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Pub Theology Recap March 3

March 7, 2011 Culture, Relationships, Theology Comments are closed

The Northern Hawk Owl amber ale in the cask set the tone for a nice, low-key evening of discussion, with some potentially hot topics. Great to have the wisdom of a philosopher again in our midst (C), not to mention the always insightful Presbyterian contingent (D and N), the resident a-theists (S & R), some new voices of wisdom (S, K and M!), and some of us who just like beer (J & A, and B). Not to be forgotten was the late arrival of our local fashion and health consultants (B and E). I am sure I have forgotten some others, but then I arrived at Right Brain at 2pm to reserve our usual seat -maybe I should rethink that strategy.

Topics:

Empathy

theories

freedom

where is Jesus?

hell

violence

evil

—
In detail:

1. Studies show that empathy is tied to our awareness of our own and others’ mortality. Will heaven be without empathy?

2. Was Jesus able to come down from the cross? Could he have blown it to a ‘million smithereens’ if he wished?

3. A physicist: “One must always allow for alternative theories.”
A theologian: “Using God as an explanation is not an explanation.”
What do you think?

4. ‘Freedom in Christ.’ What does(n’t) it mean?

5. What does it mean to say: ‘Jesus is here’?

6. “The traditional understanding of hell perpetuates the cycle of violence for eternity, and it is divine violence that does it.” Are we stuck with violence and evil forever?

7a. “Instead of bringing God to ‘unreached’ places and ‘unreached’ peoples, I find countless missionaries who say that, while this was how they once thought, time and again they find that these unreached places are the very sites where they must go to find God and to be reached. How many of us have learned too late that our initial idea, that by serving the world we will help bring God to others, has eclipsed the wisdom that in serving the world we find God there.” Is it presumptuous to ‘bring God’ somewhere?

7b. “There is no empathy in heaven, because there is no mortality. There is no empathy in utopia, because there is
no suffering.” In other words, those entering heaven will have to leave their empathetic sensibilities at the Pearly
Gates, because there cannot be empathy for those left behind. If there were, there would be regret and sadness,
and these are not permitted. What is interesting to note about the incarnation is that Jesus had to leave
‘heaven’ in order to properly empathize with us. Is heaven sterile?

8. “A story told often enough, and confirmed often enough in daily life, ceases to be a tale and is accepted as reality itself.” Discuss.

kiss_girl_hell_church_sign — This clears things up.

Through me the way into the suffering city,
through me the way to the eternal pain,
through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, who enter here.

– Sign on the gate into hell, in Dante, Inferno, Canto 3

—-
It’s been a couple days since, so I’ll focus the recap to heaven and hell.

Heaven was an interesting topic, as a couple of people felt that a utopian heaven of perfection would be theoretically impossible because different people would have different ideas of what perfection is, and therefore it would be impossible for everyone to be the same amount of happy all the time, forever. In other words, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure – but how do you account for everyone without making someone upset? Some also noted that anything that was repeated over and over forever would eventually become hell, even if it started out as your favorite thing (I do love Tetris though). Others of us felt that God would be able to pull off something that gave each person meaning and satisfaction that would not result in stupefying boredom, and that the presence of God himself would preclude that (though isn’t he present now?). We also noted that heaven (or the new creation), may well be outside of time as we know it, and so it is hard for us to think about what that is presently like, this side of things.

If you’re going to talk about heaven, hell, you naturally think about those who ‘don’t get in’. Will people in heaven be aware of them? Will this go over well? (We noted that Jonathan Edwards and others said that the chief delight of people in heaven will be awareness of the suffering of the unrighteous in hell. “Hey Joe – watch this guy – he’s going to really burn in a minute” Can you honestly imagine?) Will everyone eventually be reconciled to God or will some people remain in suffering forever? Discussion on hell was interesting, particularly the fact that no one seemed interested in defending the traditional view of eternal, conscious torment, even as I attempted to articulate it. Ideas of separation from God, of loneliness, of constantly needing more of your own space (a la The Great Divide), as well as – ‘maybe we’ve just made a lot of this stuff up by misreading texts and importing assumptions’.

There’s been a lot of talk about hell and universalism of late with Rob Bell’s new book impending. A couple of good blog posts on hell have shown up this week, so I encourage you to read them over:

To Hell With It on Gathered Introspections, by the incredibly wise and wonderful Christy Berghoef. (no relation) Wait – she’s in the other room! OK OK > she paid me to link to her post. With dinner.

and

Can Anyone Explain to Me Why People Should BURN in Hell FOREVER? – by Kester Brewin

Check ’em out, and post your own thoughts on the above topics below, or join us next Thursday at 8pm at Right Brain Brewery!

Pub Theology Recap Feb 24

February 25, 2011 Culture, Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

A nice night of discussion at Right Brain Brewery, with old and new friends, and a nice pint of Pie Whole – brewed with a whole apple pie from Grand Traverse Pie Company – a nice applely, caramelly, pumpkiny brew. Discussion was so good, that we only hit the first three of seven topics. We’ll hold some over for next week.

Topics for the night:

good / bad

amulets

meaning

sasquatch

Longer version:

1. Ancient proverb: “Every time something bad happens, something good happens as well.”
Does it? Why? What is your experience?

2. The oldest known Hebrew Bible texts are silver amulets dated to about the mid-seventh century BCE. Amulets were worn as charms against evil or injury. Compare to usage(s) of the text today.

3. “Much desire to seek after God is nothing of the sort. For instance, to seek God for eternal life is to seek eternal life, while to seek God for a meaningful existence is to seek a meaningful existence.”
What does it mean to truly seek God?

OK so we didn’t really talk about sasquatch. At least not for long. 🙂 Discussion about good and bad started out with someone noting that he used to think along the lines of the proverb quoted, that bad things were accompanied or followed up by good things. However, after a series of seemingly senseless tragedies and difficult circumstances, he had moved to a more cynical place, where bad things ‘just happen’, without a deeper purpose or greater good behind them.

I noted that I like to think that a big picture view could step outside the bad things that happen and see them as part of a larger pattern or whole, and that somehow and someway God has purposes in what happens, and that even out of bad can come good. And this is a perspective that we are not privy to in this life. But I also noted that I have a very limited amount of what you could call ‘bad experiences’, certainly a lack of tragedies in my life – and that I’m not the best one to talk from experience.

Someone else noted that it is cruel and perhaps an insult to tell someone who is in the midst of a hardship that it is ‘for a purpose’ or that they have to just step back to ‘see the good’. It’s not an easy thing.

Maybe bad things just are. We live in a broken world. Bad things happen.

But I do believe that God often can use hard situations to bring about good things, but I don’t think those bad things happen expressly so that we can experience something good.

Most people felt the old proverb might be true in a very general sense, but certainly not as an axiom of how things always go.

Regarding the ancient superstitious use of texts of the Bible, it was noted that people still have many superstitions, and that we may even (mis)use the Bible that way today.

Regarding the third quote, from Peter Rollins’ book How (Not) to Speak of God, generated some interesting discussion. Someone asked if we are ever able to pursue God without some selfish or ulterior motive. Can we pursue God just for God himself? Or do the benefits – meaning, life, salvation, peace of mind – always blur our motives, or are the motives themselves? Is it wrong to seek God out of selfish motives? Is this the one place where hedonism is permitted, as no doubt John Piper and others would assert?

It was a nice, low-key evening, and we’ll save the other topics for next time!

A reading from the backside:
“The weakening of God into the world, described in the
Pauline language of emptying (kenosis), is paradigmatically
expressed in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the
birth, but also the death of Jesus. Kenosis is not a one-time-
only event occurring in the life and death of Jesus but the
ongoing history or tradition inaugurated by this event. This
process is ‘secularization’, which means not the abandonment
or dissolution of God, but the ‘transcription’ of God into time
and history (the saeculum), thus a successor form of death of God
theology. Kenosis, as the transcription, translation, or
transmission of God into the world, means establishing the
kingdom of God on earth.

For example, the commonplace complaint that the secular
world has taken the Christ out of Christmas and transcribed it
into “Happy Holidays” is to be viewed as still another success
on Christianity’s part. For now the Incarnation has been
translated into a popular secular holiday in the West, in which
the spirit of generosity and goodwill among all people prevails.
During the “holidays” this “spirit” of love becomes general
among humankind, which is what in fact this doctrine actually
means: its application in the concrete reality of lived
experience. The tolerant, nonauthoritarian and pluralistic
democratic societies in the West are the translation into real
political structures of the Christian doctrine of neighbor love.
When the transcendent God is “weakened” – or emptied – into
the world, it assumes the living form of Western cultural life.”
– John Caputo, After the Death of God

Post any of your own thoughts on the evening below!

Pub Theology Recap Feb 10

February 11, 2011 Culture, Relationships, Theology Comments are closed

We had about a dozen people at Pub Theology last night over at Right Brain Brewery in the Warehouse district.

There’s nothing like coming in from the cold in Northern Michigan to a good brew and good conversation with friends and strangers!

On tap last night:

time

eternity

reason

ghosts

Here were the topics and quotes to get conversation rolling:

1. What about time? Does eternity exist?

From Introducing Radical Orthodoxy by James K.A. Smith:
“Modernity eternalizes the present. A modern ontology is characterized by a flatness and materialism that ultimately lead to nihilism – a loss of the real squandered into nothing. When the world is so flattened that all we have is the immanent, the immanent implodes upon itself.”

“Only a participatory ontology – in which the immanent and material is suspended from the transcendent and immaterial – can grant the world meaning.”
2. Is reason reliable?
Immanuel Kant in the introduction to Critique of Pure Reason: “Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.”

More from Introducing RO: “The myth of secularity relies upon the modern dualism of faith and reason.”
and
“We must protest equally against assertions of ‘pure reason’ and ‘pure faith’ as against theology as an internal autistic idiolect, and against theology as an adaptation to unquestioned secular assumptions… The apparently opposite poles are in secret collusion: the pursuit of pure faith is as much a modern quest as the pursuit of pure reason.” We must seek a via media in which the theoretical foundations of secularity are dismantled – whence the spaces for public discourse will provide new opportunities for the expression of a properly theological account of reality

3. What about ghosts?
——-
I don’t have time to give a full recap here, but there was some good debate about modernity/pre-modernity and conceptions of time. About what does it mean to be fully present in the here and now, and does this present awareness become overbearing when approached from a materialist perspective? There was no consensus on that, though one person, referencing Eckhart Tolle, noted that ‘all we really have is the present moment’.

Is reason reliable? Again, some good discussion, and general agreement that it is. No consensus on faith/reason as a false or appropriate division.

There were also some ghost stories shared.

Have a thought about the above topics? Post a comment below.