This week, Andrew asked us to consider the claims of divinity that are attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel:

In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes many confident self-proclamations (conservative Evangelical’s favorite verses which seemingly demonstrates the exclusivity of Jesus). Now, I’m sure that claiming to be God in 1st century Judiasm is a really big deal; however, how is it that none of these self-proclamations make it into any of the synoptic gospels? Is it possible that Jesus never made these self-proclamations? If not, how does this effect our understanding of Trinitarian theology in the gospel accounts?

There’s been a very robust conversation about this post, and I encourage you to read it. In the 1,000 words I afford myself on these responses, I simply cannot reprise all of those arguments.

First, in case you are new to this kind of question, here’s the background. Most reputable scholars think this about the four Gospels:

• Mark came first, probably in the late 50s or early 60s.
• Matthew and Luke were both written in the mid- to late-60s. They both use Mark as a source, a source that scholars refer to as “Q,” and their own source material.
• John comes much later — probably in the mid-90s — and uses mostly unique material.

Here’s how the four Gospels look in somewhat twisted mind of Paul Soupiset, as I asked him to make a Venn Diagram of the overlaps for the next Animate course:

It’s generally acknowledged that John, coming so late and having so much unique material, reflects the theology of a more evolved church than do the three synoptic Gospels. And the theology in the Fourth Gospel supports this conclusion. Whereas the Synoptics portray a more earthy Jesus — more of a peripatetic rabbi — the Fourth Gospel gives us a cosmic Christ, more interested in teaching than healing. In fact, almost half the John’s Gospel takes place on a single day, with Jesus giving his most esoteric teachings.

Among skeptical scholars, like Bart Ehrman, the assumption is always the same: the later the writing, the less accurate it is. But let’s think about that for a minute. It’s estimated that about 15,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Are you willing to say that a book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin in 2005 is less accurate than the magisterial 1917 biography of Lincoln by Lord Charnwood?

Is older always more accurate? Obviously, the answer is no. So, while we need to acknowledge the relative lateness of the Gospel of John, that in no way sentences it as a compendium of inaccuracies and theologizing.

But, for the sake of Andrew’s question, let’s assume that the claims of divinity that come out of Jesus’ mouth in the Fourth Gospel were put there by the late-first-century church, but were never actually iterated by Jesus of Nazareth.

As a case study on this kind of thing, we can look at the post-resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Mark, or the story of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery in John. Both of these are missing from the oldest extant manuscripts. That could mean that they were missed upon transcription and that, if we were to find older manuscripts, they be in them. But it seems more likely that they’re later additions, which is what most scholars assume. Then you’re left with the dilemma that someone added them to make the book more theologically palatable to a later reader — or that they were original stories that were somehow missed by the original compilers.

Again, you see that we’ve got dilemma on top of dilemma. At each fork in the road, you can pretty much guess which way a guy like Bart Ehrman is going to turn, just like you can pretty much guess what road a professor at an evangelical seminary is going choose.

The point at hand in Andrew’s question is that in the Synoptics, Jesus primarily refers to himself as the “Son of Man,” a title that did not imply divinity. In John, he’s more likely to call himself the “Son of God,” which, at least to modern ears, sounds like a claim of divinity — scholars debate this point, noting that it’s a title that’s used in the Hebrew Bible (for example, Genesis 6:2); in other words, it’s not unique to Jesus.

There are other instances in the Fourth Gospel that leads to its higher Christology. It’s in John where Jesus refers to himself as:

• “the bread of life”
• “the light of the world”
• “the gate of the sheep”
• “the good shepherd”
• “the resurrection and the life”
• “the way, the truth, and the life”
• “the real vine”

Each of these, and other statements, implies that Jesus has a special relationship with God. But it’s hard for us to get our mind around first century notions of divinity. (For those who want further reading on this topic by NT Wright, see here. HT: Andrew Mason.)

Anyway, that’s a lot of talk about the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. The fact is that anyone who’s a Christian and considers the Bible authoritative has to put a lot of faith in God’s providential hand. The canon wasn’t closed until three centuries after Jesus — that’s 18 generations of people after Jesus. That’s a lot of people to mess with things, edit stories, and update theology. If you consider the Bible a sacred text and authoritative in your life and the life of the church, you don’t necessarily need to overlook the complicated history of the canon, but you’ve probably got to put some trust in God for directing canonization in spite of its messiness.

Finally, this. The prologue to John’s Gospel is not only one of the most lyrically beautiful pieces of theology in the Bible, it’s one of the best ever written. And it’s from that prologue that we get the core of our belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, and the resulting and admittedly later doctrine of the Trinity. As I’ve argued here before, I appreciate the aesthetics of theology — I think that if something is beautiful, it’s more likely to be true. Thus, the prologue of John, universally acclaimed as a beautiful hymn to the divinity of Christ, has a particular claim on truth. (This is just the opposite from Ehrman, who argues that if something seems in keeping with later theology, it is less likely to be true.)

And I do not think that something that is later is less likely to be true. In fact, I think that something later is probably more likely to be true. Therefore, I have no problem with Jesus’ claims of divinity in the Fourth Gospel, whether or not he ever said them.

See all of the past questions and answers here, and submit your own here.

Is posting this image race baiting?

Loyal readers will remember an incident from two years ago. I was speaking at Fuller Seminary — an academic institution, it should be noted. In my remarks, I spoke honestly about my view of Pentecostal theology, and how I do not think that it’s the best theology out there. [Video here.] An African-American woman in the crowd stood up and, at the end of a lengthy comment (that was more of a lecture), she called me a “borderline racist.”

Here’s her statement, as transcribed by me (you can see her comment at about 1:31:00 of the video):

“To say that the Pentecostal theology is weak and that the American theology is sophisticated, I just, I cringe at that. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned here at Fuller…I’ve learned that all theology is contextual, and to say that your American theology — and you have to think about the fact, I mean, I hate to bring up race, but, I can’t avoid it, I’m sorry but, as a Caucasian man living in America, to say that your theology is sophisticated and to say that the theology of Latin America and South America is weak, I mean, it’s appalling, it’s shocking for me to hear that, it’s offensive, it’s borderline racist, and it’s very closed-minded.”

So, there it became clear to me that stating a theological opinion in an academic setting was not wholly acceptable, at least to this interlocutor. I made a statement of preference, that I think the nascent Pentecostalism practiced in much of the Global South would benefit from being in dialogue with the older, more developed theologies of the West.

I bring this up because of another African-American woman who, more subtly, accused me of racism on her blog yesterday. I met Christena Cleveland at Subverting the Norm 2 in Springfield, Missouri last month, an academic conference at which we both spoke. I posted my notes from my talk here. Here is one of my points:

5. Be loyal to this tribe. We have a better version of the gospel than the regnant view of the gospel in the West today. If our version of the gospel is to stand a chance, particularly among the “nones,” then we’ve got to stick together in spite of our doctrinal/theological/philosophical differences.

Yesterday, Cleveland posted, initially misquoting me saying, “we have the best version of the gospel,” which she amended only after I contacted her. She wrote, “As a minority group member sitting in the audience, I found his statement to be unfriendly to diverse voices.” She continued,

Most blatantly, the statement violates the metaphor of the interdependent and multifaceted body of Christ.  How can a gospel that is mostly (if not entirely) interpreted and articulated by a homogenous group of people (in this case, white, well-educated males) be the “better version”? But in a more subtle way, his statement sent a clear and powerful message to all of the diverse people in the room (e.g., women, people of color, people without advanced degrees, etc.). No need to join our movement; we don’t need diverse voices. We’ve already got the best version of the Gospel and we only needed white, well-educated men to figure it out. Diverse people need not apply.

Right next to that paragraph, she posted the image above. Are her words, combined with that image, meant to imply that I am a racist? The answer can only be yes.

As you can see in that last sentence in her paragraph, Cleveland didn’t quite get through the post with her corrections. Her entire post is premised on something that I did not say and a sentiment that I do not hold: that progressive Protestantism is the best version of the gospel.

In my live comments at that conference, I made a point that I’ve made in several public addresses over the last year: conservative, Reformed, penal substitutionary, anti-gay, anti-women evangelicals have been consistently kicking our asses in the public square. They proudly proclaim their theological convictions with certainty and volume.

We progressive Incarnational Christians, on the other hand, too often pussyfoot around our convictions. We’re afraid to proclaim anything too loudly, for fear that it won’t have the requisite humility, or to say anything at all because there aren’t yet enough “people at the table.” Getting all of the right people at the table is, as WOPR discovered with Tic Tac Toe, an unwinnable game. Instead, the better posture is to do the best we can, to always be invitational, but to not let the imperfection of our diversity chill us into never speaking boldly.

Let me make it clear here as I have in many posts and several books: I believe that my understanding of the gospel has benefited greatly from the diversity of opinions that I’ve encountered, from the wide variety of books that I’ve read, and from my global travels. Much of my theological career is premised on constantly expanding my own horizons in order to better understand the gospel. And I could say the same thing about the emerging church movement as a whole.

When I said, “We have a better version of the gospel,” that statement had a clear referent. Grammatically, you cannot (or at least should not) use the comparative “better” without a clear referent. If I had said, “We have a better version of the gospel” out of the blue, the natural response would be, “Better than whose version?” But the thing is, everyone at the conference — except, it seems, Ms. Cleveland — knew exactly to whom I was referring.

The same does not hold for the statements, “We have a good version of the gospel,” (which I would say), or “We have the best version of the gospel,” (which I would not). Those statements can have a referent, but they do not demand one.

Grammatically, I used a comparative, not a superlative, and I did so purposefully. To use a comparative like “better” without a referent is called an “empty comparison.” It happens all the time in car commercials, but not in my talks.

So, what Cleveland did was not only misquote me, but took my meaning exactly wrong. I was developing a critique of one particular version of American Christianity — one that is, I might say, dominated by men and exclusionary of women — and I was attempting to rally the crowd to fight against that version in the public square with our more progressive, open, inclusionary version.

Cleveland responded by painting me as a racist — or at least as someone who “idolizes” my own “cultural group identity.” And anyone who is paying attention knows that calling someone a racist is the most discrediting of all epithets these days.

Except maybe calling someone a misogynist, which I’m also sick of. I’ll post about that next week.

We are entering a period in American history when European ancestry, Christianity, and heterosexuality will no longer be the assumed default. I suspect that the past 30 years of resurgence of fundamentalist Christianity and right-wing identity politics will be seen in the course of history as a temporary backlash to the radical social changes unleashed in the 1960’s. The kinds of predictions Harvey Cox made in the 60’s in The Secular City, which many in the 1980’s and 90’s thought needed to be revised or discarded, are happening now, three decades late.

At the risk of sounding shocking, white Christian people are going to have to find a way to have “white pride,” by which I mean they’re going to have to create an identity for themselves that isn’t based on dominating everyone else or measuring everyone else by their standard.

But you don’t have to have agree with the views Brando expressed to have sympathy for the process of grief he’s going through. As a white, middle class, Protestant Christian who came out at the age of 23, I understand what it’s like waking up one day and realizing you must fight for your little plot of dignity in the world.

The process is nothing compared to what people of color, immigrants, women, Muslims, Jews, or anyone else not of pallid complexion with a y chromosome has had to go through. But as human beings we all need a little understanding sometimes. Even the soon-to-be-extinct white Christian male.

Read the rest: Jason Collins, Tim Tebow, and the End of the White Evangelical Male.

Today I’ll finish grading the final exams of the students who took “Introduction to the New Testament” this Spring at St. Cloud State University. It was my first foray into undergraduate teaching, and I heartily thank all of you readers who gave me advice about teaching undergrads. The most-given piece of advice was, “Own the Classroom.” I can’t say that I did that. Although I didn’t allow the students to call me by my first name, I cannot help but run a fairly informal classroom — you may have heard, but I’ve got a thing against hierarchy.

It seems that one of my dear students has entered me at RateMyProfessors.com, and my first rating is, um, positive:

Ahhh, shucks. Thanks.

St. Cloud State is a blue-collar school. I do not say that as an insult, but instead as a compliment.  Unlike where I went to college, the SCSU students didn’t put on airs. They were honest, funny, and unintimidated. They weren’t all into the class — one student sat in the back and read a novel most class sessions; others unsurrepticiously checked their phones every five minutes. But most of them were quite engaged in the course.

We used the ur-text for undergrad New Testament courses at state universities: Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. About that text, I say, Meh. Ehrman is thorough, to be sure. In fact, the text contains far more information than any undergrad course could get through in a 14-week semester. I’d be shocked to hear from another professor that they assign the entire book. It’s also too expensive, at about $65 (and not available on Amazon), which is all part of the price-fixing of textbooks that is another post for another day.

On the Gospels, Ehrman is good. Same goes for Acts. Same goes for the 7 undisputed Pauline letters. But once we got into the deutero-Pauline books and the pseudopigriphal books, Ehrman’s skepticism starts to seep through, and it occasionally overwhelms his “neutrality.” For example, Ehrman repeatedly refers to pseudopigripha as “forgery,” and he adamantly argues that it was not a common practice in the ancient world. I can say that through three years of seminary and seven years of doctoral work, I never had a professor call the pseudopigriphal books forgeries.

So, to help the students relativize Ehrman’s authority, toward the end of the semester I showed them Ehrman’s super-awkward appearances on the Colbert Report in 2006 and 2009. Honestly, that was one of my favorite moments in class, because the conversation that ensued was how we need to interpret not just the Bible, but also the textbook that’s telling us about the Bible.

A couple of the students were avowed atheists (one contributed to this post), one is seminary-bound, and others were various degrees of Christian. What I loved about the class is that they were all respectful of one another. They were, for the most part, curious students. None got defensive — none felt that they had to defend the Bible, or apologize for God, in the face of evidence that the Fourth Gospel was written at the end of the first century, or that Paul likely didn’t write Ephesians, or that Hebrews and James both have messages that contradict Paul.

I also realized, again, that I still have lots to learn about the New Testament. I’m glad that this course forced me to dust off my study of it — indeed, to do some new study, since the NT wasn’t part of my doctoral program.

I know that lots of you readers teach. What did you learn from your students this year?

I’ve received some fantastic questions in the last couple weeks (you can submit your questions here). I’m jazzed about seeing the discussion around each of them, including this one from Andrew:

In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes many confident self-proclamations (conservative Evangelical’s favorite verses which seemingly demonstrates the exclusivity of Jesus). Now, I’m sure that claiming to be God in 1st century Judiasm is a really big deal; however, how is it that none of these self-proclamations make it into any of the synoptic gospels? Is it possible that Jesus never made these self-proclamations? If not, how does this effect our understanding of Trinitarian theology in the gospel accounts?

You respond in the comments. I’ll respond on Friday. See all of the past questions and answers here.

John Stumme, left, kisses his husband Kyle Hanson in the state capitol’s rotunda immediately after the Minnesota Senate passed a bill making Minnesota the 12th state in the country to legalize gay marriage May 13, 2013. (Courtney Perry)

I realize that it is a grandiose claim to say that, regarding marriage equality, I stand on the right side of history. But that’s exactly what I felt as I stood in the rotunda of the Minnesota State Capitol and held vigil with thousands of others as the State Senate debated HF 1054, extending the right to marry to same sex couples. At 4:19pm, it passed 37-30, and today at 5pm, Governor Mark Dayton will sign it into law.

I stood alongside Doug Pagitt, Jay Bakker, and Russell Rathbun, fellow (straight, white, male) Minnesota clergymen who also support marriage equality. Dozens of clergy were in the crowd, based on the number of clerical shirts I saw. Many of them stood in the middle, leading songs — we were along the edge of the crowd, greeting people we know. Also there were Courtney with her camera (see above), Wendy Johnson and her daughter, our friends Bryan and Scott, and other friends and acquaintances. We were receiving news about the speeches inside the Senate chambers via text message and Twitter.

Marriage equality is a civil rights issue.

In my opinion, it is not on par with women’s suffrage or the Civil Rights Act. That’s because the right to vote is paramount in a democracy — it’s more important than the right to marry. Voting is the cornerstone of our entire system. The other freedoms ensured by the Bill of Rights (religion, press, assembly, speech, etc.) are similarly of overriding importance. Marriage simply does not rise to that level. One can be a fully empowered citizen of the United States without being married, and that cannot be said about the right to cast a vote.

However, we have heavily incentivized marriage in our culture. According to one count, there are 515 benefits that accrue to married persons in Minnesota state law — and that doesn’t even include federal or city statutes. You get tax breaks if you’re married, you get to pass on your estate to your legal spouse, you get to visit your legal spouse in the hospital. Indeed, you cannot even be compelled to testify against your spouse in a trial — in legalese, that’s referred to as “spousal privilege,” a telling phrase indeed.

In his Strib column today, Jon Tevlin tells of how one state legislator — a clergyman — decided on his vote:

In the hours before the historic vote that gave same-sex Minnesotans the right to marry, people filled the State Capitol cafeteria and gathered around several televisions tuned to the debate going on above them. They cheered and clapped whenever someone made a point on the side of gay marriage.

No one seemed to notice the Lutheran minister who walked through the crowd with his lunch.

The week before, that man, Rep. Tim Faust, DFL-Hinckley, stood on the House floor and told his colleagues, and eventually the world, that he had changed his mind.

Faust comes from a district where gay marriage is not popular. But in his emotional speech, he explained why he decided to vote in favor of the legislation.

Faust said he’d had conversations with constituents about the law, and almost every time they brought up the Bible as a reason to vote no.

“And so if this is the reason or the rationale for being opposed to this or for why this law is currently in place,” Faust said during the emotional floor debate, “the question that keeps going through my mind over and over again is, ‘Do we as a society have the right to impose our religious beliefs on somebody else?’”

The answer, of course, is no. The rights to assemble, bear arms, have a free press, and vote are not biblical. They are based on the political philosophy of John Locke, as embraced and codified by Thomas Jefferson.

Marriage, of course, is a trickier issue. The Bible does have lots to say about sex, which is (usually) a part of marriage. Nevertheless, when the state takes up the issue of marriage, religion must be relativized. To see just how that is done, I encourage you to take nine minutes and watch the one speech from the state senate floor yesterday that mattered, below. It’s by Branden Petersen, the lone Republican who voted in favor of the marriage bill. In his speech, he speaks about why he broke with his party and voted against the sentiments of the majority of his constituents.

Petersen is a libertarian, and he speaks eloquently and logically about how his vote is based primarily on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. He argues that Thomas Jefferson advocated for the protection of freedom of religion, a mutable aspect of human existence — so how much more important to protect the freedom to marry the one you love, a less mutable aspect of human existence.

Petersen says his vote was about liberty. Never once does he appeal to a religious argument.

Now, I’m a theologian. My arguments about marriage are wrapped in theological, biblical, and philosophical assumptions. Those arguments, too, have a place in the public square, but they don’t hold a trump card. Not in a democracy, they don’t.

***

In July, 2011, Courtney and I were married in our church. But we decided not to get legally married, forgoing the benefits that accrue to legally married couples until our gay and lesbian friends could be granted those same benefits. Honestly, I thought it would be many years before marriage equality would come to Minnesota. I am thrilled that it’s come so soon, so quickly, and so decisively. We look forward to celebrating with our friends this August.

I hope that many of you readers will celebrate with us.

I’d like to have some chickens in my backyard, but they’re not allowed in my city.

Dear readers, has any of you been part of getting your city to accept backyard chickens?

Last night, Courtney and I were on hand to help our dear friend, Jay Bakker, launch the new Minneapolis site of Revolution Church.  You can hear Jay’s inaugural sermon, “Vulgar Grace Throws the First Stone.”

The photo above is a detail shot by Courtney of the rainbow communion bread that we contributed to the service. We baked that loaf — the same loaf that Courtney baked with our friends Rachel and Rachet for our (sacramental) wedding — in support of marriage equality. Jay has been an outspoken proponent of marriage equality and has performed several same-sex weddings. When he broke the bread last night, Jay told us to remember not just the broken body of Jesus, but also the broken bodies and spirits of many GLBT persons who have been persecuted for their non-heterosexuality.

Today, Jay and Courtney and I and several other friends will be going to St. Paul to hold vigil as the Minnesota Senate debates and votes on a bill opening marriage in our state to same-gendered couples. It is expected to pass easily (my senator has already emailed me to assure me that she will be voting for its passage), and to be signed into law by Governor Mark Dayton tomorrow.

Our gay and lesbian friends will be able to marry in Minnesota beginning on August 1.

In celebration of marriage equality being achieved this week in Minnesota, my ebook essay, There Are Two Marriages: A Manifesto on Marriage, is free for the next couple days. In it, I spell out my views on marriage, included the relatively unconventional view that the church should get out of the marriage business — or at least the legal end of that — and that clergy should stop acting as proxies of the state by signing marriage licenses. Click on the book cover below and start reading.

This week’s Question That Haunts from Ben is pretty great:

If we take the salvation/eternity issue out of the discussion, what advantage is there to believing in God? Ideals like joy, peace, justice, love, beauty, and even community can be experienced, practiced, and enjoyed by atheists and Christians alike; these are universal ideals, and one does not have to believe in God to be happy or feel at peace. I’ve met many atheists who are MUCH more joyful, loving, compassionate, and appreciative of beauty than Christians. So, going beyond the evolutionary reasons for religion, if we’re taking salvation out of the equation, why should someone be a Christian?

And it drew lots of great responses, some of which I will quote in my own answer.

Let’s break down the question, first of all. Ben asks at the very beginning to take the “salvation/eternity issue out of the discussion.” I’m fine with that exercise, but we need to note right up front that it guts the question of meaning for most of the 6+ billion theists in the world. People believe in God, in large part, because of the salvific role that God plays (or gods play) in every religious system.

The second thing to notice is that Ben ties salvation and eternity together, almost as though they’re interchangeable terms. I admit that there are still many people to hold to Christianity because they don’t want to go to Hell when they die. But not only is that a fairly shitty reason to be Christian, it also ignores the much richer meaning of salvation in the Christian tradition. In Scot McKnight’s book, The King Jesus Gospel, he helpfully differentiates this by referring to the version of the gospel that focuses only on eternal life as the “soterian” gospel, and opposed to the the true salvation that Jesus offers. Or, in the words of commenter Ryan Miller,

Isn’t the whole point of Christianity salvation? Not in terms of being “saved” from “eternal fire” but in terms of being saved from bondage, shame, fear, injustice, and all the other hells around us all the time… so that we can become new beings and find our true identities to “save” this world and all of humanity with it, with God leading the way. Not with platitudes but with actual restoration?

Without salvation of any kind, I don’t think there is any point to Christianity.

So, that’s point one: salvation is more than your eternal destiny.

Point two is this: many of us (myself included) believe in God because we experience God. It’s what what Schleiermacher called the “feeling of utter dependence,” or, as stated by commenter Andrew DeYoung,

Though my belief in God and commitment to Christianity has often wavered, I’ve been unable to shake this bedrock belief that there is Something bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice, peace, life, and love. And for me, “God” is the best word I’ve found for that Something, and Christianity is what has helped me to experience it. It’s what I’ve got.

So, Ben, a lot of people say that the advantage of belief in God is that it makes sense of their personal experience of the Divine. Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche think that we’re deluded, as do Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. But in spite of their protestations, the vast majority of human beings who presently roam this planet experience something more than themselves, and they call the source of this experience, “God.”

Third: the advantage to belief in God is that it gives meaning to life. There seems to be something in most human beings that desires hope — it’s what has driven the career of my favorite theologian. And, without hope of something more than this life, life seems meaningless — maybe not to Nietzsche, but to most people. The aptly named Lana Hope wrote,

In short: if there is no God, then children who suffered cruel lives and died unmerciful deaths died in vane. In the end, their lives were totally useless. The idea of an afterlife means there is healing and more and better to come. I am not saying this proves God’s existence, but it comforts me.

Fourth, I agree with Jesse Turri — it’s the aesthetics of theism, and more specifically Christianity, that draw me:

For me this question comes down to a matter of aesthetics. The reason I remain a Christian is because I want to live a beautiful life.

Judgments of beauty require an aesthetic, some criterion which separates the ugly from the beautiful. So in order to live a beautiful life you need some way to define beauty.

The way I found my aesthetic was by asking myself three questions: Who, living or dead, do I admire the most? What moves me to tears? What shakes my soul?

I’ve found that Jesus of Nazereth is my aesthetic. He’s how I define a beautiful life. I’ve noticed in my heart that every time a human action moved my soul or brought tears to my eyes that action reminded me of Jesus. And so, because I want to live a beautiful life, I follow Jesus.

I’ll take it in a different direction, though. The aesthetics of the Christian story attract me because they are reflective of my experience of life. Theism often doesn’t make sense to me — at least not the theism that posits an interventionist God — but Jesus almost always makes sense to me. And, as I’ve written before, the complexity of the biblical narrative matches the complexity of my experience of human life.

Fifth, and finally, it’s about the community. A lot of commenters wrote about this, including Jonnie Russell,

Why? Because it affords you the best kind of community for making the world a better place. Say what you will (my much appreciated radical theology friends lurking in the background but failing to comment yet!), the intention of a/theistic conceptions of the Christian life, are attempts to retain exactly that feature–the community of God, bound by a common cause– that makes the religion so attractive. I do not think there is ANY historical or biblical reason for believing in God apart from a conception of participating in what God is doing in the world.

But I left this until last for a reason. I think it’s overplayed by old school Unitarian-Universalists and new school Christian a/theists. Community is important, to be sure, but a community that is not christocentric is not the church in any recognizable way.

I was talking to some Jewish friends last week, and we agreed that one of the biggest differences between contemporary Judaism and contemporary Christianity is that the former is home to many atheists, but not the latter. When a Christian forsakes their belief in God, they most often quit the church. That’s not the case in Judaism, wherein religious commitment also entails ethnic and familial commitments. The reason that atheists quit the Christian community is that, without Christ, the church just doesn’t have much to offer.

So, Ben, while your question is purely theoretical because there is no Christianity without salvation, it’s still been a great question, and I thank you.

Last week, I attended and participated in a conference at Fuller Seminary called “Talk of God, Talk of Science.” I’m always happy to return to Fuller, and I was warmly received, particularly by president-elect, Mark Labberton. Fuller’s a good place, people. Believe me.

Anyhoo, the background of the conference is that it was supported and underwritten by the Templeton Foundation, particularly the Scientists in Congregations Project. By a show of hands, it seemed that over 1/3 of the attendees were part of that project. Everyone at this conference was a fan of science. Everyone wants faith and science to embrace and make whoopee. That was the de facto assumption in the room.

What I found most interesting about the talks that I heard was that they all dealt with one particular issue in the science and religion world: evolution and creation. That was the case study around which the talks that I heard revolved (I probably heard 2/3′s of the plenary talks at the conference).

I sat on a panel on Friday evening, and, when asked about my experience of science in the church, observed what I’d seen that day. And then I said, “No one under 40 gives a crap about creationism. Only Baby Boomers care about that.”

I realize that’s somewhat hyperbolic. There are recalcitrant GenXers and Millennials who take their kids to the Creation Museum and subject them to Answers in Genesis curriculum. But, please. Those are the dark and musty corners of conservatism that will never change. As Jesus said, “The anti-science refuseniks will always be with you.”

I think that’s true. The “science vs. evolution” debate is over. No one with any significant cultural capital believes in a young earth (and don’t tell me that Colbert plaything Louie Gohmert has cultural capital). So I worry that the Christians who were presenting at the conference are fighting a battle that’s already been won.

In a follow-up question, I was asked what are the vexing issues for science at faith for younger Christians. For one, I think the science regarding human sexuality needs to be thoroughly vetted in churches. I remarked that if the scientists and theologians had given their talks on that topic, there wouldn’t have been nearly so much mutual admiration in the room.

And how about the bioethics of stem cells and of human cloning?

There are lots of issues that science has brought to the fore that the church has not dealt with sufficiently. If we’re still beating up on the creationists, it’s because we’re too timid to wade into more turgid scientific waters. It’s time to turn our attention to more pressing matters of science and faith.

Next to me on the panel was longtime friend, Andy Crouch. He said that, being married to a scientist who studies quantum theory, they have dinner table family discussion about science all the time. He admitted to not understanding quantum theory all that well, but he did say this: Unlike some previous scientific paradigms, quantum theory bends not toward closed systems of rationality, but toward openness, mystery, and paradox.

If he’s right, these will be fruitful times to be a science-appreciating Christian.