Updown sideuP

New Book

2016-02-15T14:38:00.001-08:00

http://wipfandstock.com/relationship-is-the-transformative-space.html

It is now available at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Relationship-Transformative-Space-Living-Not/dp/1498280412/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455585988&sr=1-1&keywords=Darryl+Wooldridge

Relationship is the Transformative Space

2015-12-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

Come and see the preparations of my new book, Relationship is the Transformative Space https://www.facebook.com/spiritualtranformation/ to be release early in 2016

Drive for The Divine

2015-09-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

Abstract
Although the present article stands alone, it is a continuation of ‘Living in the not-yet’ (below, published in vol. 71, issue 1 of HTS). Both articles are derivatives of a larger study that discusses God as the centre of an often inarticulate and inchoate but innate human desire and pursuit to enjoy and reflect the divine image (imago Dei) in which every human being was created. The current article sets forth foundational considerations and speaks to the ineffaceable drive within humans to find God. It is a reciprocated drive – a response to God who first sought and continues to seek humans – a correlate and concomitant seeking in response to God. Although surely not the final word, this article discusses God as spirit and spiritual, by whom human beings have been created as imago Dei or God’s self-address, showing God’s heart as toward his creation, and humans most especially. Also discussed here is that humans are destined to join the perichoretic relationship that God has enjoyed from eternity. Moreover, in his ascension and glory, Jesus sends the Spirit of adoption into creation so that human creation might enter this same perichoretic relationship with God.

Introduction
There are eleven sections in this article. Anthropomorphism is inescapable, as God has, in parts, revealed himself by this manner for human understanding. Moreover, God’s greatest revelation of himself is in the person of the man Jesus Christ. God accommodates himself (section three) to his creation and particularly to humans to facilitate perichoretic koinōnia with them among the Trinity. In this fellowship the article is drawn into section four (Relationship) wherein God’s heart is shown to be reaching and arranging for this much desired relationship with his creation. The introduction of interruptions to this desire is briefly discussed next. Although narrowly presented in section five (Best possible world), a full development and defence of worlds and the aetiology of evil are beyond the scope and intent of this article in the main. Certain conjectures are discussed and ostensibly founded as key to the intent and subject of this research in affecting proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). For one, although human striving fails, and the finality of death is assured, God has created a world that cannot be defeated from God’s purposes and intents (Lioy 2011:124). The creation into which humans have been placed is good and in truth the best possible world in God’s sovereign, omniscient, and omnibenevolent desire (Leibniz 1998:123). Creation and most especially humans are intended for relationship with God.

Leibniz (1998:123) goes on to clarify that God is at full liberty and free to use his will and power without hindrance or compulsion by outside forces or wills. God is free in always being self-led toward what is good and right. He is without restriction or displeasure in prosecuting his will. In this all humans were created as God purposed in display of his wisdom and benevolence to best realise this wisdom and will. This ‘need’ of God, in freewill, is without imperfection as is the ‘wrath’ of God. However, this article does not hold to a ‘Leibniz Lapse’ that God could have created any possible world he might have wished (Plantinga 1974:44). If humans are to have freewill, as conjectured by this article, then they may, unlike God, by their free actions, introduce evil, pain, and suffering. Nevertheless, a drive for the divine (section six) cannot be snuffed out; in fact, the prior section supports such a drive. All persons have a divinitatis sensum (to sense divinity). Section seven necessarily speaks to the reality that God is spirit and spiritual, a necessary understanding for all who seek and approach him. The following is section eight (Trinitarian perichoretic relationship). In the perichoretic relationship is the enjoyment of community, the true freedom in its truth of love for which persons were created. God pronounced his creation as ‘very good’ (section nine), inclusive of this perichoretic relationship with humans who are given the privilege and responsibility of vicegerency. It is only as Homo imago Dei that this privilege and responsibility can be exercised (section ten). The conclusion (chapter eleven) of this article briefly reviews the full article and points to possible follow-on considerations and research.

The Anthropomorphic God
Not only are humans endowed with freewill, but also the imago Dei (central to God’s creation of humans), which, especially as concluded in section eleven, now carries something more – the God-man. God’s image in Jesus the Christ (imago Christi) now carries the existential realities of his incarnate life toward which PrōST (proleptic, spiritual transformation) drives in the now (Rm 8:29; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:5).

In order to accomplish the goal of transformation, or unhindered and unveiled imago Dei, God had to put down human rebellion through the incarnation of Christ who exampled God’s heart (anthropomorphically speaking) regarding the intended life meant for humans. Wherever, in this article, human form, characteristics, attributes, behaviours and functions are given as God’s form, characteristics, attributes, behaviours and functions, they are used as an anthropomorphism (physitheism or anthropotheism), which is a literary device to describe God’s condescension or accommodation in extending grace and mercy in relationship with humans. Beegle (1992:54) provides candid help in that the incarnational mediation of Jesus the Christ necessitates a measure of cautionary Christian anthropomorphism, for it is in this that the finite human can know something more of the infinite, incomprehensible God whose thoughts and ways are not the thoughts of his creatures. In particular, many Yahwist (J) passages are boldly anthropomorphic in expression (Von Rad 1972:26).

Accomodatio
Although God is infinite and incomprehensible, he accommodates himself to humans, the human situation, and human understanding, for example, by using anthropological language and analogy in order to reach humans within their own milieu and needs. Although elements of accomodatio (accommodation) can be found in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, John Calvin is most recently better known (over a twenty-five-year rise [1952–1977]) for a fuller development of accomodatio, even conjectured as the heart of his theology (Wright 1997:18). This theological leaning is especially seen in Calvin’s scriptural exegeses of related passages in such books as Genesis, Psalms, Ezekiel, Daniel, and John (Balserak 2006:8–9). So that God might be known by human beings, the thought of accomodatio presents the idea of God’s condescension to human ways and means (e.g. Calvin 1996; Gn 1:5).

Some examples of God’s heart in accomodatio include the following: God’s heart is overflowing with love for his creation and creatures (Jn 3:16; Rm 5:8; 8:32; Eph 2:4; 1 Jn 4:9–10); God is desirous of beauty (Ps 8:1; 19:1; Ec 3:11a; Ac 14:17; 17:24; Rm 1:18–19) and of righteousness and justice (Gn 6:6–7; Ps 23:3; 89:14; 97:2); God’s heart is for the disadvantaged, downtrodden, orphan, widow, poor, sick, possessed, dispossessed, all nations, children, women, men, animals, the planet, the universe, and all disadvantaged issues, situations and involved people (Mt 5:1–11; 11:5; Mk 1:40–41; 10:14; Lk 4:18; Gl 3:8); God is for his kingdom (Dn 6:26; Mt 13:44–46; Jn 2:17); God is for the salvation of everyone (Jn 3:16; Rm 4:25; 5:8; 1 Cor 15:22; 1 Tm 2:6; 4:10; Tt 2:11; 1 Jn 4:9). Willard (1997:129–134) writes large and helpful words about God’s heart as referenced above and that he is against idolatry, covetousness, irresponsibility, and a host of immoral and unrighteous actions and thoughts (Dt 4–5; 2 Ki 15:5; Mt 23:27–29; 2 Pt 2:9). It is toward such a heart that humans are drawn into relationship as imago Dei, reflecting back to God this same heart of love.

Relationship
From the beginning of the scriptural record, God displayed a heart and intent to share his essence with humanity as he created humans in his image and likeness and breathed into them his very life (Gn 2:7; Jn 5:21). Moreover, and to the point of this article, God’s heart still yearns for a full, rich, and transformative relationship with humanity (Ps 34:8; Can 8:1; Jn 14:23; 17:21–23; Rm 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18; 6:16 [Grenz 2001:268; van Huyssteen 2006:118–123]).

God desires an intimate relationship with humans and is deeply troubled by any damage to that relationship (Lk 13:34; 19:41; Jn 11:33; 13:21). God’s heart yearns to be in conversational relationship with humans, freely living in his will and glory (Ex 29:43–46; 33:11; Ps 23; Is 41:8; Jn 15:14; Heb 13:5–6 [Willard 1999:10]). In this desire, God’s heart reached out to restore fallen humanity to relationship within the Triune, perichoretic community, other humans, and creation (Gn 3:8–11; Lv 26:12; Dt 23:14; 2 Cor 6:16). God’s heart yearns to restore and deepen the rich and intimate, reciprocal conditions that he and other persons enjoyed as told in the story of Eden, as reflected in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Gn 2; 3:6a; Lk 15:11–32), and as elevated in the life of Jesus Christ – ‘You have heard it said, ... But I say to you ... ‘ (Mt 5:44). God desires fellowship and intimacy with humans enjoying and living out his image to the full beginning now (Aquinas 1981:885–886; Hagner 1993:134–136; van Huyssteen 2006:154, 157).

God’s will is often referred to theologically as economy (Gk., οἰκονομία) or administration and is, at the basic level, simply God’s heart and desire and how he arranges or pursues the fulfilment of that heart and desire. God’s οἰκονομία, in creating such a world that is most conducive to his goals and means, is seen in the evolving and progressing world that humans inhabit. God’s heart and desire are toward a world that is the best possible one that allows for the summum bonum of God’s creation with human freewill seeking God (Augustine [1887] 2010; Brunner 2002:147; Leibniz 1998:123; Plantinga 1974:33, 54–55).

There is much in the human experience that would militate against such a conjecture as that presented above, such as mental and physical defect, prejudice, hegemony, discrimination, hate, murder, poverty, homelessness, ‘natural’ disaster, war, illness, malfeasance, and death. Although considered further below, a thorough examination of a coherent theodicy is beyond the scope of the present work. Nonetheless, this article holds that this world, as conceived by God, is in truth, the best catalyst for the spiritual transformation of free-willed human beings. It is designed, and has continued to develop, as the best soil and means to transformationally develop the heart of God in each individual human in expression of God’s image and in proleptic, spiritual expression furthered below (Aquinas 1981:47).
Best possible world

It is not that God ‘needs’ evil to accomplish his intents with humans. Human freewill is needful to the full development of mature and transformed humans. A world in which humans are markedly free and thereby perform more good than evil, is of greater value than a world consisting of no free persons whatsoever (Plantinga 1974:30). Unfortunately , such freewill not only presents the opportunity for personal evil, but also, in fact, necessitates its actual introduction (Plantinga 1974:30–31). Even if such freewill (Augustine’s improbra voluntas) potentiates and precipitates evil and suffering, a world in which such freedom is given, even if evil is consequential, is better for the development and transformation of humans. Whilst disagreeing with any ideation that God instituted evil (pain and suffering), whether often attributed to John Hick, the more narrowly held claim that challenges and temptations are inherently more valuable for developing virtues still holds more value than would any imagined ready-virtue apportioned to the individual.

Plantinga (1974:11), for one, gives trouble to the Irenaean or modern interpretation of his theodicy as provided in Hick when he allows that a theist may not be able to provide the rational and surely not a provable case as to why God allows evil, and yet it is not a contradiction in allowing that God does allow evil. It is beyond the purpose of this study to argue all of the causals and allowances driving evil proposed to be of God’s means. However, John Hick would say, ‘soul-making’, a Keatsian coinage often used by Hick, is God’s purpose in these difficulties in what this article refers to as the process of spiritual transformation. There is no contradiction in God’s attributes of omnibenevolence and omnipotence in any of this.

In truth, such ready-made virtues displayed in spiritual transformation would be of no value having not been worked by trial and difficulty. Although Irenaeus’ and Hick’s freewill theodicy is severely questioned, and although such a theodicy is not required for the thesis of this study, the reality of this world in which trial, pain, sin, and evil, are clearly present make Hick’s ‘soul-making’ or ‘person-making’ fruitful. This research deals with this postulate under the rubric of proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). A world of both choice and God’s sovereignty are presented throughout scripture and supported by this article. Again, consideration of the seeming tension between evil and an omnipotent
loving God is briefly intermingled in this article (Collins 2000:156–157; Pannenberg (1997:165–166; Plantinga 1974:30).
Drive for the divine

Most particular to theodicy, and to the point of this study as discussed above, is that God desires vital and intimate relationship with transformed human beings in reflection of his Son. Although often obscured and buried deeply within the soul, this ultimate destination is known and resonates in the human heart. Catherine of Siena (1980) speaks to this love of God at a devotional level in The Dialogue (1980:325): ‘Because you have fallen in love with what you have made!’ This desire of God is the essential reason that human beings desire God in concordant, harmonious response, which response is, at its core, a reflection of God’s desire (1 Jn 4:10, 19). It is a response, reflection, and echo of the very image of God, responding, reflecting, and echoing back to God and to the whole of creation (Ec 3:11). Within this transmission or transaction is the necessary and naturally spontaneous worship generated by such an encounter with the living God.

In consideration of this drive and encounter, Calvin (2006:43; Inst. 1.3.1) speaks about the semen religionis. God has deposited in all humans an understanding of ‘his divine majesty’ to prevent them, by this divine conviction, from hiding in ignorance. Specifically, Calvin (2006:43, 46, 47; Inst. 1.4.1) says, ‘God has sown a seed of religion in all men’ for divinitatis sensum (to sense divinity). He goes on to present the case that, although this seed resulting in a divine sense has been sown in humans, it does not ripen and certainly does not bear fruit in season. Humans struggle under vanity and an obduracy measuring God by their own standards and thereby missing how God has offered himself. They only seem as driven by their own machinations. So, human worship and service toward God is misplaced upon their own imagined goals driven by hearts not focused on and yielded to God.

In support of reformed epistemology, and Calvin in particular, Plantinga (1981:46) considers such ontological posits of God, and the present author believes, by inference, God’s attributes (real desires among them), to be properly basic and justifiable even lacking any possible foundational argument within a normative contention pressing against such a belief (Plantinga 1981:42). God created homo sapiens in such a manner that they are inclined or disposed to see God’s working in the universe, whether simple or grand (Plantinga 1981:46). Plantinga’s argument is supportive of semen religionis no matter how distorted, misplaced, vain, or obdurate humans may be in obscuring the resultant divinitatis sensum.

Setting aside Plantinga for the moment and pressing against the restrictions of classic foundationalism, empiricism, and scientific reason, Milbank’s (1998:123) rigorous, epistemic analysis of poesis, itself outside of accepted scientific postulation, unyieldingly suggests that in the ‘poetic moment’ is a realisation of the Beautiful. Here, in this aesthetic experience, is the place of the Christocentric revelation. It is ‘a narrative projecting forward the divine horizon’, experiencing this sacred narrative as Christ is supposed to have lived it (Milbank 1998:29). Persevering in this conjecture, and contrary to Milbank’s resistance to a divine seed, one is drawn to this teleological eventuality. It seems appropriate to suggest that human understanding, based in mythos and mimesis (Milbank 1998:127) of Christ, becomes the ‘mythos’ that one encounters, driven by the semen religionis, and is drawn to and desirous of the divine in this divinitatis sensum exampled in Christ and implanted in all humans (Calvin 2006:43, 46, 47; Inst. 1.3.1). In speaking of mythos nothing is suggested or agreed that the present considerations, especially as they apply to Genesis 1, are to be understood symbolically but rather as ‘concentrated doctrinal content’ and of topical interest for Israel then and all humans now (Von Rad 1972:47–48).
Worship before farming

Archaeologists have long believed that abundant vegetation and increasing wild game led to farming and domestication of animals which led to permanent settlements in turn leading to organised religion (Mann 2011:49). Recent archaeological findings have replaced this time-honoured, erroneous belief credited to V. Gordon Childe (Mann 2011:49). Beginning with geometric surveys, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began unearthing the temple Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey in 2003, which has been dated to 7000 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza, some 11,600 years ago (Mann 2011:39–40). Study of Göbekli Tepe has led to the firm belief that organised religion gave rise to farming. That is, religion, worship, and the spiritual preceded farming. The wonderment at changes in the natural world led to religion which led to the domestication of plants and animals, agriculture, and permanent settlement for the benefit of communal living and worship (Mann 2011:41–48). This discovery is significant in its suggestion that the intrinsic and overwhelming drive for the divine (divinitatis sensum) within humans is evidently responsible for community and progress in society as a display of imago Dei in the world. It is a response to divine general revelation and the God-infused impetus within humans as God-driven to seek the divine. Here relationship is born or at least shared in purpose among humans desirous of relationship with the divine and the transcendent.

The spiritual condition of human beings is often difficult to determine especially in the knowledge that much of the creation story has been made ‘obsolete’ by modern standards (Von Rad 1972:48). Nevertheless, the scriptures seem to tell a story about God’s desire for intimate relationship with an image bearing from his creatures. Although not fully developed here, this desire does not imply any measure of anthropopathy and may be rendered will or wish (θέλω [Gk.], Strong’s 2309). A full discussion regarding the attributes of God is not within the scope of this article; however, anthropomorphisms are used in consonance with scripture.

Metaxas (2010:349) cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he wrote a circular to the local church in Finkenwalde, Germany in 1939 and said, ‘Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words’. Although speaking of the terrible loss of the war, the point applied here is not to avoid the issue, but that although God is not a man (Job 9:32; Rm 9:20), he often speaks of himself in human terms. What is more, not only does God speak of his ‘desire’, but makes plain that without the satisfaction of his desire for the divine in resonance with God’s desire for humans there is no human fulfilment. Thus, without this resonance humans cannot find fulfilment or satisfaction, and therefore, remain frustrated from God as their ‘source’ (Houston 1992:241–242). God’s desire or will that humans be holy, in fellowship with him, follow his commandments, and a host of other intents and directions for humans, speaks to God’s desire and will for humans in harmonious communion (Gn 3:9; Lv 26:12; 1 Jn 4:19; 1 Pt 1:16). Moreover, there is no implication of any ontological lack in God’s being by such a desire any more than that God desires all to be saved (1 Tm 2:3–4). The psalmist calls out from this desire:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Ps 73:25–26)

The New Testament reflection and progression of the psalmist’s heart and desire in response to God’s heart and desire can be found in the apostle Paul’s words about Christ to the Philippians. In Christ one comes to know God the Father (Jn 14:7–11; Col 1:15–20). So then, to know Christ Jesus is to know God the Father and to satisfy God’s and one’s own heart’s desire. Indeed, everything should be seen as loss because of the incredible worth of knowing Christ Jesus the Lord. For his sake one should be willing to suffer the loss of everything and count it all as waste, in order to gain Christ and be found in him, not having one’s own inadequate righteousness, a righteousness that comes from the law, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God contingent on faith – that one may know him and the supremacy of his resurrection now, and may now share his sufferings and tribulation, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible one may enjoy the resurrection from the dead (Phlp 3:7–11; Hooker 2000:526–529).

Spirit and Spiritual
A clear understanding about whom or what God is, as discerned from God’s self-revelation, is essential to understanding God’s heart and human reciprocity. It is necessary for any understanding or theology about human spirituality (Chan 1998:40). This notion is particularly important to this brief article. An understanding of God as spirit and being spiritual is central. Furthermore, God must be an ontological entity capable, available, responsive, and desirous of relationship with human beings for any hope of intimate encounter with him. This might seem troublesome since God is spirit, unsearchable, inscrutable, unseen, and dwells in unapproachable light (Ps 145:3; Jn 6:46; 2 Cor 3:17; 1 Tm 1:17; 6:16; Gn 1:2b; 1 Ki 8:27; Is 55:8; Jn 3:6, 8; 4:24; 1 Jn 4:12). Moreover, God is not like any material, anti-material, energy, vapour, or space, but rather ‘the fullness or essence of being’ or simply ‘pure being’ (Grudem 1994:188). God’s being is spiritual, and God acts from that centre (1 Cor 2:13; 10:4). Moreover, God cannot be contained at any point of the created or uncreated (Ps 139:7–10; Is 66:1) and forbids images and representations of himself to suggest he is limited by form or place or material things that are reflected by a body of some fashion (Ex 20:4; Is 40:18, 25). God is ‘that being than which nothing greater can be conceived’ (Fairweather 1956:75).

As a spiritual being, God is invisible (Jn 1:18; 1 Tm 1:17; 6:16). Regarding spiritual matters, it more deeply has to do with his inaccessibility without his willed revelation and manifestation (incarnation) toward creatures that are capable of discerning his advances toward them. This suggests God not as an obscurant being but rather above human self-willed scrutability (Moltmann 1993a:220–221; Von Rad 1972:25–26). In discussing how Karl Barth was influenced by Søren Kierkegaard’s thoughts about divine transcendence, Millard Erickson (2013:284–285) borrows the phrase ‘qualitative distinction and dimensional beyondness’ from Martin Heinecken, wherein this distinction and beyondness are the qualitative differences between God and humans and thus the inaccessibility of God by humans. Such distinction exacerbates the inscrutability of God and assures God’s invisibility. However, accepting this understanding does not negate the availability of a condescending and therefore immanent God. God is near and available (Job 12:10; Ac 17:28; Rm 10:8; Heb 7:25) notwithstanding his qualitative distinction.

Trinitarian Perichoretic Relationship
Trinitarian theology demonstrates that God is not near and available, but that God is spirit and spiritual but also in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, who are in a perfect and unique relationship of divine love within the perichoretic union of the Trinity (Moltmann 1993a:258). Christian philosopher and martyr Boethius (c. 480–525) says that the nature of a person is its irreplaceable substance. Moltmann (1993b:172) juxtaposes this notion against Augustine’s thoughts on relationship and concludes that each of the Trinity possess the ‘same individual, indivisible and one divine nature’ in varied ways, the Father of himself and the Son and Spirit from the Father. So then, they are independent in their divinity but profoundly constrained and dependent on one another. It follows from this that, Moltmann claims, personality and relationships are connected and present simultaneously. The Trinity subsists in ‘the common divine nature’ and the Trinity ‘exists in relations to one another’ (Moltmann 1993b:173). In truth, to be a person, as is each of the Trinity, is to be in and moulded by relationship ‘in accordance with the relational difference’ and not constituted by the relationship but rather presupposed in it (Moltmann 1993b:172) (cf. Wooldridge & Lioy 2015).

In applying this concept to the Trinity, Moltmann (1993b:171) speaks of that which is ‘noninterchangeable, untransferable individual existence in any particular case’. Moltmann brings Hegel into the discussion to join Boethius and Augustine in that the Trinity realises within its self one another in love. By this third contribution, Moltmann (1993b:174) speaks of three terms into the doctrine of the Trinity: (1) person, (2) relations, and (3) history of God. Moreover, God’s ‘plural deliberation’, that is in relation to himself, is singular in the plural and plural in the singular, and inferentially, humans are both singular and plural inversely. In this God has his correspondence of or in human community individually and especially in unity (Moltmann 1993a:117–118).

Although Moltmann mistakenly limits this community to the male-female relationship, van Huyssteen (2006:138) presses that the image of God cannot be summed up as the relationship between a man and woman. Male and female, in Genesis, simply indicate relationship. Moltmann (1993a:220–221) does allow that human likeness to God in the whole human existence as consisting in correspondence and relationship to the perichoretic God as revelation of the divine in earthly form. Although differing with Moltmann (1993a:222–223) here in his insistence on the male-female image of God on earth, it is manifest that God’s image can only fully be lived in full human expression in community as social beings. Also as discussed below, the male-female reality is necessary in reflection of continued creation by God’s vicegerents. Incredibly, the perichoretic relationship reaches to all creation and includes it without necessitating creation’s divinisation although allowing creation’s influence upon the Godhead (Moltmann 1993a:258). From this perichoretic relationship and human imago Dei flows ‘mutual need and mutual interpretation. The true human community is designed to be the imago Trinitatis’.

As ‘plastic image’ or ‘God’s sovereign emblem’ (Von Rad 1972:60) humans not only function as God’s representatives, but also reflect God in the ontology of being in which there is a draw to be in and to express this perichoretic relationship. Not only should humans be in relationship with one another, but also with God. God, as revealed in the scriptures, is a personal God desirous of intimate relationship with his creation (Chan 1998:41). God desires humans to be like himself; therefore, he created them to be such (Lv 11:44–45; Jn 17:11, 21; Rm 8:29; 1 Pt 1:14–16). In addition to creating beings as imago Dei, God also brings the fullness of this to fruition through a process of spiritual transformation in perichoretic relationship. Spiritual transformation is a determinant of material persons’ ability to relate at some significant level with an immaterial and spiritual being and the ability of these material persons to ‘see’ this self-same immaterial, spiritual, and invisible God, whomever may be initiating the encounter (Pannenberg 1994:224).

Not arguing the filioque here, Moltmann (1993b:127) speaks of two movements of God in which the first, ‘the divine Trinity throws itself open’, the Father having sent the Spirit of God through the Son, that is, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ open to the world in time and to renew and unite in whole all of creation. The second movement is reversed from the first. In the transformation of the world in and through God the Spirit, all turns to God. Being moved by the Spirit, all comes to the Father through Jesus Christ the Son. By the glorification of the Spirit, the world, times, people, and things are brought together before the Father and become his.

In the first movement God reached out to his creation, and in the second movement the creation is brought to God. Both movements are in the Son through and by the Spirit in full glorification of the Trinity. Later in this same work, Moltmann (1993b:176) speaks of the manifestation of the perichoresis (Gk.) of divine life in glory as reaching further Trinitarian manifestation or relations. It is the glorification of the Spirit of God in ‘the experience of salvation’. The depth of such an experience of salvation in the Trinity is enjoyed in the perichoretic relationship of Trinity drawing and welcoming humans into this same reality. Most fully, Moltmann (1993b:213) says, this salvation and relationship will culminate as people becoming God’s dwelling and home. The early church looked to an eschatological kingdom of glory in which all would be deified (Gk., θέωσις). It is a kingdom in which people will be finally and completely drawn into the eternal life of the triune God.

Humans, constituted in part as spiritual beings, were created to experientially enjoy a spirituality that is living for God through Christ, in full communion, presence, and by the power of the Spirit of God (Downey 2003:258). Here in this perichoretic relationship, in the enjoyment of community, is found the true freedom in its truth of love for which persons were created – a ‘project of the future’ that transcends the present and moves toward the direction of God’s future – ‘the history of the kingdom of God’ (Heschel 1943:120; Moltmann 1993b:216–217, 221) that nurtures proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). Admittedly, these points are not all-inclusively developed here; however, they serve appropriately to reflect the progressive Trinity in internal relationship and to humans, especially God’s friends.

Very Good
God’s satisfaction and regard for the created universe, and humans particularly, was exceptional as noted at the end of the creation story in which God pronounced his doing in creation and the outcomes as ‘very good’ (Gn 1:31). This was also inclusive of the above sought perichoretic relationship. Pointing out the significance of human creation, Von Rad (1972:57) notes that three times in verse 27, God created (Heb., bārā) in reference to humans, both singular and collective. This refrain points up ‘the fullest significance for that divine creativity which is absolutely without analogy’. The beauty of this enterprise is ‘completely perfect’ in wonderful purpose and harmony (Von Rad 1972:61).

That which was very good, was inclusive of humans created very much like God for fellowship. God formed the entire created order of things culminating as goodness inclusive of human beings created in God’s image. This world, as ‘very good’ is the environment into which humans were conceived for God’s intent of obedient, worshipful, and glorifying communion with himself. These persons were constituted with bodies as living souls inclusive of relationship, representation, and essence (Gn 2:7 [Heb., nepesh]; 1 Cor 15:45 [Gk., ψυχὴν]). As argued herein, it is the best possible world in which to mature humans to a full expression of imago Dei. No doubt, the goodness of God’s creation is in part simply because God created it (Ps 119:68; 1 Tm 4:4). By definition, whatever God does must be particularly, essentially , and consequentially or teleologically good, if God is beneficent and in no way maleficent. Finally, to have humans created in God’s image as the capstone to creation is to survey the whole in satisfaction, which brings a pronouncement of ‘very good’ in reflection of God’s heart (Von Rad 1972:57, 61).

God communicated attributes to humans such as love, mercy, grace, benevolence, and intellect. Even the physicality of humans seems to be included in this goodness, for humans were given corporeal bodies and directed to rule over the physical earth in their bodies and to procreate in those same physical bodies (Gn 1:2– 28; 2:7). Von Rad (1972:58–59) concurs; the wonderment of the human physical appearance is not a development exempted from the domain and concept of God’s image and should not be lessened by spiritualisation or any kind of intellectual proclivity. The whole human – his or her totality – is created in God’s image. It is not exact to speak of God in anthropomorphic terms, but rather to speak of humans as theomorphic (Von Rad 2001:145). Eventually, these worthy human bodies will be resurrected into glory (1 Cor 15:52; 1 Th 4:15–18). This goodness is inclusive of God’s image in humans as not simply one but complete expressions of God’s full spectrum of communicable image, such as the substantive, relational, and functional aspects of image. This is even shared in human beings created as male and female to share in God’s creative ability in procreation as a special blessing (Von Rad 1972:60–61).

The goodness of God’s creation and of humans within that creation is evident in God’s thrice pronouncement of his incomparable creation (Heb., bārā) in Genesis 1:27, culminating in humankind, his intent and direction from the first verse (Von Rad 1972:57). In the creation of God, humans have been entrusted with its care (Gn 1:26, 28; Job 5:9; 37:14). Moreover, humans are to continue the responsibility for creation as vicegerents responsible to God (Ps 8:6).

This vicegerency is more poignant when viewed through the agencies of genealogy and benefice. Humans are children, sons, heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ, and eventually glorified with Christ (Rm 8:17; Gl 3:29; 4:7; Eph 3:6). God’s intent is seen early in that he delegated his sovereign right to his first created human as a ’worthy assistant’ with a task to give names to the world’s creatures and to rule over them (Gn 2:19; Von Rad 1972:53, 59, 83). As with powerful earthly sovereigns, humans are God’s sovereign emblems to represent God in relation with God in all earthly affairs (Von Rad 1972:60). Moreover, one might infer or receive a hint at the possibility of the fall in the freewill that was given humans in vicegerency introducing rebellion in to the created order. Included in this ground of goodness (or best possible world) is the opportunity for self-willed rebellion that, as shown above, also serves the transformation of humankind (Plantinga 1974:29–30, 44; Willard 1999:10).

Not only was creation declared very good in scripture, but numerous philosophers and theologians have argued and debated that this is the ‘best of all possible worlds’ (Steinberg 2007:123–124). This best of all possible worlds has importance in that it is the environment into which God’s creatures would be situated, tested, offered abundant life, and transformed into God’s inclusive, unhindered expressed-image. The nature of humans is indeed wonderful and awesome (Von Rad 1972:57–60). If it were not so, God could not have become incarnate. It may even be that flesh was elevated by incarnation. In either case, God’s remedy testifies to the nobility of the human being in the incarnation (Ranft 2013:5, 165–166).

Imago Dei
As addressed above, the human image of God (Homo imago Dei), generally referred to in this article as imago Dei, with vicegerency responsibility, is a discussion of great consequence not only to the premise of this research but also to anyone seeking understanding and meaning in this life. The imago Dei is foundational to all divine revelation (Feinberg 1972:236). A postfoundational strategy for revisionist interpretations that sympathises and rings true with core scriptural texts, in a shift away from speculation and abstraction, ushers the understanding of imago Dei into a theological and interdisciplinary dialogue (van Huyssteen 2006:151). More specifically, God’s image in humans is central to this study of proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST).

Since this is the case, it is vital that this study is founded in a coherent theory of the imago Dei. This research sets aside any Platonic, mediaeval, or Aristotelian beliefs that may place the human parts in conflict with each other pressing for supremacy or set against recognising the whole human, spirit, soul, and body, as the full embodiment of the imago Dei (Moltmann 1993a:245) as God’s self- address. This integrated- embodiment is the hoped-for consummation of the human life in reflection of the completed life of the God-man Jesus Christ.
Admittedly, such an embodiment is, in its full transformation, magnificent, and its effulgence emanates light making the sun seem dark in comparison (Gottstein 1994:173–174). The imago Dei is a sign of humanity’s gravitas, beauty, and original androgyny – the Adam Qadmon or Primordial human being (Feinberg 1972:241). Humans are, by this view, complete, integrated, and without partitioning. Such wholeness is animated by God’s breath (Gn 2:7).

Conclusion
An exhaustive treatment of the vast proposals and arguments related to this subject are not necessary, neither possible here except as begun. This article spoke to the very- good world into which God created and made humans with an ineffaceable drive within them as God’s children and vicegerents of this planet to find, serve, worship, love God, and to care for the creation. God created the very best possible world with the means for human freewill seeking and transformation.

As a result of the lawlessness of sin brought on through human freedom, God needed to intervene (incarnation) in order to put down the rebellion that had, to some measure, veiled the imago Dei in human beings and created estrangement of humans from God. It, Imago Dei, or God’s self-address now carries something more – the God-man (imago Christi). God’s image in Jesus the Christ, as bestowed to humans by the Spirit of God, now carries the existential realities of his incarnate life, passion, resurrection, and ascension.

Although surely not the final word on this subject, this article discussed God as spirit and spiritual by whom humans have been created as imago Dei. It spoke about God’s heart in seeking to fully recover and express his image in humanity through proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST) in perichoretic relationship as the remedy to the spiritual effects of the fall. It is a reciprocated drive – a response from humans to God who first sought and continues to seek humans – a correlate and concomitant seeking in response to God.

Acknowledgements
Competing interests:
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.

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http://www.hts.org.za doi:10.4102/hts.v71i3.2997

Living in the not-yet

2015-07-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

Abstract

This article is derivative of a larger study that discusses God as the centre of an often inarticulate, innate human desire and pursuit to enjoy and reflect the divine image in which every human being was created. The purpose of this article is to affirm the human elemental pursuit, as God’s intent, to fulfil this created, intrinsic human desire in the now, or what is referred to here as proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). Moreover, the primary aim of this article suggests investigation of whether individuals must wait for the afterlife to have purification and spiritual transformation fully or largely ‘worked out’. That is, the eventual would demonstrate that PrōST, an experience of transformation and kingdom life, usually reserved for heaven in eternity, is greatly available today.

Introduction

There are eleven sections in this article. The first is this ‘Introduction’ explaining the direction of the article, including a brief description of the other sections and the interconnectedness in support of the above abstract. The second section (‘Breadth’) provides the intended breadth, methods, and limits of the article, before section three (‘Beginnings’) is explored, which examines the beginnings of human history and creation, followed by their importance to God. Section four (‘God’s heart and relationship’) explores this importance to God with a brief review of God’s heart, especially as God cares for humanity. ‘Spirituality’, the fifth section, naturally follows section four as a consequence of God’s heart desire in providing proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). ‘Human and Divine koinōnia’ is the sixth section showing that spiritual transformation is found in perichoretic fellowship (koinōnia) with God and other persons. The seventh section considers the extent of transformation in ‘Full-orbed spiritual transformation’ from koinōnia. ‘Transformational anaemia?’ is the eighth section, and asks the question of the state of Christian transformation, its history, and the state of imago Dei in its substantive, representative, and relational aspects. The ninth section (‘Relationship’) considers the labyrinth of human existence and the reciprocal drive of humans toward relationship with God. Included in the ninth section is the central question underlying this article, that is, whether individuals must wait for the afterlife to have purification and spiritual transformation fully or largely ‘worked out’ in living the kingdom life? The tenth and final section, ‘Variegation’, speaks to the help of deconstruction and post-foundationalism in arriving at the body and ‘Conclusion’ of this article, in which the article briefly reviews and points to a follow-on article that considers God’s heart more deeply in the matters of this article.

Breadth

Having reviewed the sections of this article, the authors begin with the article’s breadth. This article is limited to Christian traditions and expressions of faith (Schneiders 2005:1), and yet transversely considers ‘pluralistic and interdisciplinary’ fields as necessary to the subject (Van Huyssteen 2006:112, 159–160, 242). Nevertheless, a full-orbed and exhaustive inclusion of multiple scientific disciplines is outside the scope and intent of the present discussion. However, the authors employ an enlarged pluralistic view to inform and weigh-in on the concerns of this article. The research of this article investigates a wide contextual perspective and draws from a broad area of Christian spiritual traditions inclusive of Western and Eastern traditions, but mainly from three: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Additionally, the authors have planned follow- up articles, as warranted, inclusive of thoroughly researched and consulted sub-categories of these main traditions along with sciences such as paleo-anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive science.

The authors broadly survey both biblical and extra-biblical literatures to measure and inform the assessment as well as the aims, goals, and objectives of this article. The authors view the Bible, within this approach, from an underlying progressive or trajectory hermeneutic (Webb 2001:30–34). Moreover, the authors view both testaments as progressively unfolding God’s full revelation and intent of a transformed universe in which such allowances as divorce and slavery are done away for fidelity and freedom (Gn 1:26–27; Pr 14: 31; Mt 7:12; 10:2–9; Ac 17:26; Gl 3:28; Phlp 8:1–21; Lioy 2011:55); where an eye for an eye gives way to turning the other cheek (Mt 5:39); and where only loving one’s clan gives way to also loving one’s enemies (Mt 5:4).

The hermeneutic utilised and underlying the broader study, of which this article is part, does not abandon the existential realities or position of the active interpreter (Palmer 1983:60). The research employs an eclectic hermeneutic and thereby leverages various approaches into an eclectic ‘post- foundationalism’. For ease, the authors refer to and employ this broad and open approach as an eclectic hermeneutic, in which multiple interpretive techniques and principles are appropriate. This approach invites disparate elements of exegesis such as allusions, authorial style and leanings, genre, and earlier scriptural assumptions as well as history, grammar, and the sciences.

Whilst a post-foundational approach holds place, it is in seeking defensible rational to ‘intersect transversally with theological arguments. . . [as to] what it might mean to talk about human uniqueness today’ (Van Huyssteen 2006:112, 164, 242), consulting to best discern voices pertinent to the research. As in utilising different modes of transportation as conditions demand, this article moves within the eclectic hermeneutic that is inclusive of postmodern interpretations.

More precisely, using the thought of Badiou (2010:401), in which he places the ‘law of the future anterior ... [from which] a post-evental truth is being deployed’, a statement is veridical. That is, it is possible to determine the truth of the present, although a passing, post-evental truth. This post-foundationalism allows that communal and historical conditioning whilst holding that one can work and reach beyond such preconditioning of culture, prior and ‘received’ knowledge, and human insularity.

Although this study presumes knowledge and understanding of objective reality (foundationalism), used here is a post-foundational, postmodern ‘theological condition’ as the materials indicate the need for deconstructing or ‘un-peeling’ the layers obscuring seeing. This assists the authors in looking past the obvious, delivered truth to the underlying plurality, discontinuity, and complexity of the ‘un-deconstructible’ (Vanhoozer 2003:4–5, 11, 13, 17). This approach further mines and deconstructs meaning utilising and transversing interdisciplinary constructs. Although not arguing for or defending deconstruction here, it assists and supports the eclectic hermeneutics of this study as an interpretive approach as the need presents.

Beginnings

Such eclectic hermeneutics assists the understanding of early beginnings against a usual popular interpretation. There have been numerous and varied records of the human pursuit for God as first shown by the discovery of the scrawls of a half animal, half human in a cave of Dordogne, France, from the Paleolithic Age, dated about 30 000 years ago (Leroi-Gourhan & Michelson 1986:6–17). However, at the extreme, Harrod (1992:4–7) has argued that the first event may go back over 2 000 000 years. At the opposite extreme, Christian fundamentalism argues against any evolutionary account of creation and of the first humans for a young earth (10 000–20 000 years) created with a built-in age of 4.5 billion years (Grudem 1994:295–297, 304–306).

Although Genesis does not portray history in the sense of modern histories, the scientific evidence, rightly interpreted, does not conflict with biblical accounts and presents God- directed and precise biological evolution coming out of a less than idyllic swirl as the most viable explanation (Lioy 2011:25–26, 44, 85). Whether more recently or back into a nascent evolutionary forming, the human pursuit for God has reached across time, place, and all cultures and milieus (Cady 2001:23–25). The story of this search for God has been a particularly intense quest that, at times, is told and experienced in often opposing perspectives.

Humans, in legitimately exercising genuine freewill, rebelled against God, both wrongly expressing imago Dei [image of God] in choice and wilfulness, and thereby falling from God’s intended purposes, and in this falling away, became like God (Welker 1999:75–76; Gn 3:22). This, unfortunately, is also on display in Christian culture as testified by the cant, although perhaps well intentioned, and other legalistically, rebellious ways of living such as the popular phrase, ‘What would Jesus do?’ as another approach of trying to discern an ethical expression of God without God, leaving aside the ‘becoming’.

God’s heart and relationship

Spiritual transformation

This ‘becoming’ from the fall, addressed above, well positioned human beings to receive the intent and heart of God. It seems that the world, and the extent of spiritual transformation, ranges from an etiolated theology to experiential fullness. This article contains beginning considerations about God’s heart, in relationship, and its implication toward an image-bearing human spirituality and how the Edenic fall interrupted this intent. From this, God’s heart has active interest in recovery of his fully, expressed image in humanity especially as experienced in PrōST (proleptic, spiritual transformation).

It appears presumptuous to speak as though one might know something about God’s heart. After all, God is transcendent, eternal, immortal, immutable, and invisible – the magnificent creator of the universe and the maker of heaven and earth and all their content, seen and unseen, experienced and never to be experienced. What is to be experienced of God is to be found in Christ as facilitated by the participation of the Spirit, who brings Christ and his benefits, and through whom disciples find communion with God (Canlis 2010:154–155).

God, in unapproachable glory, is ‘outside’, ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘before’, and ‘after’ space-time, and yet contains space-time (Gn 1:31; Ec 8:17; 1 Jn 4:12; 1 Tm 1:17; 6:16). God contains all; all is in God (Job 12:10; Da 5:23b; Ac 17:28). God is the uncreated creator and uncaused cause of reality and all of its content. He sustains the entire ‘universe by the word of his power’ (Col 1:17; Heb 1:3). As Anselm famously said, God is that being ‘than which nothing greater can be conceived’ (Fairweather 1956:75). Yet this God, who is transcendent, is revealed in Christ Jesus (Jn 1:18; 6:46; 8:19; 14:7–10) in whom humans participate in communion in Trinitarian immortality ‘in the Word, by the Spirit’ only in ‘relational context’ (Canlis 2010:77).

Although much is claimed regarding the revelations of God’s heart in creation – experiential tales by individuals and communities – God and God’s heart is at the deepest level a mystery. John Calvin (2006:62) spoke to this mystery with poignant counsel in that the ‘most perfect way’ to seek God is not to attempt to satiate one’s curiosity by attempting to probe and investigate his essence but rather to adore and meditate him as can be seen in his great works. It is by these works that God is close and known to his children, and by which he communes with his creatures (ICR 1.5.9).

Not only can God’s heart be seen in his works, but as further considered below, the Judeo-Christian scriptures display the heart of God and help derive his desires (Ps 19:1; 50:6; 144:6; Rm 1:19–20). The anthropological personifications used in scripture to describe God, although only partial and incomplete, are adequate to the task of revelation for human understanding (2 Tm 3:15–17). More pointedly, in the hands of the Yahwist, they are the ‘boldest anthropomorphisms’ and necessary to God’s, self-revelation (Von Rad 1972:25–26). God’s heart is laid open in the histories, narratives, poetry, psalms, parables, allegories, and directives of Hebrew and Christian canon and deuterocanonical writings.

As testified by these writings, God determined to make known to humans the ‘mystery of his will’ which serves God’s purpose (Eph 1:7–10; 3:3). This μυστήριον (Greek) indicates that God’s will, in plan, was hidden. God’s self-revelation opens his heart to human knowledge and experience. Moreover, God’s self-revelation now makes possible that one might join and serve God’s heart desire in fulfilling his will and plan (Chan 1998:140, 223–224; Willard 1997:97–99).

The theory and theology of an unknowable God, a God that is exclusively transcendent, ineffable and ‘transcategorical, meaning beyond the range of our human systems of concepts or mental categories’ (Hick 2001), is most often offered as the discussion’s end point. Nevertheless, there is a vast list that can be numbered regarding the revelation of God’s heart in scripture and following that God is to some measure and at some level knowable. The evidential testimony to God’s heart as found in scripture is indeed, a priori, multitudinous. Nonetheless, the intent and subject of this study is specific to spiritual transformation and the possibility of proleptic, spiritual reality. God’s heart specifically regarding this subject graciously presents as seminal, knowable, vital, and central. It is a focus of this discussion.

Mystics and contemplatives variously claim that the Judeo-Christian God, in particular, is experienced in both presence and absence and sought in positive (cataphatic) expression and the negative (apophatic) expression (McGinn 2005:xviii). These differences of pursuit are not solely academic distinctions. Their paradigms portend existential outcomes. The nature of the Christian relationship with God directs or even determines any transformative effect of that relationship upon the life of the seeker, initiate, or seasoned disciple as they seek spiritual transformation. Moreover, and to the point of this study, God’s heart still yearns for a full, rich, and transformative relationship with humanity (Ps 34:8; Can 8:1; Jn 14:23; 17:21–23; Rm 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18; 6:16; Grenz 2001:268; Van Huyssteen 2006: 118–123).

God seeks an intimate and vital relationship with humans and is injured by the loss of this relationship (Lk 13:34; 19:41; Jn 11:33; 13:21). God desires to be in conversational relationship with humans as friends, freely living in God’s will and glory (Ex 29:43–46; 33:11; Ps 23; Is 41:8; Jn 15:14; Heb 13:5–6; Willard 1999:10). Toward this desire, after the Edenic fall, God’s heart immediately reached out to restore fallen humanity to relationship within the Triune, perichoretic community, one another, and creation (Gn 3:8–11; Lv 26:12; Dt 23:14; 2 Cor 6:16).

Additionally, God must ontologically be an entity capable, available, responsive, and desirous of relationship with humans for any reasonable hope of intimate encounter with him. This might seem troublesome, since God is revealed as spirit, unsearchable, inscrutable, unseen, and as dwelling in unapproachable light (Ps 145:3; Jn 6:46; 2 Cor 3:17; 1 Tm 1:17; 6:16; Gn 1:2b; 1 Ki 8:27; Is 55:8; Jn 3:6, 8; 4:24; 1 Jn 4:12).

Trinitarian theology demonstrates that God is not only spirit and spiritual, but also that God is three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit, who are in a perfect and unique relationship of divine love within the perichoretic union of the Trinity (Moltmann 1993a:258). Borrowing from the Christian philosopher and martyr Boethius (c. 480–525) in that the nature of a person is its irreplaceable substance, Moltmann (1993b:172) juxtaposes this notion against Augustine’s thoughts on relationship and concludes that each of the Trinity possess the ‘same individual, indivisible and one divine nature’ in varied ways, the Father of himself and the Son and Spirit from the Father. So then, they are independent in their divinity, but profoundly constrained and dependent on one another. It follows from this, Moltmann (1993b:173) claims that personality and relationships are connected and present simultaneously. The Trinity subsists in ‘the common divine nature’ and the Trinity ‘exists in relations to one another’. In truth, to be a person, as is each of the Trinity, is to be in and moulded by relationship ‘in accordance with the relational difference’ and not constituted by the relationship but rather presupposed in it (Moltmann 1993b:172).

In what may be an unpopular contention, this article argues that humans are not hindered in the reality of imago Dei by the notion of also being sinners (Moltmann 1993a:216, 219). Although their actual sins do hinder humans in relationship with God, sins become a blockage to divine communion. It is a violation of image bearing, limiting human reflection of God (2 Cor 3:18) and the nature of such a relationship that image bearing suggests and requires. Sin is a violation of loving God and others (Mt 22:36–40). The act of being human is unrelentingly in relationship to God (Brunner 2002:150; Moltmann 1993a:220). Sin is a perversion of that relationship, but as a creation or gift from God, humanness cannot be annulled or rescinded except if God were to do it (Moltmann 1993a:233). Since sins do not stop one from being human, relationship with God cannot be fully broken nor can the imago Dei be lost (Feinberg 1972:245; Van Huyssteen 2006:135). Following this, sin and righteousness is determined in the relationship of love of God and neighbour (Mk 12:30–31). This is the same love that drew God into incarnation and his sacrificial work. This is the imago Dei that Christ’s disciples are called to live in unseating sins (not any notion of original sin except as the first sin) to freely live in relationship with God, others, and the creation.

Spirituality
PrōST

The understanding of sin briefly presented above is important, for by it koinōnia is affected. The nature of the Christian relationship with God directs and even determines any transformative effect of that relationship upon the life of the seeker, initiate, or seasoned disciple as they look to spiritual transformation. The new academic discipline ‘spirituality’ probably began in France during the first half of the twentieth century and referred to a kind of liberation. Both ascetics and mystical theology seem to imply excessive inflexible and elitist concepts of divine activity. This prior concept is overwrought with distinctions between human nature and God’s grace. Spirituality attempts to address a multifaceted range of human experience (Endean 2005:74).

More particularly, this article defines spirituality or the lived experience of spirituality as one’s conscious participation in life synthesis through an experiential integration of self- transcendence toward ultimate value (Schneiders 2005:1). More accessibly, spiritual transformation mainly points to a basic change in the place or character of the sacred as life’s significance (Pargament 2007:21). Integration of one’s life into the sacred is a change in spiritual quality, vivacity, function, character, or condition from one experiential level to another that may have collateral effects on soul, body, and creation. Moreover, such transformation will alter one’s relationship with others as well as God. ‘Transformation’ is used and explored throughout this article. Although the terms ‘ascetical’ and ‘mystical’ are used in spiritual writings, a preference for the forms of ‘spiritual’ – a term more focused on the human experience, especially as it relates to God – is found throughout this article.

One may call the spiritual, transformation process sanctification, right and moral living, the Spirit-filled life, progressive theosis, divinisation, deification, divine filiation, or some other appellation to spiritual transformation. The problem presented here is not the naming of the process or state, but rather the proposed process and state, and who is included in what is mostly referred to herein as proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST). Proleptic here, meaning spiritual transformation usually thought reserved for the eschaton, is anachronistically enjoyed, to a measure, in the present.

In addition to the examples that one can find in scripture (e.g. Gn 2:7–9; Can; Mk 9:2–8; Gl 2:20; 2 Cor 3:16–18; 12:2–4; 1 Th 5:12–26; 2 Pt 1:4; 1 Jn 3:2), there are extra-biblical spiritual writings and authors, too numerous to list all of them here. They can be found starting in the first century C.E. onward (e.g. First epistle of Clement, Clement [c. 80–140 C.E.]; The shepherd of Hermas, Anon [c. 100–160]; The cloud of unknowing, Anon [c. 1375]; The practice of the presence of God, Brother Lawrence [c. 1605–1691]; The imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis [c. 1380–1471]) until present times – e.g. Absolute surrender, Murray [1895]; Streams of living water, Foster [1998]; The divine conspiracy, Willard [1997]; The wound of knowledge, Williams [1991]; Subversive spirituality, Peterson [1997], The return of the prodigal son, Nouwen [1994]).

These writings example, discuss, debate, and instruct on what can be experienced of the spiritual and of God. Like Celebration of discipline (Foster 1988), these writings often present various methods and disciplines intended to facilitate a way to these spiritual experiences and encounter with God. The extent of experienced spiritual transformation ranges from initiation to deification or divinisation (Gk., θεός). This article generally means, by such terms (deification, divinisation, and theosis), a real knowledge of God and actual participation in God’s divine life (Meyendorff 1985:350). Rarely is deification or divinisation spoken of in the fully developed, superlative meaning as a possibility for the present space-time continuum before eternity is entered. Deification is not in any way an issue of receiving God’s incommunicable essence (e.g. aseity, incomprehensibility, omnipotence, omniscience), but rather only God’s communicable attributes such as righteousness, holiness, love, dominion, intellect; glory (Kärkkäinen 2004:30–31; Gn 1:26; Dt 6:5; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10; 1 Cor 11:17). The organic flow of this reality is further considered below in the next section.

Human and divine koinōnia
Perichorisis

The scholastic position, represented here by Thomas Aquinas (1981:1140), speaks about ‘partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature ... by a participated likeness’. Although, the position of this article posits a scholastic similarity (at least as held by Thomas) to Orthodoxy (Plested 2012:11, 27–28, 225), though route and methods may differ. This article sets aside the controversies of Orthodox practices of Hesychasm, and its variants whilst holding to the desired possibility of direct experiential fellowship with God by which deification is enjoyed by measures, as Paul says from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18).

From a Reformed position, Carl Mosser (2002:38–40) finds deification in both Luther and Calvin (particularly 2 Pt). Canlis (2010:188) looks to Calvin and Irenaeus and argues that Irenaeus’s anachronistic sense of deification is helpful in removing any competitive relationship between humans and the Creator. Although admittedly ‘deconstructive concepts’ were intended to destroy Gnostic ‘radical incompatibility [laid] between heaven and earth’ this deification makes humans more like God in koinōnia (Greek) or Triune, perichoretic relationship with God, adoption presented as proof of such a deification (Canlis 2010:190, 237). If deification is in any way an issue of receiving God’s essence, it is not a matter of the incommunicable but rather only God’s communicable attributes (Kärkkäinen 2004:30–31).

Whilst agreeing with Canlis (2010:236) that deification is a matter of fellowship and relationship of koinōnia (Greek), with God, to be direct and clear, this work holds most closely to an Orthodox position that the image breathed (Gn 1:26; 2:7) into humans was the beginning, inviolate deposit of those communicable divine energies or nature of God ultimately resulting in deification (Lossky 1974:98, 110; Mantzaridis 1984:15). Thus, the transformation spoken of here is coming into a fuller expression of that which is communicable, by removing the dross caused in the fall and protracted wilful acts on display throughout human history, that opens one to fellowship or koinōnia (Greek). It is God’s communicable nature ‘[extending] to the whole human makeup, not excepting the “cloak of skin” ... penetrated by deifying grace ... what God is by nature’ (Lossky 1974:139).

Grace is within the realm of deification in perfect conformity with God. Thereby, transformation is removing that which may obscure the imago Dei from being more fully expressed in humans, without limit to one particular human facet but ‘the whole of human existence’ (Mantzaridis 1984:16). It contains an ontological eventuality of full, unhindered, and expressed imago Dei as deification in relationship and expression not incommunicable divine essence.

Calvin establishes his relational view as can be seen by a thorough review of his writings. He rejects any difference between image and likeness (Gn 1:27) as a difference between substance and qualities (Grenz 2001:166–167), stating that humans are the ‘brightest mirror’ of God’s glory (Calvin 1999:85). Canlis (2010:3, 80, 92) reaches beyond ‘brightest mirror’ and further into Calvin’s thought in which Christ brings humanity into ‘obedient communion to the Father’ by his descent from koinōnia with his Father, followed by his ascent back to the Father, bringing with him, in ascension, all of the lost. It is in this koinōnia in Christ to God that imago Dei is born and enjoyed (Canlis 2010:3, 65, 82, 85). It is a full-orbed transformation.

Full-orbed spiritual transformation
Theosis

Amongst the main Christian bodies, the Orthodox Church, followed by elements of the Catholic Church, has been the most forthcoming in offering a theology and model of full-orbed spiritual transformation toward deification or divinisation as a full development toward koinōnia in Christ. The Orthodox Church, in fact, has been unequivocally explicit to call such a potential spiritual transformation deification or divinisation. The beginning of this process, according to the Orthodox Church, is available today, and yet they do not hold out the expectation for the main population of Christians for deification or divinisation before eternity. It seems that Orthodox theologians are united in their belief that human, culminating deification is not obtained until the eschaton with the so-called ‘third birth’, but that a very clear and firm beginning should distinguish all Christians presently (Clendenin 1994:377). The Church fathers and mothers, both early and later, have variously spoken of these experiences with God. Both the Orthodox Church and Catholic Church have owned these persons and mystical approaches in differing manners and degrees (Campbell 1907; McGinn 2005:149–157; Zizioulas 1985:38–40, 116–119).

Whoever might claim ownership, the early church fathers (e.g. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen of Alexandria) spoke of deification (McGinn 2006:397). This language better harmonises with Orthodox theology. As per Steeves (1992:806–808), in the final analysis, within the Byzantine period, Orthodoxy’s considerable mysticism, intuition, and amalgamation were firmly fixed. This was in sharp contrast to the West’s philosophical, scholastic, and forensic design (809). History also records a number of smaller bodies of Christians that have reached for this ‘glory’ (2 Cor 3:16–18). Amongst them are Friends of God, Brethren of the Common Life, Quietists, Quakers, Pietists, and the Morovians (Cairns 1981:249–250, 378–382).

Where theosis, deification, and divinisation are not explicitly addressed by these early disciples and mystics, ‘union’ with God is proposed by such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, and John of The Cross (McGinn 2006:427–429). Hero mystics of the Orthodox Church, such as St. Anthony the Great, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Macrina (St. Gregory of Nyssa’s sister), St. Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory of Palamas, all left the church with examples of the spiritual life. However, their ranks are suspiciously lacking in the writings of women (Ashbrook-Harvey 2010), whilst the Catholic tradition has a number of women who left mystical writings for posterity. Examples of female Catholic writing mystics are Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Liseux. The Orthodox Church and, to a less defined degree, the Catholic Church, are the two largest bodies that have continued with these beliefs, in varying modes.

In more recent times, in no particular order, some representative mystics or contemplatives that have shaped much of the present spiritual, transformational thought and expectations are the writings of Madame Guyon, William Law, John Wesley, Evelyn Underhill, Andrew Murray, Ruth Paxon, Watchman Nee, Simone Weil, Dallas Willard, Jacob Böhme, Richard Foster, Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths from the Benedictines, and Mother Gavriellia Papaiannis from the Orthodox. Clearly, these representatives stand on the shoulders of the scriptures, the church fathers and mothers, and those mystics and seekers who have come before (Chan 1998:82–83, 103– 109, 190; Foster & Griffin 2000:xi–xiv; Willard 1997:271–273). Some have already been cited above; nevertheless, there does not seem to be a unified theology or praxis or single guiding light.

Transformational anaemia?

Discussions about the extent of spiritual transformation range from the anaemic to full-orbed experience. The Church fathers and mothers have variously spoken of these experiences of God. Admittedly, the accusation of heterodoxy, aberrance, and even heresy sometimes trouble the words of these early innovators (McGinn 2006:481, 490, 511–512).

Although there is a rich and long history of mystics, seekers, and ‘common people’ simply desirous of the divine, there is no unified, broadly, accepted understanding of spirituality. What spiritual conditions or attributes of God are communicably and fully available to humans has not been clearly and thoroughly presented and made available in Christian literature. More specifically, there does not seem to be much, if anything, addressing ‘proleptic, spirituality transformation’ (PrōST). That is, what of the ‘not-yet’, if any, of these communicable conditions and attributes are available ‘now’ for humanity to enjoy of God’s restorative and progressive work of spiritual transformation?

Moltmann (1993b:216–217) says that ‘the truth of freedom is love.’ God’s love brings freedom, not constraint. Freedom constrains itself by love (Jn 14:21–24; 2 Cor 5:14). Moltmann continues that this freedom is directed toward the future in the hope of God’s coming and yet to be defined potentials. ‘In the Spirit we transcend the present in the direction of God’s future’. Such thought furthers the reality of proleptic not-yet living and draws it down in a ‘creative function’ into the now (PrōST).

Humans were originally created in the ‘image and likeness’ of God (Gen 1:26–27). This creation, in God’s image, joined with the natural world and has been expressed in both the immaterial and material worlds, that is, both ontologically and functionally, making them different than the animals of creation (Lioy 2011:86, 89). God’s ‘image’ tselem (Hebrew) ‘does not consist in man’s body which was formed from earthly matter, but in his spiritual, intellectual, moral likeness to God from whom [humanity’s] animating breath came’ (Harris, Archer & Waltke 1980:767–768). Neither does

this article enter the debate of whether ‘is’ or ‘in’ the image is the correct rendering except to say that the human being both is the imago Dei and in the imago Dei however found in this article. Although there seems to be some ‘representational’ elements in image, for example, functional dominion over the earth as consequence of being God’s vicegerents, these elements fail to address either the substantive or the relational theories of image. That is, what, if any, is the structural, essential, spiritual sameness, or possession of humans as God’s image (substantive)? Moreover, what is the relationship of humans to God and creation in order to reflect God’s image back to God and creation in those relationships (relational [Herzfeld 2005:363])?

Relationship

The prior, present, and future condition of humanity is a labyrinth difficult to navigate and derive any coherent systematic that would assist this goal of God-reflection. Yet, the scriptures seem to reveal God’s desire for some large measure of relationship with his creatures as they bear God’s image in kingdom living. A primary question continues to surface regarding the extent of that relationship and image and the effects of that relationship and image upon the heart of God and the condition of humanity and creation. There is an ineffaceable drive within humans to find God. It is a reciprocated drive – a response to God who first sought and continues to seek humans – a correlate and concomitant seeking in response to God. Again, what of the ‘not-yet’, if any, of God’s communicable conditions and attributes are available ‘now’ for humanity to enjoy of God’s restorative and progressive work of spiritual transformation? Amongst the many secondary questions that can be asked regarding proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST), the following should be considered:

• What does God’s heart, in relationship, imply toward an image-bearing human spiritually, and what, if any, are the implications on this from the Edenic fall?
• In what measure is God actively interested in the recovery of his image in humanity as the remedy to the spiritual effects of the fall and in PrōST?

• What are the means by which God reveals or unveils his heart, truth, and intents toward creation and humanity in particular in the plan of spiritual recovery/PrōST?

• What are the transformative and soteriological implications of PrōST?
• What are the possibilities, if any, to develop a unified theory regarding PrōST from the conclusions of the study?

Although these questions cannot be fully answered in this short article, the central question underlying this article is to ask whether individuals must wait for the afterlife to have purification and spiritual transformation fully or largely ‘worked out’ – that is, the possible opportunity to greatly ‘work out [one’s transformation] with fear and trembling [now]’ (Phlp 2:12–13). This article answers that God’s economy includes provisions for a present enjoyment of the imago Dei in transformation as inclusive of the life of Christ. This transformation, as the imago Christi, is to be reflected and represented by humans in time and in relation to God and creation as kingdom life in the ‘now’.

To reach the ultimate aim of this study, the prior questions must be thoroughly addressed in future research. Each of them could become a separate study. However, the central theoretical argument of this article is that humans were originally created in the ‘image and likeness’ of God (Gn 1:26–27); nevertheless, the enjoyment and expression, not the essence, of this imago Dei has been greatly blemished, marred, and damaged by a God-defying wilfulness of humanity (Gn 2:16; 3). Despite this rebellion, God desires a full restoration of the enjoyment and expression of his image. God has not forgotten his intent that humans would express him in this life as his image (Rm 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 1:11; Col 2:13; 3:10; 2 Tm 1:9; 1 Pt 5:10). Moreover, the imago Dei now carries something more – the God-man (imago Christi). God’s image in Jesus now carries the existential realities of his incarnate life toward which PrōST drives. This article should be followed by a re-examination of the conventional partitioning of the ‘now’ and ‘not-yet’ for a new balance and paradigm in expressed PrōST toward imago Dei.

Repeating, the present authors argue that imago Dei now carries something more – the God-man. God’s image in Jesus the Christ now carries the existential realities of his incarnate life toward which PrōST (proleptic, spiritual transformation) drives in the now (Rm 8:29; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:5). In spiritual disciplines, there is no suggestion to immanentise the eschaton. Nor is there any suggestion in this article that any effort of human creatures can introduce the kairos of God prematurely. However, ushering in some measure of the ‘not-yet’ into the ‘now’, especially as spiritual transformation is defined, seems possible. Although this article makes no claims or suggestions of dominion theology or kingdom-now proposals, the implications of PrōST suggest a measure of the not-yet now – a living in the not-yet although the kingdom has not been fully manifested and the world is not yet fully transformed as God’s kingdom. The authors are not alone in positing that ‘salvation/liberation’, as Hick argues (1996:185), is not an event to wait for until the afterlife but rather something that should be expected and entered into now.

Variegation

The approach to this transformed life is not a mixture or even a combinant. It is the tension between memory, faithfulness, preservation to what has been given and yet variegated, something original, and a departure from the prior (Caputo 1997:6). In this ‘deconstruction is treated as an hermeneutic of the kingdom of God’ as an approach to interpretation that assisted in seeing the prophetic spirit of the unpredictable and sometimes dissonant outsider—Jesus—who took a stand with the marginalised, disenfranchised, and downtrodden (Caputo 2007:26). Here may emerge a ‘unified approach’ for spiritual transformation and God-reflection.

Moreover, deconstruction occasionally supported this article by affirming, but without being self-certain and positive. Here it is not used as a position in opposition to Christianity or for that matter any other established or proofed belief or practice. Deconstruction is a disquieting tool by which to examine a stance or belief, about how not to hold too strongly any given stance or belief. It presses against seeing or holding a stance or belief as decided with too much complacency and certainty, and rather encourages permitting one’s self to be held (Caputo 2007:55–56).

The authors of this article intended that post-foundationalism enfolded deconstructive principles and the eclectic hermeneutic described above to provide space in which an understanding of proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST) was best gained.

Utilising an eclectic hermeneutic, this research gained an understanding of what God’s heart, in relationship, implies toward human spirituality, and what the implications of this are from the Edenic fall. Moreover, an eclectic hermeneutic affirmed that God’s interest in recovery of his image (imago Christi) in humanity and PrōST is the remedy to the spiritual effects of the fall.

Utilising an eclectic hermeneutic, the authors hope for the reader a measure of understanding of the means by which God reveals or unveils his heart, truth, and intents toward creation and humanity in particular in the plan of spiritual recovery and PrōST. To corroborate this purpose, the means and methods of God’s revelation in unveiling his heart, truth, and intents toward creation and humanity in particular toward spiritual recovery and PrōST, should be examined. Moreover, the transformative and soteriological implications of proleptic, spiritual transformation (PrōST) would follow and then determine whether a unified theory regarding PrōST emerges. This same assisted an understanding of the transformative and soteriological implications of PrōST. Utilising this eclectic hermeneutic suggested further areas of supporting study .

Conclusion

The subject of this article leads to more questions than can be answered in such a short study. However, this article did affirm the human elemental pursuit as God’s intent to fulfil this created, intrinsic human desire for spiritual transformation in the now. It seems clear that God created humans with a purpose to represent him in creation and through intimate relationship and that in imago Dei. Perhaps it is as simple as Calvin (2006:62) suggests when he says the ‘most perfect way’ to seek God is not to attempt to satiate one’s curiosity by attempting to probe and investigate his essence, but rather to adore and meditate him as can be seen in his great works. It is by these works that God is close and known to his children, and by which he communes with his creatures (ICR 1.5.9).

Additionally, as already stated, Moltmann (1993b:216–217) says that ‘the truth of freedom is love’. God’s love brings freedom, not constraint. Freedom constrains itself by love (Jn 14:21–24; 2 Cor 5:14). Moreover, Moltmann continues that this freedom is directed toward the future in the hope of God’s coming and yet to be defined potentials. ‘In the Spirit we transcend the present in the direction of God’s future’. Such a thought furthers the reality of proleptic not-yet living and draws it down in a ‘creative function’ into the now (PrōST). This article answers that God’s economy includes provisions for a present enjoyment of the imago Dei in transformation as inclusive of the life of Christ. This transformation, as the imago Christi, is to be reflected and represented by humans in time and in relation to God and creation as kingdom life in the ‘now.’

This relationship (koinōnia) is intended to lead to full expression of God’s heart in a perichoretic experience of PrōST (proleptic, spiritual transformation). The primary aim of this article answered that individuals do not need to wait for the afterlife to have purification and spiritual transformation fully or largely ‘worked out’. That is, the eventual demonstrates that PrōST, an experience of transformation and kingdom life usually reserved for heaven in eternity, is greatly available today. This ‘not- yet’, experienced ‘now’, ushers in the kingdom life and a glorification of God in his creation especially in human beings in prolepsis. A deeper examination of God’s heart in these matters will be considered in a follow-on article scheduled to appear in this journal.

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Jesus Christ: Preliminaries in Christology and The Second Person of The Trinity more

by Darryl Wooldridge, PhD

Abstract

Christology is the foundation and center of Christianity. This paper begins a clear and unambiguous presentation of who Christ was in eternity past, whom Christ was when he walked the Earth, and what Christ came to do. Christ’s incarnational life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the foundation of Christology. Without these four events Christology looses its universal reconciliation (Gk. aποκατάστασις πάντως) for all of creation, and Christianity falls into ruin.

The claim that Christ died to reconcile the world rests upon who Christ is. That is, Christology will inform Christian beliefs regarding the all-important work, acceptance, status, and accessibility of aποκατάστασις πάντως as provided by Christ. To be wrong here is to miss the mark and to believe an invention or myth.

Although human words are inadequate, divine revelation in the Bible, as debated and establish by councils, creeds, and doctrine, make great, progressive attempts. As discussed here these include Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity, the Messiah, pre-existence, and co-equality with the Father and Spirit, incarnation, fully God and fully man (the God-man). Jesus lived as a man in every way except that he was without sin. By living without sin, Jesus became the victor to reconcile the world. His resurrection was a seal of God’s acceptance of that victory. He ascended to the right hand of God the Father, and he will soon return to receive his redeemed and have all put under his feet and made right.

The following is a small survey. Full listing and consideration of all Christology has filled thousands of books, lectures, and fueled multitudinous debates. Christology has occupied the greatest Christian minds for millennia and will continue to do so until Christ returns.

2014-06-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Follow me on https://nwu.academia.edu/DarrylWooldridge

Proleptic spiritual transformation: Living in the not yet

2014-06-26T19:21:00.001-07:00

This doctoral work has been removed to make it more accessible in book form as Relationship Is the Transformative space.

Present Practice And Implications

2014-06-12T19:34:00.001-07:00

Much of the present day spiritual discipline and practice owes its foundations to the early mystical fathers and mothers and their developments over more than a thousand years (from Origen [c. 180-254] to Catherine of Siena [1347-1389]). The single common practice was to seek a state of prayer without ceasing—to bring themselves into intimate communion and union with God.[1] There are, now, active monasteries and various religious orders that continue this goal, along with other practices, with strict adherence to their predecessors’ ways of life. In fact, there is an evident need for a reapplication or regaining of the early practices, many associated with mysticism. The shallow living of most Christians and the church at large give no alternative to a world’s increasing desire for the spiritual. Spirituality is an increasing awareness and growing industry among the Western satiates and the world’s never-ending have-nots.[2]

The Catholic, Protestant, and various Orthodox churches all have many religious orders, teachers, and practitioners of the mystical ways. Yet there seems to be a dearth of evidence of any general or large examples of encounter with God and subsequent kingdom of God living (Matthew 5-7). Such a living should result from an encounter with the living God. Yet this testimony is lacking in this dark and dieing world. The light and salt of the Christian testimony is too often absent from the affairs of this world and rather supplanted by the abusive and godless powers of this world.

To slake the desires and needs of the multitudes, the church must first begin to answer the departing call of the Lord Jesus Christ: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20 [italics the author’s]). It is such a discipled church—practicing the presence of God and living from the very being of God—which they have experienced. It is such a church peopled with these kinds of disciples that is equipped to make disciples and not simply converts.

Rowan Williams speaks to a profound, but most often overlooked, need among the members of the body of Christ. It is selfless, even self-humbling, and enabling discipline to facilitate the opportunity for others to encounter the life-giving presence of God. He is speaking of discipling.

What if the real criteria for a properly functioning common life, for social existence in its fullness, had to do with this business of connecting each other with life-giving reality, with the possibility of reconciliation or wholeness? What if the deepest threat to life together were standing in the way of another person’s discovery of wholeness by insistent clinging to self-justification? Our success . . . would be measured only in the degree to which those around us were discovering a way to truth and life. . . .[3]

It is a loving of “your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39b) that is illustrated by Williams in these questions. The mystic’s goal is not isolation and only self-serving but rather to be equipped to love God and neighbor. Having missed this mark the mystic’s efforts are simply self-aggrandizement. Facilitating and loving others into the presence of God is being the good neighbor. This is loving “your neighbour as yourself.” Loving God and neighbor is to fulfill the law; it is the disciple’s expression of spiritual

transformation.

[1]I Rowan William, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another and Other Lessons from the Desert Fathers (Boston, MA: New Seeds, 2005), p.160.

[2]Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality And The Reshaping of Religion in The Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), pp. 83, 146-147.

[3]Williams, Where God Happens, p. 25.

Good News (Rob Bell)

2014-06-05T06:17:00.002-07:00

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." So we don't either.--Rob Bell

Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the Right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the Battle for American Science: The real reason conservatives are freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson: He's laying bare their worst hypocrisies.

2014-05-30T08:25:00.001-07:00

Salon / By Sean McElwee

151 COMMENTS

The religious right has been freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance of Enlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.

There is a nasty tendency for those arguing for their case to adopt a stance of enlightened empiricism on one issue to devolve into empirical nihilism on another. There is also the habit of shifting from a high praise of liberal values on one issue to utter contempt on another. Of course, our various liberal values will come into conflict frequently and must be weighed, but we must be disturbed at how quickly some, particularly on the religious right, are willing to twist these traditions for their own gain.

The odd conflict of science and religion has come to define modern religious fundamentalism. While most religious people happily accept scientific theories about gravity, claims about the age of Earth are subject to a strange scrutiny by those who believe that the literary creation narratives in the Bible describe actual events.

The scientific consensus about global warming must be untrue, because, as Dr. Innes writes in “Left, Right and Christ,” the world is “not a glass ornament that we might accidentally destroy … we are not capable of destroying it, whether by nuclear weapons or carbon emissions.” Young earth creationism is the ultimate attempt to both accept modern science, but also to deny it. Fundamentalists like Ken Ham argue that the world and laws we currently observe simply bear no resemblance to the past.

In truth, we cannot get fundamentalism without the scientific revolution. Fundamentalism does not exist independently, but rather defines itself in relationship to post-Enlightenment values. It is the odd melding of science and religion that creates fundamentalism — the belief that the Bible is ultimately both a scientific and religious text. Fundamentalists, like the conspiracy theorists they resemble, will build up reams of evidence creating the case for something that can be disproven with a simple logical proposition. Few thinkers have built such an impressive edifice of logic and evidence upon such a thin foundation of speculation.

Dinesh D’Souza, for instance, has taken to using science as proof of religion — he argues, rather absurdly, that the Bible’s explanation of the origins of the universe predates modern science. In his speech at Intelligence Squared, he claims:

When the discovery of the big bang came — this, by the way, was at a time when most scientists believed the universe was eternal, the steady state universe was the prevailing doctrine of American and Western science — so it came as a shock that the universe had a beginning. Why? because, in a way, it wasn’t just that matter had a beginning, but space and time also had a beginning. In other words, this was something that the ancient Hebrews had said thousands of years ago and without conducting a single scientific experiment. By the way, this is not the same as other cosmologies. Other ancient cosmologies posited the universe being fashioned by a kind of carpenter god who made it out of some preexisting stuff, but the ancient Hebrews said, “No, first there was nothing, and then there was a universe.”

But this rhetorical flourish is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the creation narrative, and religion in general. Religion, ultimately, aims at truths deeper than science and trying to apply religious reasoning to the natural world is absurd. Augustine warned as much, telling Christians in “De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim” to avoid, “talking nonsense on these topics.”

More worryingly, the idea that a rather tenuous reading of a literary work holds the same weight as centuries of scientific evidence is more than a little absurd. D’Souza is trying to selectively apply science, but without its foundation — empirical, testable, repeatable propositions.

We see here the fundamentalist flaw: a mass of rhetoric, reason and evidence built on the utterly insane proposition that the Old Testament is meant to be a scientific account of the origins of the universe.

The reason any somewhat knowledgeable Christian is frustrated by these debates is that they simply pit one fundamentalist against another. One tries to use science to disprove religion, the other to prove it — both apparently unaware that belief is something that cannot be “proven.” That’s the entire point! Too often, religious excursions into science resemble the thinking of the suicidal people described by Anne Sexton, “They ask only what tool, they never ask why build?” Fundamentalism at its core is the misunderstanding of the proper relationship between science and religion — one practiced just as frequently by atheists as Christians.

Another form of this trend is the co-option of liberal values. The religious right cannot generally be found decrying freedom of speech or freedom of religion, instead they make a selective application of these values — much the way they’ll talk science when you question nuclear power but deny a consensus about evolution or global warming on entirely spurious grounds.

One recent example of this illiberalism was the quickness with which Catholics decried a “Black Mass” at Harvard. The “Black Mass” is merely a satanic parody of the Catholic mass — which, while it may be offensive to some Catholics, is totally harmless in practice. Of course, the idea of Catholics demanding special privileges is not rare, but to be expected; one wonders if Satanist child abusers could claim that their church would deal with the matter internally.

Liberal values are not weighed in a vacuum, but this weighing appears to be something many religious conservatives are incapable of doing. During the Black Mass controversy, Father James Martin appeared on MSNBC and said, “I think to put it in perspective, we could say, how would we feel if they said, ‘we’re going to do a little cultural thing, we’re going to do something that’s anti-Semitic, or racist, or homophobic, just as a cultural experiment, we’re going to set up the reenactment of a lynching …’” Father Martin claims to put the event in perspective, and then does the opposite, equating the merely offensive with an act of white supremacy.

Lynchings were intimately tied to white supremacy in the post-Civil War South — their intention was to establish white hegemony and create a permanent underclass. Lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan and the burning of crosses were either overtly violent or symbolically violent. The reenactment of a lynching would not be acceptable at a liberal university because it would amount to the direct threat of violence to minorities on campus. It would be aimed at suppressing their rights to expression.

One wonders how Father Martin has lived his entire life in the United States and is still capable of making such an odious comparison. The distinction between the merely offensive and what amounts to group libel or defamation is hard to make, but the Supreme Court has endorsed the idea that some speech may be more than just offensive, and can therefore be regulated. As Clarence Thomas noted in his correct dissent in Virginia v. Black, “just as one cannot burn down someone’s house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point.” Father Martin seems to miss this distinction and believes that he should be protected from ever being criticized or offended.

Hobby Lobby provides another example of the selective use of the liberal tradition. One might find it ironic that Catholics aim to carve out an exception for themselves from laws of general applicability when denying other religions that privilege. But sadly, religious majorities have a long history of understanding the First Amendment diametrically wrong, as a protection of powerful religions rather than weak ones. It is the latter the Founders knew would need special protection (see: Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah), not the former.

To both of these claims — that many on the religious right have entirely abandoned the post-WWI liberal consensus of scientific inquiry and Enlightenment values — there are those who would like to say the same about the left. The Economist is quick to point to GMOs as the left’s version of anti-scientific inquiry. Such claims are entirely overblown. More recently, there have been claims that the left is showing the same illiberal tendencies as the right, most notably Michelle Goldberg of the Nation. She argues we are “entering a new era of political correctness,” which she calls “left-wing anti-liberalism.”

While she cites some rather damning movements, they are all fringe movements that have produced pixels but will not bring about change. As Marx once wrote of Communism, “In order to supersede the idea of private property, the idea of communism is enough. In order to supersede private property as it actually exists, real communist activity is necessary.” We might note that the idea of illiberalism is something liberalism must countenance, even though it must be prevented from ever being existent.

And here the threat from the right is far stronger: We have seen free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion and rights of due process come under scrutiny at all levels. Workers are being denied even the semblance of control over their labor and women over their bodies. Money is making a mockery of democracy.

What we see is an asymmetric illiberalism. The religious right and some portions of the conservative movement have hijacked Enlightenment values for selective use. A truly deep (almost dogmatic) commitment to free speech, say, that practiced by the ACLU, which will defend the right of neo-Nazis to protest, is not what we find in many conservative circles. Instead, we see an embrace of empiricism when it is good and a rejection when it is bad. We see an embrace of religious freedom for me, but not for thee. Harry Emerson Fosdick preached in 1922:

The present world situation smells to heaven! And now, in the presence of colossal problems, which must be solved in Christ’s name and for Christ’s sake, the Fundamentalists propose to drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration. What immeasurable folly!

Well, they are not going to do it; certainly not in this vicinity. I do not even know in this congregation whether anybody has been tempted to be a Fundamentalist. Never in this church have I caught one accent of intolerance. God keep us always so and ever increasing areas of the Christian fellowship; intellectually hospitable, open-minded, liberty-loving, fair, tolerant, not with the tolerance of indifference, as though we did not care about the faith, but because always our major emphasis is upon the weightier matters of the law.

His words are still more important today. We live in an increasingly connected and multicultural world, and yet many major religions refuse to recognize marginal ones. We also live in a world threatened by global warming, and yet some Christians deny it, even though it has long been a tenet of religion to live in harmony with nature.

Sean McElwee is a writer and researcher of public policy. He blogs at seanamcelwee.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanmcelwee.

Feeding on Scripture

2014-02-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

Reading scripture may seem obvious and rudimentary. Some might think, if an individual is literate, what else is required? Well not everyone is literate. Besides, there seem to be plenty of Bibles available. By the year 2007, over 7.5 billion had been distributed throughout the world. There are approximately seven billion people living. Allowing for the loss of a .5 billion Bibles, that’s at least one Bible for every person on the planet! Just pick up one and go for it. Only about eighteen percent of the world’s population is illiterate. But wait, half of the world’s languages do not yet have a Bible translation at all. If you speak one of those languages, that may be a problem. There does seem to be a clear imbalance in access.

In addition, Americans own more than half of the world’s Bibles. In fact, those Americans, who have Bibles, have an average of three or four per person, including atheists, there is a large portion of the world that does not have even a small section of a Bible. Perhaps to my own shame, to slake my own “need” and desire, I have over sixty Bibles. I have English, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, various translations, and many study versions. Does anyone really need that many Bibles? Well, before I feel compelled to defend myself, let’s leave that discussion for another time.

I am not defending the rather recent (c. 19th century) doctrine of inerrancy. Any argument of "originals" is suspect, but that is another article. However, as is the case, that the whole person is affected by stirring one part, reaching through to persons by the imagination and emotions generated by fiction, story, allegory, and parable, affects the whole person. That is, story, allegory, and parable are some of the means to break through the conscious resistance that often blocks hearing. Such devices are inherent to scripture, inerrancy set aside.

Biblical mission is more of a poem and less of its common use as treatise, more art than science, using feelings and sensibilities to reach the mind to share sympathy, love, and life—it is about God’s beauty (Bushnell, 1976:344). Among the various genres, scripture uses such devices as story, allegory, and parable, in seeking to break through the intransigent ways of thinking that enslave individuals and communities to processing thought as comfortably expected. While scripture must be understood in ethical, logical, and historical ways, it must also be understood in its “aesthetic” (Milbank, 1998:123). It is beauty expressed in story, allegory, and parable.

The Bible can be said to be, in some parts, less of an ethical, logical, and historical focus and more of a teleological pointer even escort. Story, allegory, and parable are common devices found in scripture by which God speaks of deeper and higher truths than are readily seen by simple propositions and historical accounts. This is dressed in the beauty and pleasure of story pointing and reaching for the teleological goals of the creator of the universe particularly the spiritual maturation of humans beginning now. Story, allegory, and parable are used to tell truth and break through staid, stagnant, formalistic-views and beliefs whether they are present in biblical myth or history.

So then, what do we do with all of these Bibles? Well, forty-five percent of Americans adults (mainly Evangelicals) claim to read the Bible at least once a week. And yet only one third of Americans believe the Bible is the word of God. Okay, put aside the statistics. What do all these massive numbers mean to the subject of reading scripture? Well my point is not statistical, that is for sure. In fact you may be able to find better statistics than the ones I have cited. My point is that there is a glut of Bibles available to an extremely large portion of the world, and I am asking how much is being gained with such rich resources?

Any supposed gain is clearly questionable measured by world conditions. Where is the spiritual transformation that should accompany “right” reading and "consumption" of scripture? And of those who read the Bible, even fewer, I suspect by the lack of evidence (my own anecdotal conversations and observations) are actually fed by the words and enjoy their sweetness.

“Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. . . . How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Jeremiah 15:16; Psalm 119: 103).

We must not read Scripture in the same way we might read the comic strips, our newspapers, or even the best literature. Yes, the Bible is literature, and it can be read as such; however, what we are discussing here is something much deeper and more profound. We are considering the intended purposes of God’s speaking through scripture for his human creatures. Knowledge, history, poetry, ethics, and even wisdom can all be found in scripture. However, God’s desire is for encounter, communion, and intimacy with us. And by this relationship, he hopes to see us reflect his image. And so, although we may query the Bible for knowledge, history, and such, we primarily must look to encounter God through its pages. This encounter brings about transformation: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The techniques of hermeneutics (scriptural interpretation) and exegesis (to analyze and explain) will not be discussed here. That is, I am not here after teaching about the ingredients of the meal, about fat and fiber, or how many calories are included. I am exceedingly more interested, here, that we “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8; 1 Peter 2:3).

There are various methods to accomplish this. One well-known technique is lectio divina (divine reading). This and other such techniques are often accompanied by controversy, warning, and fear. Nevertheless, biblical reading does include meditation (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2; 19:14; 104:34; 119:15), memory (Joshua 1:13; Psalm 119:11; Matthew 21:16, 42; John 15:20), response (Exodus 19:8; 24:3; Matthew 7:24; Romans 2:13; James 1:22, 25; 2:14), obedience (Exodus 24:7; Deuteronomy 17:19), and praise (Psalm 56:4, 10; 106:12). Whatever the hesitation, we do not have to bring along the baggage of Eastern mysteries from some of the practices used for scripture reading.

I am not suggesting that we disengage our minds from reading scripture in an esoteric, Gnostic abandonment to whatever decides to enter our souls. I am simply suggesting that we open to the eternal God, creator of the universe and maker of heaven and earth. Listening to God speak through Scripture is not alien. Rather to miss this, renders the reader dull and unresponsive to God. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). We will be nourished as we feed on the living word of God. For this, deep intention, meditation, and prayer over the words of the Bible are critical. We are mining the very depths of life (John 1:1-4; 6:68).

We are reading scripture for life, and that life is found in God (John 1:4; 5:39-40; 11:25; 14:6; 1 John 5:20). “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). So then, however we read scripture, whatever disciplines or technique we use, if we are not gaining life, then we are approaching scripture only partially at best. To use lectio divina, meditation, memorization, imagery, prayer, or any other technique is not as important as touching the author of scripture, the one spoken of in scripture, the one being offered. This is the assurance of safety in our disciplined life.

Emptying or opening to anything or anyone else other than the God of the Bible is safeguarded when we read his scripture and hold him in our hearts and minds as we read or do anything else for that matter. If we do not dishonour God in our approach, he will be pleased to receive us into fellowship and communion. In fact, like a loving father who is happy to see his child bring him a painting that is nothing more than a mess of paint on butcher paper, God is delighted with our messy approaches of love toward him. No matter how mature we may become, we will always be as children in the presence of our Father.

I hope I didn’t disappoint you by not pontificating erudite techniques and profound seminary “secrets” of reading Scripture. If I can encourage some few to enjoy God in scripture, to be fed and nourished by his word through scripture, and to be further conformed to his image by that enjoyment (Romans 8:29; 12:2; 1 Peter 1:14), then I am extremely pleased. And so is our Father. We’ll later talk about the techniques of reading.

Anonymous

2014-01-30T14:50:00.000-08:00

On a hot summer day in south Florida, a little boy decided to go for a swim in the old swimming hole behind his house. In a hurry to dive into the cool water, he ran out the back door, leaving behind shoes, socks, and shirt as he went. He flew into the water, not realizing that as he swam toward the middle of the lake, an alligator was swimming toward the shore.

His father, working in the yard, saw the two as they got closer and closer together. In utter fear, he ran toward the water, yelling to his son as loudly as he could. Hearing his voice, the little boy became alarmed and made a u-turn to swim to his father. It was too late. Just as he reached his father, the alligator reached him. . . .

From the dock, the father grabbed his little boy by the arms just as the alligator snatched his legs. . . . That began an incredible tug-of-war between the two. The alligator was much stronger than the father, but the father was much too passionate to let go.

A farmer happened to drive by, heard his screams, raced from his truck, took aim and shot the alligator.

Remarkably, after weeks and weeks in the hospital, the little boy survived. His legs were extremely scarred by the vicious attack of the animal. And, on his arms, were deep scratches where his father's fingernails dug into his flesh in his effort to hang on to the son he loved.

The newspaper reporter who interviewed the boy after the trauma, asked if he would show him his scars. The boy lifted his pant legs. And then, with obvious pride, he said to the reporter, "But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them because My Dad wouldn't let go."

You and I can identify with that little boy. We have scars, too. No, not from an alligator, but the scars of a painful past. Some of those scars are unsightly and have caused us deep regret. But some wounds my friend are because God has refused to let go. In the midst of your struggle, He's been there holding on to you. . . .

The Scripture teaches that God loves you. You are a child of God. He wants to protect you and provide for you in every way. But sometimes we foolishly wade into dangerous situations, not knowing what lies ahead. The swimming hole of life is filled with peril[.] And we forget that the enemy is waiting to attack. That's when the tug-of-war begins—and if you have the scars of His love on your arms, be very, very grateful. He did not and will not ever let you go!

God has blessed you, so that you can be a blessing to others. You just never know where a person is in his/her life and what they are going through. Never judge another person's scars, because you don't know how they got them. . . .
Right now, someone needs to know that God loves them, and you love them, too—Enough to not let them go.

Always Tell Your Family And Friends How Much You Love Them!!!

From Tentmaker Ministries (http://www.tentmaker.org/)

Love

2014-01-14T10:21:00.003-08:00

The command to love, as most consider it, "If you love me (God) you will keep my commandments," is not to do anything because it will prove one's love. It is rather a matter of the doing spontaneously springing from love. We give our lives for our children, partners, strangers, or neighbours because of its spontaneous rising from love not as a effort of proof. The spontaneous act proves our love. Love drives action. Action does not drive love.

What Is Jesus Doing?

2014-01-13T11:45:00.003-08:00

It has become popular if not simple cant, to ask, “What would Jesus do?” There are necklaces, wristbands, car stickers, decals, shirts and hats, and all-manner of merchandise carrying this question. Or should we call it a slogan. A banal slogan, as it is usually applied so loosely without thought or even serious application.

From the first sightings of this marketing blitz, I was wary that although it may have begun as an altruistic attempt to move believers in the direction of a Christ-centered life, a life that might witness to a fallen world. Or was it, or had it become, one more ploy to sell “Christian” merchandise. Whatever your judgment on this little saying and its use, your heart will testify to your attitude regarding it as you try to deal with its challenge. “What would Jesus do,” may lead you into a best a guessing game based upon your understanding of Scripture and at worst a set of rules and an attempt to follow numerous commandments bordering on Leviticus. Remember, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit
gives life” (3 Cor. 3:6).

It immediately occurred to me, “Why would we ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’” In fact he is doing. The question we must ask is, “What is Jesus doing?” When Jesus walked the earth he gave us the model: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19). So then we must do what we see the Son doing, which is precisely what the Father is doing. The Godhead is one and not thinking, “What would my Father do?” The Son does what the Father is doing and the disciples of Jesus do what they see the Son is doing.

Jesus is living today. He is seated at the right hand of God the Father (Acts 2:33). He is interceding for us and apparently he even sometimes stands to receive his martyred children (Acts 7:55-56). In fact, by his Spirit, he is living within his redeemed (Romans 8:11; 2 Cor. 1:22; 3:17; Galatians 4:6; Philippians 1:19; 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:13). And he will come again to receive his own unto himself and pour out judgment on a sinful world.

If any of his words recorded in the Scriptures are meaningful; if they are filled with the power they suggest, if his commands and promises are real, then he is living and “doing” now as you read these words.

He is living and the God of the living not the dead (Psalm 42:2; Matt. 16:16; 22:32). Our faith is vital, intimate, and relational with an imminent God. To ask, “What would Jesus do?” is to confess a great measure of separation between God and us. It is to confess our distance from his living heart and will. We always know what the object of our love is doing, if we are in the presence of that object. Young betrothed couples know the smell of each other, the rhythm of one another’s breath, and the moods of each. Is it any different with the couples of Jesus and his believers, if in fact we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalms 34:8)?

So then, let’s abide in Jesus and spontaneously do what he is doing. The world doesn’t need to see poor attempts at mimicking Jesus. “Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus’” (John 12: 20-21). The world needs to see Jesus (Luke 19:3; John 9:35-38). If you are a disciple of Christ, saved by his life, death, and resurrection, with his Spirit dwelling within you. He is active within you. Offer yourselves in sacrifice to him that he might be doing in and through you. This is our “reasonable service” or “spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). Can it be seen through you, through me, what Jesus is doing?

Christian Spirituality: Some beginning points of what Christian spirituality looks like

2014-01-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

· Intimacy with God · Walking by the Spirit of God · A transformed mind · Not conformed to this world · Living with wild-abandon to God · Following the leader—Jesus · Not fulfilling the lust of the flesh · Dying to self · Seizing the divine moment · Loving God · Living God's adventure · Loving our neighbors · Hating sin · Hanging out with and loving sinners · Caring for the world and Earth · Meditating on God's word · Spending, even "wasting" time with God · Obeying God's word · Disciplined · Not domesticated · Wild as John the Baptist or Peter · As peaceful as Mary · Leaning on God's breast like John · Praying without ceasing · Not caring what people think of us, if it is to serve God's glory · Caring what people think of us, as it affects God's glory · Not Democratic · Not Republican · Perhaps a Demo-publican · A peacemaker · Not a warmonger · Standing against unrighteousness · Standing with the disenfranchised · Loving God with your whole being, all that you have, all you can be or will have ——— Darryl Wooldridge, August 2005

Tired, Poor, Refuse, And Homeless

2014-01-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!—Emma Lazarus, @ the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

How might we interpret these words in light of the challenges of immigration, gender difference, today's poor, refuse, and homeless? It seems to me that many are fond of hailing to this country's beginnings and yet forget what it claimed to represent despite its often failed example.

God's Time

2014-01-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

I have been considering for a long time that time may not be sequential in God’s economy. Apparently I am not alone: “But the imposition of linear time on what is an eternal idea is what creates the contradiction. I don’t try to make a theologian out of Einstein, but he did show us that events that happen in sequence can also be events that happen simultaneously. If Einstein can imagine that in terms of physics, theologians can imagine it also in terms of the intrusion of eternity into linear time—that we are both immediately raised and raised together.” —Thomas G. Long (Candler School of Theology). It also indicates that it is never "too late" to pray.

MY TIME IN PRISON

2011-08-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

I just got out of Chino prison. The environment, discipline, and food reminded me of my Army experience over thirty-five years ago. Of course I ate what I was given. If I got a heel to go with that greening tuna, I was considered fortunate—it was a thicker piece of bread. The occasional apple was mealy and the coffee was weak. I moved through bared doors and checkpoints per the CO’s (correctional officer) direction and at the CO’s timing and discretion. I wasn’t free to do things the way I did on the outside. But everyone loses a lot of freedom. That’s why its prison.

Did you gasp? Were you even fazed? Or did you simply not register the potential implications of me in prison? Why was I in prison? Did I commit a crime? Why should you care about people in prison—me or anyone else? Well, if you easily guessed I was there in some other function than an inmate, you are correct. In fact, I was in Chino Men’s Prison with Kairos Prison Ministry International as one of three clergy with a team of loving men to minister to a group of Chino prisoners.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (emphasis added, Matthew 25: 34-40).

These are men paying the consequences of regretful actions. For some it was a single act; for others it is a lifetime of actions. We were not there to lobby for the relief of those consequences. Nor were the prisoners asking for such relief. In fact we were only able to include half of the men who applied to be part of the four-day experience beginning late on a Thursday evening and ending late on Sunday. We went back the following Saturday and the first Saturday the month after, and we will follow-up with them every first Saturday of each month for one year. We are trying to build Christian community within the prison environment to support the prisoners while incarcerated and to prepare those leaving to live an ethical, moral, and law-abiding life within the communities they left by following a Christian world-view.

If someone is not convinced by Jesus’ words, quoted above, I think we can all be moved by the practical affects of reaching out to prisoners. There is only an 8.0% recidivism rate in comparison to the expected 20.3% recidivism rate of those inmates not exposed to such a program.1 This translates into less crime on the streets you share. It means less robbery, rape, and mayhem in our neighborhoods.

But let me say, these are real people with regrets, pain, and dreams. By the end of our time, that first weekend, many of these men were crying and hugging one another and us like born brothers. These are people not meant for the trash heaps of our moral indignation. They, too, were created in God’s image and likeness. Christ loves them and died for them too. We are called to love them no matter the practical affect, no matter if they go back to a life of crime and prison, and no matter our feelings. I am not, nor are the men with whom I went into Chino Prison, special. We simply love Christ and through him those whom he loves, and he loves prisoners. Isn’t this what the two greatest commandments are about?

Jesus answered, "The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ '" (Mark 12: 29-31).

We are called to a life of love—without exceptions. We are the neighbor of the prisoners as well as those we might like who are like us and easy to love and serve. I have numerous stories about many of these men, and perhaps those are better left for another time. But let me tell you about one of these men now. We will call him Paul.

Paul was a “really bad person” per his own admittance. He had become a Christian only seventeen short months before. He has put his life on the line by turning from his “bad” life and living a God-honoring life. This big man is now evangelizing the prison community and is raising-up disciples to assist him in his efforts. This man’s tears and hugs ministered more to me than I may have ministered to him. The warmth of many of these brothers’ hugs and love toward me has changed me forever. This “bad” man is now a beautiful brother in Christ, and I truly love him.
The joy of serving Christ by serving others is literally immeasurable.

If you are interested in Kairos Prison Ministry International, you can either contact me of go to their link for an overview:

http://www.kairosprisonministry.org/templates/System/default.asp?id=23761

Seeing The Invisible God

2011-06-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

The bold request which goes up the mountains of desire asks this: to enjoy the Beauty not in mirrors and reflections, but face to face. The divine voice granted what was requested in what was denied, showing in a few words an immeasurable depth of thought. . . . He would not have shown himself to his servant if the sight were such as to bring the desire of the beholder to an end, since the true sight of God consists in this, that the one who looks up to God never ceases in the desire.—Gregory of Nyssa

Kingdom Triangle

2011-03-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

Kingdom Triangle, by J.P Moreland, is a crucial book–especially for nudging awake the Western church. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He has authored or co-authored over one hundred books, articles, journals, and received over twenty-five awards and honors. Moreland has debated from one end of this country to the other in universities, churches, and other public venues. I only mention some of his accomplishments to assure you that Dr. Moreland is eminently qualified to address the subject of Christian worldview and to propose a way forward for the twenty-first century church.
In Kingdom Triangle Moreland discusses the global South and its precipitous growth in Christian conversions enabled and validated by supernatural testimony. In contrast the West seems, by all measures, to be waning in Christian growth, influence, and belief in the supernatural. In this morally and ethically postmodern world, especially in the West, empiricism has infiltrated the church and is denaturing it of its supernatural roots. Scientism has dismissed Christian thought as simplistic, relative subjectivism. Moreland says, “There simply is no established, widely recognized body of ethical or religious knowledge now operative in the institutions of knowledge in our culture, for example, the universities” (p. 76). Moreover, religion is not thought to be “a domain of fact and knowledge, so there are no experts” (p. 92).
We must defend Christianity at this point of attack, and in this Moreland successfully argues the case for nonempirical knowledge in rebutting the scientists and ideologues that wish to marginalize and relegate all religion, especially Christianity, to relativism outside of objective truth: “If it works for you that’s fine;” or, “If it feels good to you, just do it, and leave me to what works for me.” The “truth” is to be left to what can be observed and measured. Moreland shows how scientism, and its relativistic attitude toward anything outside of its measuring, tares at the very root of what is truth and what really makes humans happy. The good life, he says, is one of “human flourishing constituted by intellectual and moral virtue . . . [a] life of ideal human functioning according to the nature that God himself gave to us” (p. 94). The good life is not a measure of how much pleasure can be had or how much difficulty and pain can be avoided.
Moreland further presses what human life was intended for by contrasting it with what it is not meant to be when he refers to the bane of the empty self: “The empty self is inordinate individualist . . . infantile . . . narcissistic . . . [and] passive” (pp. 142-143). The empty self is false and hides behind a presentation that protects it from the world in order to be safe. It is “a tangled web of internal tapes created by childhood struggles, pain, embarrassment, anxiety, and fear” (p. 141). Moreland’s response to the empty self is Christian self-denial in which we are invited to follow Jesus into a different kind of life than that which is empty or false. In this, happiness is expressed in “a life well lived, a life of virtue and character, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness” (p. 144). He secondly recommends a spiritually disciplined life in which the disciple’s body and mind are brought into control for good and rational service to God and his Kingdom. This is done through disciplines of the body in dependence on the Spirit of God. Thirdly, Moreland suggests that we need to “cultivate emotional sensitivity to the movement within [our] souls” (p. 155).
Not afraid of potential repercussions, Moreland states that the white Evangelical community, in particular, is populated with obsessive-compulsive, left-brained, type A males who are not rightly connected to their emotions. This disconnect follows from a fear that emotions are too subjective and that they cannot be trusted, thus the general fear of any apparent movement of the Holy Spirit over the emotions of people and the sometimes-attendant ecstatic responses displayed.
Moreland, however, reminds us that such a display, often led by charismatic/Pentecostal believers, cannot be let-off without some scrutiny. The charismatic/Pentecostal community cannot be left with “an addiction to special experiences of the manifest presence of God as a substitute for the day-to-day process of cultivating a rich inner life as that process is captured in the church’s formative literature.” (p. 156).
In his final chapter, Moreland may surprise some of his regular readers. He argues for the third side or vertex of the triangle as an acceptance and restoration, in church communities, of the “Kingdom’s miraculous power.” He cites a few statistics to show how the global South is leading the way, even exploding, in the manifestation of the Christian conversions due in large part to the Spirit’s manifest power (pp. 166-168). People are able to see that God is living and cares about the needs of the disenfranchised, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, and the “leprous.” Moreover, God is reaching the Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu by his miraculous mercy and grace. After assuring the cessationists that their work and “emphasis on Scripture and theology is critically needed today,” Moreland encourages them to continue in this much-needed endeavor and then goes on to lovingly admonish them. I quote this admonishment here in brief:

But frequently, you are too cautious and too concerned about “being in control” to allow things to get messy and to take risks where you may look foolish if God’s manifest presence does not show up. Too often, you are defensive and stuck in tradition for its own sake. There is too little power in your churches, too little extravagant worship in which your people pour out their hearts to God on Sunday. Too much of your church’s accomplishments can be explained without there needing to be a God to explain them. Things are too predictable and too, well, American (p. 180).

Moreland speaks with authority. In addition to his standing in the academic community, he is someone who has personally attended these same churches for thirty-five years. In a balanced approach, he cautions the charismatics/Pentecostals when he points out that they are “too anti-intellectual.”

First, you are too anti-intellectual. . . . As “signs and wonders” continue to increase worldwide, there will be satanic counterfeits, and it may well be that the caution and biblical fidelity emphasized by those at the Word end of the spectrum will become more important than ever . . . [and referencing Rick Nuñez, Full Gospel Fractured Minds] recapture the life of the mind in a way distinctive to your community (pp. 180-181).

So then, in agreement with Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, Moreland proposes the solution to the issues by three foci: (1) Recover The Christian Mind, in which he firmly begins with the need to recover the Christian mind and enter into the world debate well equipped to rationally demonstrate valid reasons for intellectual belief in the Christian story; (2) Renovate The Soul, by moving concisely to show the need and method of renovating the soul; and (3) Restore The Spirit’s Power, where he argues for the great need to restore God’s Spirit in our churches for testimony and means of God’s activity in the world and accomplishment of his ends. In his own words Moreland says that we must pursue a “development of the life and mind . . . the cultivation of an inner life . . . learning to live in and use the Spirit’s power and the authority of the Kingdom of God. . .” (p. 196).
As I already stated, Moreland’s concern for this third side or vertex of the triangle is of great importance for him. He addresses it with two points in his conclusion. He addresses the skeptics as giving into stereotypes that people involved in the manifestations of God’s power are (1) “weird, uneducated, and extreme cases, frauds” and (2) that they are fearful “of risking and looking foolish if [they] pray for the sick and nothing happens” (pp. 197-198). After speaking about his own risking in the area of prayer for the sick, he says,

Learning to be naturally supernatural . . . is a matter of learning about the presence and power of the Kingdom of God, and recovering the implications of viewing Jesus’ activities as flowing from his life of dependence on the Spirit, doing what he saw the Father doing, and providing a human model of what we should do (p. 199).

So then, Kingdom Triangle is, in my view, a critical and important work at this pivotal juncture of history. God is active and doing what he said in Scripture that he would. If a survey of our time can teach us anything, even from a secular vantage, then it teaches us that we are in a grave time, perhaps even the culmination of the age. We have a choice to be co-laborers or to withdraw and stand down in dispassionate malaise or fear. Moreland says we were created for greatness and we desire drama (pp. 19, 21, 192). I agree. His “thick world,” allows for God’s supernatural involvement in his creation, and is at “the center of the meaning of cosmic history and [our] individual story. . . . Join me in the revolution. This is your opportunity. Seize it and rejoice in it” (pp. 192-199).
I join Moreland and encourage you to read his book, Kingdom Triangle, and to respond with boldness to its message and call to be transformed by the renewing of ours minds, renovation of our souls, and to open to the outworking of God’s power through the Spirit. We were created for such a thick world in high drama, communion, and service to God and his creation.Kingdom Triangle, by J.P Moreland, is a crucial book–especially for nudging awake the Western church. Moreland is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He has authored or co-authored over one hundred books, articles, journals, and received over twenty-five awards and honors. Moreland has debated from one end of this country to the other in universities, churches, and other public venues. I only mention some of his accomplishments to assure you that Dr. Moreland is eminently qualified to address the subject of Christian worldview and to propose a way forward for the twenty-first century church.

Illusion

2011-01-21T09:49:00.001-08:00

. . . people held in the grip of an illusion cannot be directly reasoned with. One must assault them with appealing but apparently absurd stories and even contradictions in the desperate hope that indirect communication can accomplish what direct communication cannot.— Soren Kierkegaard

Spiritual Transformation

2010-10-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Without responding to God’s call and provision, spiritual transformation is stunted and we do not participate fully in the development and enjoyment of kingdom living. Our lives are formed, whether by default as driven by the tides of cultural environment, personal proclivities, or spiritual forces; and they are lived according to that forming. Speaking of Christian forming Gordon Mursell says, “The essence of this spirituality is . . . namely the relationship between the gracious God and the saved sinner.”[1] Our lives, when formed by cooperation with God are transformed lives—a reference that indicates the changed and higher nature of such a life. It is a life that increasingly conforms to the image and likeness of God.

There has been an insufficient focus on Christian spiritual transformation within the church for the preceding two hundred years.[2] Although there has been a beginning turnaround, history lamentably exposes an essential need for more people, and communities, to come into a full knowledge of God’s call to discipleship. It is a discipleship manifested in the kingdom life as recorded in both the history of the Bible and extra-biblical writings. Kingdom living is transformed living. We do not enter into this kingdom living without transformation. A transformed life expresses the kingdom life just as winged flight and bird song express a measure of the bird kingdom. This Christian kingdom life is expressed in numerous passages such as Matthew 5-7, Romans 14:17, 1 Corinthians 4:20, Galatians 5:22, Ephesians 4:24, and Colossians 3:10-17.

Kingdom life is holiness and wholeness. It is a life that goes on from, and is above, accepting doctrine to living with God and expressing him. Kingdom life is the transformed life. As far as the transformed life is full and mature it is synonymous with the kingdom life. Where the transformed life falls short it falls short of expressing the kingdom life. If Jesus Christ is the kingdom life (Matthew 4:17; 18:20; John 14:6-7; 18:36; Acts 8:12), my basis here, then to live the kingdom life is to live Jesus (Galatians 2:20). Jesus is the Kingdom life, and by that this author means that the life of Jesus is the realm in which we are to live, and move, and have our being. Jesus claimed that he is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) in which we should live, in which we should live the kingdom life. Living in him (abiding in him) is living the kingdom life. It is to live the life Jesus would live if he were living the disciple’s life today.[3]

Practicing spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, celebration, and abstinence facilitates kingdom life. The kingdom life is lived in God, through God, by God, and in expression of God. It is a life that is increasingly salt and light, does not retaliate, and loves our enemies (Matthew 5:13-16, 38-48). It is our life in which we come to God with the acceptance, dependence, and innocence of a child (Mark 10:14-15). The kingdom life expresses “the fruit of the Spirit [which] is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22, 23a).[4]

This kingdom life is that to which God has called us. The kingdom life expresses the beatitudes and the fruit of the Spirit. It is the transformed life matured and a life made more reflective of God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26; Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthian 3:18; Colossians 3:10). Moreover, God provides the means to such a life. He enables us to live this life in increasing spiritual maturity (Luke 8:14; 1 Corinthians 14:20; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 4:13; Colossians 4:12; Hebrews 5:14-6:1). This call from God is for the kingdom life to which we are to respond.

We have the opportunity and privilege of responding to God’s calling and provision for spiritual transformation. Additionally, this response leads to the expected spiritual progression that should naturally follow after the new birth described in the Gospel of John. John 3:16 Unfortunately, this passage is popularly quoted for proof of salvation without much attention usually given to the changed nature of the new life that should proceed from the new-birth. This new life, in growing maturity, is the transformed life. It is the kingdom life to the degree it expresses God’s image and likeness.

Although more than two billion people in the world call themselves Christians,[5] what too many “lack is a disciplined life and a critical mind to resist the temptation to conform to what just anyone might think or do (Rom 12:1-3). Decisiveness is the mark of true discipleship.”[6] Too often, those of us concerned with living an example of Christianity are focused on law keeping as a means to that end. Many others are willing, in an almost antinomian (lawless) manner, to agree that such a life is desirable but without restrictive requirements. That is, they might contend, no requirements can be made of the disciple. This spiritual life, if it is possible, they argue, must be spontaneous and confessed as a reality despite possible evidence to the contrary. Some further argue that the demands of such passages as Matthew 5-7 may only be interpreted for a future kingdom of God in the new heaven and earth.[7]

Nominal Christianity in the forms of undisciplined living and self-justified antinomian tendencies hinder the great commission (Matthew 28:18-20). In this commission Jesus directed his followers to make disciples. This, of course, is preceded by conversion. Indeed, conversion is the prerequisite to discipleship. Jesus spoke of his authority to fulfill this disciple-making commission when he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18b).

This authority supports the disciple-making commission. We are to observe what Jesus taught his apostles. God calls and provides, and we must respond. This process, not reserved for a future time, results in spiritual transformation as the expression of kingdom life.

Four considerations are helpful to this pursuit: (1) An examination of the meaning of Christian spiritual transformation, (2) what God’s call is to his disciples for Christian spiritual transformation, (3) how God calls disciples to Christian spiritual transformation, and (4) how disciples cooperate with that call and avail themselves of God’s provision for Christian spiritual transformation and kingdom living. We will examine these in future posts.

[1]Gordon Mursell, gen. ed., The Story of Christian Spirituality: Two Thousand Years from East to West (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press 2001), p.167.

[2]Eugene H. Peterson, Subversive Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Regent College Publishing, 1997), p. 3.

[3]Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 283.

[4]Unless otherwise indicated, all Bible references come from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[5]Adherents.com “Major Religions of The World Ranked by Number of Adherents,” Preston Hunter; available fromhttp://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html: Internet; accessed 29 February 2008.
[6]Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study Of The Christian Life (Downer Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 69.

[7]Frank E. Gaebelein, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Zondervan Corporation, 1984), vol. 8, Matthew-Mark-Luke, p. 127.

Story

2010-08-21T11:44:00.001-07:00

Søren Kierkegaard hit home regarding my view of story when he said that “people held in the grip of an illusion cannot be directly reasoned with. One must assault them with appealing but apparently absurd stories and even contradictions in the desperate hope that indirect communication can accomplish what direct communication cannot.”

As valuable as direct, unhindered truth is, it is often missed, unaccepted, or misunderstood. Story, among a number of things, is a means to break through the preconceptions and presuppositions that hinder our minds from seeing different perspectives and truths. Our tremendous capacity is limited by packed-in, “received” knowledge. Story disarms us and allows the assault of counter-grain views and visions. This is often the meaning of story in the scriptures. But our proclivity looks for facts and twists the story into science and western concepts of history thereby missing the intent and spender of the affect of story which is often called myth.

I plan to further examine these preliminary thoughts in my ongoing doctoral studies dedicating a chapter to its understanding and application. Yes, I know whole books have been dedicated to this study, but unless the subject of my PhD is modified a chapter will have to suffice. Thoughts? Resources? Discussion?

Communion in God's Communion

2010-07-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Because the Christian God is not a lonely God, but rather a communion of three persons, faith leads human beings into the divine communio. One cannot, however, have a self-enclosed communion with the Triune God- a "foursome," as it were-- for the Christian God is not a private deity. Communion with this God is at once also communion with those others who have entrusted themselves in faith to the same God. Hence one and the same act of faith places a person into a new relationship both with God and with all others who stand in communion with God.--Miroslav Volf (After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity)