Author: David Opderbeck

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: January 16-17, 2011

January 16-17, 2011

Lectionary

Heb 5:1-10

Brothers and sisters: Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people. No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. In the same way, it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest, but rather the one who said to him: You are my Son: this day I have begotten you; just as he says in another place, You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. In the days when he was in the Flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Reflection / Life

Prayer

God of justice and mercy,
Make our eyes bright in darkness,
Make our feet quick towards need,
Make our our hands strong for labor,
Make our hearts beat for peace.
Amen.

Categories
Barth Theology

Blogging Barth's Dogmatics: § 1.2

This week in Daniel Kirk’s virtual Barth reading group, we are discussion § 1.2 of the Dogmatics.  Here Barth discusses what comprises a proper prolegomena to dogmatics.

Coming from an Evangelical context, it’s common to take analytic philosophy as the prolegomena to theology.  This is particularly true for neo-Evangelical theologians such as Carl Henry and conservative Evangelicals such as Millard Erickson and Norman Geisler.  Their systematic theologies rest on logical rules such as the law of non-contradiction as applied to what they consider to be empirical observations concerning the propositional content of scripture.  This method leads to an emphasis on rational argumentation, which in turn supports a robust apologetic program. The same observation could be made concerning scholastic Roman Catholic theology.  Indeed, Norman Geisler considers himself an “Evangelical Thomist.”

Barth will have none of this.  For him, adopting anything other than “revelation” as the basis for dogmatics is a form of unbelief and idolatry.  Philosophy, for Barth, is a human construction, and therefore the ultimate ground of rationalistic theologies is man, not God.

The immediate response to this claim is that man is made in God’s image, meaning that human reason and the rules of logic are reflections of God’s own self.  Barth rejects any such notion of the analogia entis.  As he will develop later in his discussion of revelation and the Trinity, Barth — drawing strong support from Martin Luther — takes God to be wholly other, hidden, and inaccessible to fallen humans absent a radical act of grace.

Two very helpful themes can be derived from this section.  First is the limitations of apologetics.  For Barth, apologetics are not merely of limited value — “apologetics and polemics,” he says, “have obviously been irresponsible, irrelevant, and therefore ineffective.”

Second is that revelation is the proper foundation of theology and indeed of Christian epistemology.  As Barth notes,

“the place from which the way of dogmatic knowledge is to be seen and understood can be neither a prior anthropological possibility nor a subsequent ecclesiastical reality, but only the present moment of the speaking and hearing of Jesus Christ Himself, the divine creation of light in our hearts.”

As we will see, and as this quote foreshadows, Barth’s concept of “revelation” certainly is not the same static notion as Henry’s or Geisler’s.

At this point we might begin to wonder, however, about Barth’s anthropology.  Barth will eventually flesh out this brief introduction with a lengthy argument specifically against any sort of anthropological prolegomena to theology, in response to a claim that an earlier version of the Dogmatics relied too heavily on anthropology.  But it is not at all clear that he — or anyone — can escape some sort of a priori anthropological assumptions.  Even Barth, after all, is making a reasoned argument against the use of reason as prolegomena.

For this and other reasons, I will eventually lean towards Thomas Torrance’s softer understanding of the analogia entis and natural theology. It should also be noted here that Roman Catholic theology, after the nouvelle theologie, is no longer predominantly scholastic. Barth and one of the key figures in the nouvelle theologie, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, were famous interlocutors, though this relationship began after Barth wrote Volume I of the Dogmatics.  Balthasar may also be a helpful conversation partner, along with Torrance, as we delve deeper into Barth’s work.

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: January 13-15, 2011

January 13-15, 2011

Lectionary

Heb 4:12-16

The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account. Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.

Reflection

“Christ commands you to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ But this ‘as yourself’? Certainly no wrestler can get so tight a grasp upon his opponent as that which this commandment gets on our selfish hearts. The commandment is so easy to understand, and yet we must be broken in spirit to follow it. As Jacob limped after he has wrestled with God, so shall our selfishness be broken when it has wrestled with this commandment. Yet htis commandment does not teach that a man should not love himself. Rather, it teaches him the proper kind of self-love. Christianity presupposes that a man loves himself, and adds that in loving himself he should also love his neighbor.” — Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer

The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
(Ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10)

Categories
Science and Religion Spirituality Theology

The Triune God and Creation

Here is the text of my most recent podcast.

The Triune God and Creation

In our previous podcasts, we mentioned that the doctrine of the Trinity is vital to our understanding of creation. In this conversation, we’ll explore what we mean when we say God is Triune, and how this deepens our perspectives on God’s relationship to creation.

That God is Triune is among the most basic of Christian confessions. Christians confess that there is one God – God is “one in essence” – distinguished in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Certainly the idea that “God is one in essence distinguished in three persons” is far easier to state than to understand. As theologian Robert Jensen says, “’[t]he doctrine of the Trinity’ is less a homogeneous body of propositions than it is a task: that of the church’s continuing effort to recognize and adhere to the biblical God’s hypostatic being.”

It is easy to paint incorrect pictures of what it means for God to be Triune: pictures of three persons of the Trinity having different hierarchical ranks (called “subordinationism”); or pictures of the three persons representing merely different manifestations of God (called “modalism”); or pictures of the three persons as individually separate gods (called “tritheism”). Against these incorrect pictures we need to understand that the persons of the Trinity are equal with and inseparable from each other – that they are “coequal,” “coessential,” “coinherent.”

These word pictures matter because they point us toward the sort of being God really is. Theologian Daniel Migliore says it this way:

To speak thus of God as triune is to set all of our prior understandings of what is divine in question. God is not a solitary monad but free, self-communicating love. God is not the supreme will-to-power over others but the supreme will-to-communion in which power and life are shared. To speak of God as the ultimate power whose being is in giving, receiving, and sharing love, who gives life to others and wills to live in communion, is to turn upside down our understandings of both divine and human power.

This relational understanding of God has profound implications for how we understand God’s purposes for creation. This is because God acts as God is. In theological terms, we say that the “economic trinity” – how God is in Himself – is the “immanent trinity” – how God acts in relation to creation. God created not because anything compelled or required Him to do so, but out of the same love that characterizes the coequal, coessential, coinherent Triune persons of his being.

Creation is a gift. Theologian and writer David Bentley Hart summarizes this theme beautifully:

The God whom Genesis depicts as pronouncing a deliberative “Let us…” in creating humanity after his image and as looking on in approbation of his handiwork, which he sees to be good, is the eternal God who is the God he forever is, with or without creation, to whom creation adds absolutely nothing; God does not require creation to ‘fecundate’ his being, nor does he require the pathos of creation to determine his ‘personality’ as though he were some finite subjectivity writ large, whose transcendental Ego were in need of delimitation in an empirical ego; God and creation do not belong to an interdependent history of necessity, because the Trinity is already infinitely sufficient, infinitely ‘diverse,’ infinitely at peace; God is good and sovereign and wholly beautiful, and creation is gift, loveliness, pleasure, dignity, and freedom….”

Hart continues: “precisely because creation is uncompelled, unnecessary, and finally other than that dynamic life of coinherent love whereby God is God, it can reveal how God is the God he is; precisely because creation is needless, an object of delight that shares God’s love without contributing anything that God does not already possess in infinite eminence, creation reflects the divine life, which is one of delight and fellowship and love.”

Gift. Delight. Loveliness. Fellowship. Love. These words characterize creation because they are what the God who created is in His Triune self.

Creation is gift. It is easy to lose track of this truth in the midst of the violence, anger and war that scars our experience of the world. Have you ever thought it would have been better if you had never been born? Have you ever wondered why God created at all when the result is so much suffering? It is impossible to “explain” suffering and evil, though we will talk about some ways to think of suffering and evil in future podcasts. One important theme is that, even with all its groaning, creation is given freely by God, out of His overflowing perichoretic love, as gift. That we are alive, that we breathe the air of this world and feel its soil under our feet, is good.

Creation is delight. How often do you drink in the simple joy of being? Stand by a window for a moment and feel the warm sun on your skin. This is an expression of God’s own life.

Creation is lovely. From the tiniest one-celled organisms to the inconceivably vast fields of galaxies, creation displays symmetry, light, color, movement, form, shape.

Creation is fellowship. The creatures of the earth and we human beings are bound together in a common share of life. And we as human beings, with all our variety of skin and body types, are fundamentally of the same stuff, sharing the same spark of divinity, made for each other and for God.

Creation is love. Every structure, every particle, everything seen and unseen, all that is, is because of God’s love, and is loved by God. To be loved by the God who is perfected in love within His own being is to be named a thing of unimaginable worth. There is nothing ordinary in the universe or in any universe God has made. Everything that is, is extraordinary and priceless.

Today may you receive with gratitude the gift of being;
May you delight in life;
May you bathe in beauty;
May you know you belong;
May you realize the true measure of your worth, and share in the joyful dance of God’s overflowing, creative love.

Categories
Podcasting Science and Religion Spirituality Theology

TG Darkly Podcast: The Triune God and Creation

Here is TG Darkly Podcast #4:  The Triune God and Creation.

Use the player below to listen, or download the file.

Categories
Spirituality

Daniel Kirk on Community and Belief

An excellent post by Daniel Kirk, reproduced in full below.

When I was younger, I remember hearing and talking as though the most important thing you could say about a Christian is what that person does when no one else, or at least no other Christians, were around. Once you leave that protective sphere, who are you really?

I have almost decided that the opposite is closer to the truth. To play a role in the Christian drama is to be an individual who is part of a body. I am most myself when I am functioning within the body of Christ, and those possible deficiencies that surface when I’m not in close connection with the community show me how much I need the community to help me manifest who I truly am in Christ.

This is a smaller piece of a larger puzzle. Who we are, what we believe, and what we do are all to varying degrees part of the communities in which we participate. Sometimes this will be by way of agreement, sometimes by way of disagreement–often the communities we’re in will shape our thinking in ways we’re not even aware of by nature of the very questions it’s asking or not asking, or the way it’s framing the options.

All of this gets me to the real point, which is that the state of our faith as followers of Jesus is rarely separable from the Christian community of which we are a part.

When I was going through some of the worst of my struggles to find a Christian community where I could thrive, my belief in the God of the Bible was at its weakest. Other stories I hear of people slipping away from the faith often have lengthy struggles of finding a community that can bear the questions someone is bringing to the table.

Some places will be asking questions or giving answers that resonate deeply with us–and that very affinity will become part of what makes the Christian story compelling and believable.

Some places will be pouring out their energies in debates that seem arcane and ridiculous to us–and that very dissonance will become part of what makes the Christian story flimsy and unbelievable.

Some places will demand that Christianity entail certain positions or actions that we cannot endorse, and so not only does that community take a hit in our estimation, but the Christian story as a whole loses its luster.

In the Christian narrative, salvation is a communal affair. This is why I strive to send people to churches that will serve them well–even if those aren’t churches that would so serve me. And that is part of why I keep up this blog.

For all the various disagreements we might have with each other, I am convinced that there is a kind of person out there–someone who lives between giving up the Christianity of their youth, often, but is still passionate about Jesus, someone who might find some peace with God if they were given space to acknowledge various data about the Bible, evolution, sex, –who will find here freedom to keep believing.

Categories
Epistemology Science and Religion

Al Mohler's Ephemeral Epistemology

James Kidder, a Christian paleontologist, comments on Al Mohler’s most recent critique of BioLogos.  Mohler’s view of science seems to rest on an “appearance of age” argument.  According to Mohler, “given a plain reading of Scripture, there is every reason that Christians should reject a uniformitarian presupposition.”

Big words like “uniformitarian” and “presupposition” make this idea sound smart.  It is, however, profoundly anti-intellectual.  I mean “anti-intellectual” here not in the sense of opposing the “academic elite” as a class.  I mean it literally: adopting Mohler’s epistemology destroys our ability to “known” anything.  It is, in fact, a relativistic, Gnostic and nihilistic world view, which is not at all compatible with Christianity.

Mohler effectively sells out a Christian realist view of the universe to Descartes’ Demon.  Descartes was troubled by empiricism.  How can I really know for certain, he wondered, whether the things I observe with my senses are “real?”  I can’t prove, he reasoned, that the apparent reality I observe isn’t just an illusion created by a malevolent demon to keep me deluded.  After all, whatever proofs I might offer would be part of the illusion.  Thus he resolved to the one fact he thought could not be an illusion without self-contradiction:  that of his own existence.  “I think, therefore I am.”

Mohler’s epistemology says that Descartes was right to be afraid after all.  The world that we think we observe, with its distant starlight, its layers of fossils, its rates of radioactive decay, and so on, is illusory.  It may “appear” to be very old, but it is in fact something very different.

But, Mohler would say, Descartes’ Demon is vanquished because a “plain reading of scripture” tells us what really happened.  Here is the insurmountable problem:  a “plain reading of scripture” depends on “uniformitarian” assumptions about history.  It assumes that the text we now have is really an ancient text, created thousands of years ago.  It assumes that there really was a Jewish community and subsequently a Christian Church that existed in the past and preserved and handed these documents down as scripture.  It assumes that people in the past used certain words that have meanings that can be known with a high degree of certainty through historical study.

If Mohler’s view of history is correct, then all of his assumptions about scripture are up for grabs.  Absent a “uniformitarian” view of history, there is no way to be sure that what we now think of as “scripture” wasn’t poofed into existence with the “appearance of age” only moments ago.  There is no way to know with any certainty what the “plain meaning” of these documents might be or whether there is any “language” with meaning at all.  Indeed, there is no way to know whether Jesus really lived and truly rose again.

If your world view causes you to deny that history is real, that is a sure sign of trouble.  Without history, there is no meaning.

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: January 12, 2011

January 12, 2011

Lectionary

Heb 2:14-18

Since the children share in blood and Flesh, Jesus likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life. Surely he did not help angels
but rather the descendants of Abraham; therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Reflection

“Don’t whip yourself for your lack of spiritual progress.  If you do, you will easily be pulled even further away from your center.  you will damage yourself and make it more difficult to come home again.  It is obviously good not to act on your sudden emotions.  But you don’t have to repress them, either.  You can acknowledge them and let them pass by.  In a certain sense, you have to befriend them so that you do not become their victim.  The way to ‘victory’ is not in trying to overcome your dispiriting emotions directly but in building a deeper sense of safety and at-homeness and a more incarnate knowledge that you are deeply loved.  Then,  little by little, you will stop giving so much power to strangers.” — Henri Nouwen

Prayer

The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
(Ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10)

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: January 10, 2011

January 10, 2011

Lectionary

MK 1:14-20

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” As he passed by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then they left their nets and followed him. He walked along a little farther and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They too were in a boat mending their nets. Then he called them. So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.

Reflection

“Faith — when it is truly faith rather than a mere intellectual assent to some proposition or other — will always seek to enter into a fuller and deeper knowledge and understanding of that which matters most to it.  And so Christian faith is driven by a desire to know more of that which is its source and raison d’etre; to learn to speak and think more appropriately of that reality, and of the various component parts of the knowledge of it which has been handed down through the ages by the community of faith; to consider the way in which all the things which are believed about this reality cohere with one another; and to explore the pattern of truth which pertains to it.  In all this, faith is concerned with what might be called the ‘internal coherence’ of its own story or gospel.” — Trevor Hart

Prayer

The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
(Ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10)

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: January 9, 2011

January 9, 2011

Lectionary

Is 42:1-4, 6-7

Thus says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.

I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

Reflection

When the soul is tempest-tossed, troubled and cut off by worries, then is the time to pray, so as to make the soul willing and responsive towards God. But there is no kind of prayer that can make God more responsive to the soul, for God is always constant in love.

And so I saw that, whenever we feel the need to pray, our good Lord follows us, helping our desire.

And when, by his special grace, we behold him clearly, knowing no other need, then we follow him and he draws us to himself by love. — Julian of Norwich 

Prayer

The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
The Lord will bless his people with peace.
(Ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10)