dreary fundamentalism. This will come off as very dismissive and small minded to some readers who are sympathetic to atheists concerns in regards to religion. But Hart's book is actually a brilliant tour de force of church history and the accomplishments and failures that we learn from that history.  Even though Hart's book does not really tackle the new atheist arguments, he does such an incredible job setting the historical record straight that it does put to bed many of the atheists arguments that religion is bad or God is not good.

Hart rightly says that the new atheists focus is Christendom whereas it should be Christ if you want to hit the mark. The truth is many of the new atheists used to be a part of the Christian faith tradition and even in their moral critique of Christianity, they are still utilizing many of the moral values that came from their post-Christian past. Hart puts into context the way both faith and reason have played a role in medieval history and many of the positive contributions like art, architecture, law, philosophy, and natural science comes from this time what people have tragically described as "the dark ages."

So no, it was not the Christian movement as a whole that was burning down libraries, rejected science, or oppressed all people who believed differently than they did. It has been the church that has prompted people are valuable as God creatures, led the way in building hospitals, libraries, and even promoting the natural sciences whom many of it's great leaders were Christians.  The great scientists through the ages viewed the entire universe as a creation of God governed by laws that God placed within His universe. Materialism is a metaphysical prejudice and the universe is far more open than closed as the New Atheists would have us believe.

Polytheism and secularism as well as religious people have all had their share of violence and abuse throughout history. The story that monotheism is the great evil in our world is simply a historical fiction. What people of little or no faith miss in Christianity is its sheer optimism, joy, and even celebration of life, even in the face of death. The law of charity is seen by all when it comes to natural disasters where Christians are typically the first ones to show up.  Spiritual awakenings and Easter has spurred on people to emancipation and liberty and Jesus who was a slave came to set all slaves free.  Even the pagans in the early church tried to imitate these early Christians benevolence and love and laying down their lives for friends and strangers.

Entering Into the Sacred Heart of Jesus

"If you don't believe my words, then believe in my wounds" (words spoken to my heart meditating on the cross of Christ)

Jesus was pierced and wounded by love for us.  Out of the sacred heart of Jesus pours divine blessings and torrents of heavenly grace. Oh how my heart longs every moment of every day to enter the love chamber of Jesus sacred heart.  Jesus heart full of transparent truth and fiery purifying love.  One ray of light from Jesus heart can take me into the throne room of heaven.

As I went on a cruise on the ocean recently, it reminded me that I am like one drop in the ocean of Christ's mercy and how I want to throw myself into the loving embrace of Jesus' love that is like an immense ocean of love. Oh, how I want to cast the anchor of my trust into the divine abyss of God's mercy. My prayer every day at 3:00pm is a prayer for the salvation of the whole world.  This short and powerful ancient prayer goes like this: "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and the whole world."

The sacred heart of Jesus is like a purifying furnace. We are sanctified by the flames of love, revealing the mystery of our heart with all its illusions, and our lives are transformed into a love song for Almighty God. Maybe the only way of truly seeing Jesus is with eyes that the Scriptures say . . ."They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (John 19:37 & Zechariah 12:10).

Must Christians Vote and is Voting a Christian Act?

This political season has been the worst ever, negative, demoralizing, caustic, polarizing and on and on it goes.  Is this what Jesus wants or how Christians are to respond to one another or people who see things differently politically? If we have to choose between the lesser of two evils, isn't that still a vote for evil? or here is my main question, at what point would it take to not vote your conscience in a political election? Is there never a time and if there is a time, then there can be a sound discussion for voting or not voting in an election. Maybe the most disturbing problem is who I become in order to win this debate or mandate to vote?  Here are a few reasons for people to consider in not voting or being a conscientious abstention from voting.

1.  The logic of voting more supports Constantinian faith than biblical faith.

2.  Voting is a private personal act rather than a communal act.  How can voting ever be immersed in the scriptural world of God's kingdom if its simply a private act?

3.  Could not voting be viewed as a symbolic act of resistance to the powers that be?

4.  Not voting could reveal a higher allegiance to the politics of Jesus rather than Caesar.

5.  Elections within the nation-state deceive us into thinking that we control the world.

6.  Not voting could be a step to unlock our political imaginations and speak out for justice with new voices.

7.  It is easy to trace people voting records for better economics and material prosperity. In other words, voting has more to do with our own self interests or nations interests against other nations.  Are we voting for mammon or for the economics of God's kingdom?

8.  There can be a case made that Jesus rejected the politics of his day.  If democracy would have been an option in Jesus day, would not most of us probably have voted for Caesar if we are brutally honest and lived in those times? Please don't forget, deification of Caesar was part of the politics of that day.  Would we then choose not to vote?

Can Christians Eat Together?

I remember when Stanley Hauerwas provocatively asked the questions, "Can Christians not kill one another?" This sounds like a simple answer but the problem is many Christians have no problem droning or dropping bombs on other nations.  Obviously in practice, Christians will argue that in extreme cases which often turn out to not to be exceptional but normative, that Christians can kill Christians.

Two books I am reading at the same time is the edited work by George Kalantis and Marc Cortez Come, Let Us Eat Together: Sacraments and Christian Unity as well as Craig Carter's Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis.  It is interesting and sad to see how many of the divergent articles simply uphold their traditional beliefs on the subject, especially concerning the Eastern Orthodox and Catholics. Several of the best articles were by D. Stephen Long and I especially appreciated Cherith Fee Nordling "Ascension Communion."

Paul L. Gavrilyuk "The Eschatological Dimension of Sacramental Unity" I found the most helpful in thinking through the murky waters of intercommunion among Christians. He tries to provide a "middle way" between the two extremes of open communion and closed communion. He says that open communion serious flaw is the reality of divisions is ignored. His problem with closed communion which is part of his Eastern Orthodox tradition is there is no place for the eschatological character of the sacrament to be seen.

The Eucharist is the in-breaking of the kingdom of God and is a foretaste of the unity of Christ that breaks down all barriers between believers (p.182).  The Eucharist is a foretaste of the messianic banquet and a sacrament of communion with Christ. The reality of eschatological intercommunion is obscured by our continuing divisions and quarrels. To the extent in which we are Eucharistically taken up into fellowship with Christ, our divisions melt away in the life of communion (p.183).

Craig Carter's book is trying to get Christians back to both a sacramental realism and a recovery of Christian Platonism. Although I agree with Carter and Hans Boersma in their respective works in renewing the church through the theology of the early church fathers, I agree with the focus on a sacramental realism that binds us together but I don't understand why we must hold onto Christian Platonism to be faithful to Scriptures and the traditions of the church? Surely if the church father's contextualized the gospel in their Greek Platonic world, can't we do the same today translating the same faithful gospel into our postmodern global world? For example, Carter somewhat dismisses panentheism as heresy or wrong because it does not follow the classical theism of the ancient church. But doesn't our changing world demand that we look at the more interconnected ways the science, philosophy, metaphysics and the like have evolved?

We have shifted today from our dualistic thinking to more holistic thinking on so many issues. Rather than see everything as either/or categories, have we not seen some welcome changes in both/and categories?  For example, Carter says God is either in history, or is history and therefore not free of history and transcendent in the classical sense.  I want to suggest that God is over history (transcendent of history) and involved and in history (panentheism sense not to be confused with pantheism) and these are both true realities we need to hold onto and not jutrapose them against each other. 

In the end, I am on board with Carter's recovery of premodern exegesis but does that mean we have to throw out all modern exegetical forms? I suspect Carter would be on the same page here and maybe a better way of saying this is rather than critiquing modern historical studies of the Scriptures, we say they must serve the Great tradition as a norm rather than the other way around understanding that even the great tradition needs course corrections and renewal at times.  Maybe another way of saying this for me is we need to hold onto Patristic theology but it's contextualized forms like Platonism may change due to preaching the gospel fresh in today's unbelieving world.

Augustine: Friend or Foe?

There has been considerable debate over the centuries of Constantine and whether his conversion or influence on the church was either negative or positive or more probably, a mix of both.  Augustine is estimated as one of the greatest Christians who ever lived by the western church.  His brilliant work called Confessions has stirred the imaginations of a multitude of Christians throughout history. But interesting, his popularity is mixed upon the Eastern church where many of his novel ideas translated down throughout church history, had negative consequences not only on the Eastern Orthodox Church but as a stain on the violence of the church throughout church history.

I for one view Augustine as a church father who like any other human, had his blind-spots and flaws.  Augustine never told the western church to follow his teachings alone but to look at a consensual reading of the early fathers and mothers of the Christian faith.  I also imagine that some of the seed ideas that Augustine planted in the church he would have been horrified to see how they were expanded, abused, and used for political and oppressive behavior.  Augustine chief aim of understanding Scripture was through the lens of love but how some of his ideas grew and evolved, took some very dark and ugly turns.

I will later look at some of the problems of Augustine's theology that has effected the church.  I remember once talking to a Catholic priest who gave a homily on how Augustine taught original sin and how we should follow that today.  I talked the Priest afterward and said, Augustine also said all babies are going to hell, what about that?  He said, the Catholic church does not believe nor teach that.  I then went further and said, them maybe Augustine's understanding of original sin may have been flawed as well.

Augustine was a faithful interpreter of Scripture from both a catholic and orthodox perspective in how he read the scriptures.  The problem was Augustine's Bible, the Latin Vulgate of his time had mistranslations of various key texts that led Augustine to several faulty conclusions. Augustine supported the idea of inherited guilt on his reading of Romans 5:12. The original Greek says that death passed upon all men because all have sinned (eph hoi) but Augustine's Latin text said in quo (in whom) which led to all sinned because of Adam's sin.

Augustine also believed in the conscious eternal punishment and God elected only a group of people to be saved in the end.  The imprecise language of vocabulary on eternity led Augustine in this direction since he did not know the different uses of the word aida which is not applied to human beings, the Greek word for describing this to humans is aidio.  Since Augustine did not know Greek like Origen and some of the early church fathers, the distinction and differences is completely lost to him.

I do not fault Augustine for following the Bible of his day with some mistranslations, but I do find fault with today's theologians who either blindly follow Augustine or try to get around the actual Greek text to fit it into Augustine's theories or faulty understandings.  The Spirit of the living God should lead us to humility and change and not our dogmatic understandings of some kind of systematic theology. Augustine is a friend but some of his ideas and teachings are unwelcomed guests today.

A Catholic Reading of Universalism

I have been reading several interesting books in regards to the historical story of universalism from the early church to the present.  One such book is Robert Wild's A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism.  This is only a brief guide and I was hoping for more but there are some excellent quotes and features to this book.  Wild powerfully remarks that "hoping" universalism is true is not heresy.  Hope is hope and not a dogma or contradicts any major tenet of the early Christian creeds.  I love these words, "What a burst of new life would penetrate the human race if everyone believed that God is love and that they were already eternally safe in the arms of love."  I remember one youth minister getting chastised from a leader in his church for reading Rob Bell's book Love Wins and the young minister replied, "Which part do you have a problem with - love wins in the end or God is love?"

He describes the three possibilities that the early church fathers taught.  The majority view since Augustine became eternal conscious torment view while the minority and very early views were annihilationist view and universalism (Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuetia, etc.). There was the universal salvation of "Apokastasis" of 1 John 2:2 & Phil.2:10 taught and that evil is finite and will eventually end.  The universal restoration of all things has been a Christian doctrine taught throughout the whole history of the church by various leading Christian theologians and writers. Punishment by many of the earliest Christian writers viewed punishment as remedial and restorative and not punitive.  These early Christians focus was on Christ and not on Adam.  These are some of the first chapters in this provocative book.

What is the Gospel?

Here are some definitions I liked the best that I found on the Internet:

The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness this radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. The good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship.”  – Jim Belcher, 

The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. (my abbreviation)  – Tim Keller

 “The gospel is the word about Jesus Christ and what he did for us in order to restore us to a right relationship with God.”   ‐  Graeme Goldsworthy  

 ”The Gospel is the good news that in and through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, God makes all things new.”  -  Tullian Tchividjian  

“The gospel is the royal announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again according to the Scriptures, has been enthroned as the true Lord of the world. When this gospel is preached, God calls people to salvation, out of sheer grace, leading them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord.”  -  N. T. Wright


Here is my definition below merging Keller and Tchividjian together with a slight alteration:

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?

The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to dethrone sin according to God's Word and to renew the whole cosmos. The Gospel is the good news that in and through Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God makes all things new.”   

Shalom!

Another Road to Emmaus

I just returned from an extraordinary weekend where men from many Christian traditions gathered together to experience the Agape love of God and the fellowship of Christian community in a deeper way than they have ever experienced it before. Several of the amazing things that happened this weekend were many miraculous answers of prayers as we prayed for healing for members of the team and the pilgrims on their walk to Emmaus. We experienced a three hour repentance and renewal service where men openly laid down their baggage and all the sin that had been hiding in long dusty closets. I saw groups of men not only become friends but became so close that they could tell their new friends anything! I witnessed first hand the incredible transformation of these men by the powerful grace and love of God.

During the answer the questions of these men, the question of where did Cain's wife come from? The minister who had the question actually did not know what to say and I tried to answer the question as well but way too sporadically and quickly. What I learned from this was when it comes to answering questions with many leaders from different Christian communities, the two reminders we should remember are (1) We all believe we are brothers and sisters in Christ and respect one another even though we are in different theological traditions; and (2) We can show that same respect even though people may understand hard and difficult scriptures differently than the one you currently hold on to. 

We are all on a faith journey and what we believe today may change or be challenged later by our maturing beliefs in following Christ. The truth is this the question about Cain's wife like many questions, however you answer the question, the scriptures are silent and do not give an explicit answer. Our answers at best are provisional and simply are filling in the gaps. Our answers certainly do not posses biblical authority or demand all other Christians have to believe the same as we do.

Decolores!

Open Atheism

One of the new understandings between Evangelicals in the past few decades is something called "open theism."  This is the view that God does not know the future completely but lives in the daily now present moment with His creation. These Evangelicals thought classical theism was too closed off in how God relates to His creatures and reality thus the term "Open theism" which means the future has an openness about it.

I have just finished reading Larry Alex Taunton's book The Faith of Christopher Hitchens and just started reading Greg Boyd's The Benefit of Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty. Boyd deals with how doubt from a biblically informed faith can actually help one grow in faith rather than choosing the all or nothing certainty seeking modern model of faith. Christians have always struggled in the faith with doubts but can atheists have doubts too? What is fascinating about Taunton's book is the questions and concerns Christopher Hitchens raises when he is dying of cancer and facing the spectre of death.

Christians typically view the new atheist Christopher Hitchens as a petty mean spirited aggressive atheist.  For hitches, this was his public face but his private more personal demeanor was something quite different behind the scenes. Probably what Hitchens hated the most was hypocrisy and he had no problem calling it out for what it is for all the world to see.  As I read the last encounters of this man through Larry Taunton's lenses, I sensed a love and appreciation for this notorious atheist.  Here was a man with a quick wit, a sharp tongue, but also a human person who was open to change his mind at times when reality hit him hard enough.

Christopher Hitchens went through an enormous change of beliefs after 911 happened. His atheism was still in tact but he saw the reality of evil in man that broke with many of his ideas on Marxist utopianism and modern left views of interpreting evil.  I was reminded of my own spiritual shifting waters where I was theologically in the postmodern camp of the Christian faith and lost my faith in postmodernism after 911. Why 911 did not shake up more people's ideas and faith is beyond me.

Hitchen's most famous books god is not great and How Religion Poisons Everything found this atheist contrarian possessing both Evangelical Christian friends and his secret love towards the King James Bible's poetic prose and the Protestant Reformation revolt against Rome and hierarchal institutional Christianity.  Behind the scenes, Christopher could just as much challenge other atheist platforms as he could religious ones. Hitchens saw a lot of duplicity and lack of authenticity in many Christian leaders and pop culture religious crusaders. Although he could turn a phrase into a weapon to win points in a debate to make god look bad, he gave many critiques of the Christian faith that Christians should learn from in the sad history of the abuse of power of ecclesial authority and the hypocrisy and inconsistences of some of our representatives of the Christian faith.

Maybe the ghost that haunted Christopher Hitchen's was the ghost of a higher love? Atheists who are quick to say they don't believe in God will just as quickly suggest they believe in love.  I want to tear down the false idols and illusions of the Christian faith just as much as the atheists do on some issues.
I also want to point them to the real living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and not the small god of the philosophers.  I want them to see the glorious truly human-God man of Jesus stripped of all the confusions and modern human projections. I want the atheists to understand that the love they believe in is God because God is love.

Speaking Truth to LIES WE BELIEVE ABOUT GOD

William Paul Young is the author of the bestselling book The Shack and has tried for the first time in writing a non-fiction Christian book called Lies We Believe About God.  I read Young's book at the same time I read Richard Rohr's beautifully written book The Divine Dance and a little later, Brian Zahnd's book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.  Zahnd's book especially was trying to free people's conceptions of God being viewed as an angry abusing deity towards a more loving heavenly Father.

Here comes Paul Young whose life has been filled with both abuse and toxic Christianity on what he experienced on the mission field.  It's a miracle that Young is even a Christian today by his past history.  I for one could not find one charitable or positive book review of Paul Young's new book on the internet. The negative assaults on Paul young's theology and person are so loud and deafening that I have felt compelled to offer a more positive and constructive review amid so many outraged Christians.

William Paul Young deals with twenty eight lies to challenge Christians to think more accurately and deeply about God.  Maybe some of the pushback would not have been so heavy if Paul would have taken us deeper into the journey he's been on that I believe not only connects with the early church fathers but also many of the ancient and medieval Christian mystics throughout the history of the church.  What people think as theologically innovative or new or simply out of step with the traditional church shows how our own modern conceptions of God and church today are so out of step with what earlier Christians have thought in earlier times.  Our historical amnesia blinds us from the truths that many Christians have believed throughout the whole history of the Christian faith.

Many Christians would probably not have many problems with his chapters on God loves us, but doesn't like us, God is a magician, God blesses my politics, God doesn't care what I'm passionate about, God is not good, that was just coincidence, God is a prude, God is a divine Santa Clause, death is more powerful than God, you will never find God in a box, and God is one alone.

Where Young gets into trouble with many modern Christians is his challenges to salvation and the universal hope for all people, atonement theologies that relate to hell, judgment, and sin, as well as his vision of God.  He challenges people who think of God who does not submit, is in total control, wants to be a priority, and not everyone is a child of God.

What I find brilliant and beautiful about Young's theology is his focus is not on the utter depravity of man we get from Augustine's theology but on the goodness and blessing of man being made in the image of God.  The younger generation today is rightfully tired of hearing about the doctrine of original sin and how bad they are but they desperately want to hear about original blessing and how they can be more fully human as they read about Jesus in the four gospels.

As far as God in control (of evil), Young wants to argue against some of the hard line Calvinism that shows God as only loving some people and that God is not some kind of deterministic dominating being but whose nature is one of self-giving love.  This is possibly the one area where Young almost has a dualistic view of good and evil where he struggles with the classical doctrine of God's omnipotence.  I believe one can still hold onto this doctrine without falling into the problem that Young is trying to avoid of setting evil at God's feet.

Young tries to give a fuller vision of God in the fullness of the doctrine of the Trinity's dance of mutual submission.  Does God makes himself vulnerable, self-sacrificial or does he desire rules and religion to save us?  For William Paul Young, we are not saved by right beliefs or correct precise doctrines or even by the Christian religion.  We are simply saved by the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ.

God is about adventure, trust, and surrender and not about performance, control and a priority list according to Young.  Maybe his words about faith as a gift from God we already posses and simply need to recognize rather than jumping through some kind of list of rituals and right responses is what will irritate most of his Christian readers who have been following faithfully the tenets of what it means to be a "good Christian" rather than the God who is transforming the whole cosmos by His radical free grace in Christ.

Insider and outsider talk, the saved and unsaved, sinner and saved language are turned upside down as Young quickly sets forth his own understanding that hell, sin, and atonement flow out of the universal love of God.  The ongoing rescue of creation and salvation for Young does not end with death but continues on in both heaven and hell. What modern Christians do not realize is how the early church believed in praying for the salvation of people even in hell and that Christians with God in heaven will still go through a purging, growing, and evolving process towards perfection.  This does not diminish our earthly decisions but puts them in a cosmic-timeless perspective.

The earliest Christians believed in the timelessness of God and eternity and they did not have this huge separation between our sin and God's grace and the finality of death and the separation of heaven from earth as modern Christians often believe today.  Maybe this is the biggest lie that many modern Christians today believe that needs to be reevaluated by both history and a more cosmic understanding of the restoration of all things that the Bible speaks about and teaches.