Too funny. (HT: Culture Making).
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Category: Humor
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Boulet on New ESV Versions
This is very funny.
In my “Intro to the Christian Tradition” class at Biblical Seminary, we’re discussing James Payton’s Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. In Chapter 4, Payton describes how Eastern Orthodox Christianity historically has emphasized God’s ineffability to a greater degree than Western Christianity. As a result, Eastern Orthodox theology tends to stress “apophatic” or “negative” theology — speaking about God primarily by emphasizing what God is not like — over “cataphatic” or “positive” theology. Here was one of our classroom discussion questions and my response:
1. How do you respond to Orthodox theology’s understanding that speaking of God is “a hazardous enterprise,” and that language is unable to fully convey God’s nature? (p. 59)
This is a very helpful reminder for those of us raised in evangelical independent church traditions.
In some circles, I think our ways of speaking about God have become “scholastic.” We are very keen to make logical arguments brimming with “evidence that demands a verdict.” Our in-house arguments tend to focus on the precise meanings of terms in carefully drafted “Statements of Faith.” These arguments and Statements may have a place, but it’s helpful to remember that they don’t really begin to grasp or contain God. I believe God is concerned with our fidelity to Him, and that this involves the transformation of our minds and the ability to “teach sound doctrine.” However, God is so far beyond our ability to articulate who He is that I think we dishonor Him when we make doctrinal precision the sine qua non of the Christian life. In fact, I agree with John Franke’s book “Manifold Witness” that some degree of difference in doctrinal articulation is part of God’s design for the Church. This need not be disturbing when begin to realize that God truly is ineffable.
It’s also helpful to remember that we cannot fully explain God’s ways. Often, we display enormous confidence in our own ability to discern exactly what God is doing in the world. Perhaps we assume automatically that AIDS, or genocide, or a financial crisis or natural disaster, is a clear message from God about someone else’s sin. Perhaps we assume equally quickly that our own “success” is evidence of God’s blessing. It’s true, of course, that God does discipline and punish sin and that we do experience His blessing as we follow Him. Yet, it’s helpful to remember that our primary posture must be one of humble, kneeling humility and gratitude. In fact, one of the blessings of faith, I think, is the ability to leave such tangles in God’s hands. If His love, justice and grace ultimately are beyond us, it is not for us to circumscribe how and when He must act with regard to others. It is for us simply to seek to be faithful with what He has given to us.
This is from Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. I think Migliore’s discussion of what Christian “faith” entails is a highlight of this wonderful systematic theology.
Christian freedom is the beginning of a new freedom from the bondage of sin and for partnership with God and others. This fresh start has its basis in the forgiving grace of God present in the new humanity of Jesus with whom we are united by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the perfect realization of being human in undistorted relationship with God. He is also the human being for others, living in utmost solidarity with all people, and especially with sinners, strangers, the poor, the disadvantaged, and the oppressed. He is, further, the great pioneer (Heb. 12:2) of a new humanity that lives in radical openness to God’s promised reign of justice, freedom and peace. In his total trust in God, Jesus acts as our great priest, mediating God’s grace and forgiveness to us; in his startling solidarity with all people, and especially with the poor and outcast, Jesus acts as our king, bringing us into the new realm of justice and companionship with the ‘others’ from whom we have long been alienated; and in his bold proclamation and enactment of God’s in-breaking reign, Jesus is the prophet who leads the way toward the future of perfect freedom in communion with God and our fellow creatures for which all creation yearns. To be Christian is to participate by faith, love and hope in the new humanity present in Jesus.
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Shatner Reads Palin
William Shatner interprets Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed. Too funny.
(If the embedded object doesn’t appear, here’s the link: http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/clips/shatner-reads-palins-tweets-072909/1140351/
Recently we watched the movie Freedom Writers, which is about a high school teacher who works with inner city students. It’s a little hokey, but not a bad movie. At one point, the teacher brings the kids to a holocaust museum, and they meet with some camp survivors. A somewhat incongruous thought struck me at that moment: can my theology handle the Holocaust?
Of course, no theology, no reasonable system, can “handle” the Holocaust. That kind of evil by definition defies reason. What I mean is, does my theology provide a system of justice that can account for the victims of the Holocaust?
I’m starting to think of this disturbing question as the “Holocaust Test.” A theology that can’t pass the Holocaust Test seems too small. Human history is filled with holocausts. The Nazi Holocaust is unique in its focus on the Jewish people. Yet we can also speak of African slavery, of communist dictatorships and gulags, of the killing fields of Cambodia, of Rwanda and Uganda, and so on. What does our theology say about the innocent blood — the blood of men, women, and young children — that cries out from the ground of human violence?
I’m afraid the very conservative brand of Evangelical theology I’ve inherited fails the Holocaust Test. The individual eschatology in this system is simple: those who have heard and responded to the Gospel are in Heaven; those who have not are in Hell. Anne Frank, and the millions of other Jewish children who died in the Holocaust, simply are lost (assuming they passed the “age of accountability,” whatever that might be). All of the Jewish adults who died in the Nazi camps, simply are lost. We should state the logic of this theology in terms that are as unflinching as its teaching: the residents of Berkenau and Auschwitz went straight from the gas chambers to the flames of Hell.
Obviously, I’m not the first person, or the first Christian, to realize that this view of eschatology is grossly inadquate. There are many ways of thinking about Christian eschatology that avoid the simplistic poles of hyper-exclusivism and universalism. On the Roman Catholic side, after Vatican II, there has been much reflection on how the grace extended in Christ through the Church can spill over to non-Catholics and non-professing-Christians. On the Protestant side, there is Barth, who was a universalist of sorts, and more “evangelical” voices such as Billy Graham, John Stott, Dallas Willard, and others who are by no means universalists, but who strongly suggest that the mystery of God’s salvation cannot be circumscribed by what is visible to us in the human context.
The Holocaust Test forces us to tread in some difficult waters. I don’t think the Biblical witness, or the Tradition, or reason or experience, support true universalism. It seems abhorrent to me to suggest that Anne Frank and Hitler share precisely the same fate, whether in Hell or in Heaven. Freedom means that we have freedom to reject God, and many do reject God, which is the definition of being “lost,” now and in the eschaton. But, at the same time, the crabbed little “four spiritual laws” view of individual eschatology can’t possibly be the whole story if there is such a thing as divine universal Justice.
What do you think?
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Biblical Curse Generator
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Google Launches GMail Autopilot
Once again, Google launches an astonishing new feature in time for April 1. What will they think of next?
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Sharkface and Skeleton Man
Looking on the web for some video clips for a project on Lamentations and stumbled on these. Hmmm…
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New Theological Terms
A new theological dictionary from John Frye. This seems promising.