Theology Archives - Pub Theologian

The Sweet Kingdom of Jesus

March 15, 2016 Relationships, Theology Comments are closed

“Listen to what your heart is telling you.”

I had the delightful experience of attending a middle school play recently: Cinderella and the Candy Kingdom. It’s the usual Cinderella story, but set in a world of chocolate, sugar and sweets. Plenty of puns made it a very fun show: the wicked stepsisters of Cinderella were named Kit and Kat. The prince of the kingdom was named Reese, who rarely appeared without his squire, Hershey.

While Hershey won the audience with his consistent jokes and eager banter, it was Prince Reese who brought home the underlying meaning of the play. In the world of the Candy Kingdom, everyone loves sweets: first dessert, second dessert, third dessert. Whip cream and chocolate syrup on everything. You get the idea. Yet the young prince has a secret: he doesn’t like sweets. In other words, he’s not like everyone else. He doesn’t belong. Not only that, he’s in line for the throne, but isn’t the “right kind of prince.” Continue Reading..

To Explain God as Unexplainable

January 18, 2014 Philosophy, Theology Comments are closed

winding_path_to_nowhere — A winding, uncertain path

“Quia de deo scire non possumus quid sit, sed quid non sit, non possumus considerare de deo, quomodo sit sed quomodo non sit.”

This is St. Thomas Aquinas’ introduction to his whole Summa Theologica: “Since we cannot know what God is, but only what God is not, we cannot consider how God is but only how He is not.”

At different points in my life, I’ve been pretty sure that we can know exactly who and what God is. We could define him quite precisely. We could come up with a list of attributes. We could name a bunch of names written in an old dusty language: “Jehovah Jireh,” “Adonai,” or “Yahweh.” Of course, we had only a vague idea what those words meant, yet we felt quite confident using them. We pulled out the good book and felt we had not just a good handle, but a definite handle on who God was and what he was like.

Yet the further I travel on the road of faith, the more I learn about the divine mysteries, the more I realize it is just that: mystery.

Anthony de Mello recounts how the great Karl Rahner, in one of his last letters, wrote to a young German drug addict who had asked him for help. The addict had said, “You theologians talk about God, but how could this God be relevant in my life? How could this God get me off drugs?” Rahner said to him, “I must confess to you in all honesty that for me God is and has always been absolute mystery. I do not understand what God is; no one can. We have intimations, inklings; we make faltering, inadequate attempts to put mystery into words. But there is no word for it, no sentence for it.” And talking to a group of theologians in London, Rahner said, “The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable.”

De Mello concludes: “Unexplainable mystery. One does not know, one cannot say. One says, “Ah, ah…” That is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know.”

It is a strange comfort, this unknowing. It is threatening, to be sure. But also comforting.

This is what the mystics are perpetually telling us, notes de Mello: “Words cannot give you reality. They only point, they only indicate. You use them as pointers to get to reality. But once you get there, your concepts are useless. A Hindu priest once had a dispute with a philosopher who claimed that the final barrier to God was the word “God,” the concept of God. The priest was quite shocked by this, but the philosopher said, “The ass that you mount and that you use to travel to a house is not the means by which you enter the house. You use the concept to get there; then you dismount, you go beyond it.” You don’t need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts.”

To know reality, de Mello states, you have to know beyond knowing.

Perhaps Jesus was on to something when he stated in Mark 10:15: “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” We must become as little children. Because children are in a place of wonder, and see things afresh. We see things and think we know. And sometimes, our knowing is what gets in the way.

In Session: Pub Theology 101

March 27, 2013 Books, Pub Theology Comments are closed

A Guide to Cultivating Meaningful Conversations at the Pub

You’ve heard about people gathering at the pub to talk about God and faith, and wondered, why aren’t I doing this? Now you can, thanks to this new guide by Bryan Berghoef, author of Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation, and God. Here Bryan walks through all the steps to beginning your own Pub Theology group, from choosing a location to deciding what to talk about. (You’ll have to make your own decision as to whether you prefer an IPA or a stout). And the best part of this new book: hundreds of discussion topics and questions, sorted by category–such as art, belief, death, morality, philosophy, politics, science, and world religions, to name a few–that Bryan has compiled from over five years’ worth of pub discussions.

So what are you waiting for? This is the inspiration you’ve needed, and the resources to boot, all for less than the price of a pint!
—Book description at Amazon.com

My new book, Pub Theology 101: A Guide to Cultivating Meaningful Conversations at the Pub, is out TODAY for Kindle for only $2.99! (Go to Amazon page)

After my first book, Pub Theology, came out, I began to hear from people all over the country—some leading similar groups, others wanting to get one going. The constant request was: what do we talk about? Do you have some topics for us to get started?

I have compiled all of my topics, questions, and quotes from facilitating Pub Theology sessions for the last five years into one handy ebook, all sorted by category, as well as some tips and suggestions for best practices. And I’m making it all available for—have I said this—less than the price of a pint (or a tip to the bartender.) This is a must-have resource for anyone leading discussions at the pub!

You can carry this handy guide with you on your Kindle or smartphone and pull it out whenever you’re looking for something interesting to talk about with friends, or when prepping for facilitating a Pub Theology session (or Theology Pub, or Theology on Tap, or even Scripture and Scotch, as I heard the other day).

Quotes from Bob Dylan, Søren Kierkegaard, Mother Theresa, Mark Driscoll, Thomas Aquinas, Rob Bell, Kester Brewin, John Piper, Peter Rollins, John Calvin, the Talmud, the Buddha, Plato, Demosthenes, Immanuel Kant, Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Tim Keller, Richard Rohr, Jesus, the Shepherd of Hermas, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Walter Wink, John Frame, Elizabeth Gilbert, Oprah, C.S. Lewis, Doug Pagitt, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Feuerbach, Leo Tolstoy, Paul Tillich, and. . . many many more questions that I’ve written or others have shared with me —all gathered here, for your pub theologizing pleasure.

So what are you waiting for? Get your copy now!

I should also mention—there’s no marketing plan and no major publisher behind this, it is totally word of mouth and grassroots, so share on your Facebook page, Tweet it, pass it along to friends. If you know anyone who might benefit from this resource—let them know!

*Also, if this resource proves helpful to you, please leave a review at Amazon!
—
Don’t have a Kindle? You can get a free Kindle reading app for your Mac, your PC, your tablet, iPad, phone… Or, you can convert it to Nook or other another eReader format at Calibre.

From Chad Schuitema, facilitator of Pub Theology Lafayette:

“Everything you need to start your own Pub Gatherings – except the courage! The enormous amount of questions and discussion starters have helped me not only with each week’s gathering, but have helped me come up with my own as well. A much needed resource!”

God Doesn’t Need our Help, But He Asks for It

February 18, 2013 Theology Comments are closed

James K. A. Smith wrote a new blog post this morning: God Doesn’t Need Our Help. And since, per usual, no comments are allowed, I thought I’d respond with a post of my own. And, per usual, your comments are welcome!

He begins with this notion that there is now a “new apologetics” afoot in Christianity to make the faith more palatable in an age of intellectualism and postmodernity:

In our age of post-Christian anxiety, where so many worry about young people leaving the faith and the implausibility of Christianity in a secular age, we get a new apologetics. The goal of the new apologetics is not to prove or defend the puzzling and scandalous aspects of orthodox Christianity. Instead, the goal is to show that “authentic” Christianity, or the “true” Gospel, is not offensive–that the “God of love” worshiped by Christians is pretty much the God you would want.

I’m guessing that the efforts he has in mind are generally emergent-style approaches, such as Brian McLaren’s “Naked Spirituality” or Rob Bell’s “Love Wins.” These folks make God so warm and fuzzy as to remove all objectionable content, Smith is arguing. One wishes he would provide specific examples, and then counter with a better approach. He does gloss over a few such theological touchstones like hell and the atonement, but fails to articulate what he feels is an insufficient understanding, or how he would like it framed.

He goes on to note the dubious path of this ‘new apologetics’:

That presents a challenge, of course, but the challenge is not located where you might think. Instead of spending its energy on articulating, explaining, and defending the coherence of biblical, historic Christianity (including all the “hard truths” that attend it), the new apologetics expends its energy convincing the skeptic that all sorts of aspects of “Christianity” are, in fact, non-essential accretions or downright deformative perversions of “true” or “authentic” Christianity. This is undertaken in the name of removing “intellectual hurdles” to the Christian faith. If you look again at how many new apologists frame their “reconsiderations” of hell, or the doctrine of the atonement, or the doctrine of original sin in light of evolutionary evidence, or traditional Christian sexual ethics, I suggest you’ll often find they “frame” their project something like this: “These are aspects of Christianity that are just not believable today. But that’s OK, because it turns out that they’re also aspects that are not really biblical and not really Christian. So don’t let those things stop you from believing.” [Then cue your favorite tale about “Hellenization” or “Constantinianism” or “fundamentalism” here.]

Where to begin? First of all, most efforts I am tuned in to that are rearticulating the faith have nothing to do with making Christianity more palatable, but with honest attempts to engage the biblical and historical material, and go where the evidence leads. He intentionally twists this around, noting that many begin with deciding something is not believable, then attempt to justify it biblically and historically. Is there any evidence that this is the actual motivation of these “new apologists”? It is quite a charge to make, and we might wish to have this in hand before agreeing to the point.

Smith wishes that this new approach would spend its energy “articulating, explaining and defending the coherence of biblical, historic Christianity (including all the “hard truths” that attend it).” Yet the hard truth here is that a single, unified “historic Christianity” simply doesn’t exist. It’s a convenient fiction by which we tell ourselves we are simply walking the path that began with the first disciples undistorted down to our day.

As Harvey Cox notes in The Future of Faith: “When I attended seminary, most historians conveyed the impression that once upon a time there was a single entity called “early Christianity,” but that gradually certain heresies and schisms arose on the margins and disrupted the initial harmony. In the last few decades, however, all these assumptions have proven erroneous. There never was a single “early Christianity”; there were many, and the idea of “heresy” was unknown.”

Speaking Of…

Are some folks interested in changing theology to make it more ‘believable’? Probably. That may well be true in certain cases. But many, many folks I study and read are simply interested in studying the biblical and historical record to know what a text or doctrine actually meant when it was written, and the context in which it arose. The consequences for theology only come later, if at all. It strains credulity to imagine this hard work of studying, gathering and analyzing all the evidence from linguistic, archaeological, cultural, literary and historical sources is done simply for the sake of inventing a more believable Christianity!

In fact, Smith himself would prefer us to begin with the answers, pay attention only to evidence that supports his version of orthodoxy, and ignore everything else. Which does the very thing he claims the “new apologetics” does: it makes Christianity more palatable for his particular audience. Smith teaches at Calvin College, a private, Reformed institution. [Cue your favorite tale about “John Calvin” or “Heidelberg” or “ham on buns.”]

This version of the faith is meant to be more amenable to his audience, precisely because it is the same version that his students’ parents hold and the same version his administrators hold, not to mention the donors who fund the whole enterprise. In seeking to display honest attempts at understanding the Bible and church history as dishonest marketing efforts for Christianity, Smith succumbs to his own charge: he defends the status quo under the guise of honest theological discussion.

Instead of having a response to those who may look at early church doctrine and the influence of Hellenization (i.e., being shaped by Greek thought and philosophy), he wants us to ignore it. Instead of acknowledging the troubling political realities surrounding the church councils at which some of the core doctrines of “historic Christianity” were founded, Smith would prefer us to just ‘take their word for it’ and carry on, because ‘there’s nothing to see here.’ Who cares if Nicea was presided over by a corrupt Roman emperor who had power and national unity in mind rather than any real interest in theological accuracy? That’s no business of ours! Our charge is to assume they got it exactly right, and continue to uphold the “hard doctrines” upon which our forebears spent so much personal capital. Speaking of ignoring intellectual challenges.

Listen to Calvin College’s own statement of its calling, as articulated by Neal Plantinga: “We [Christians] learn to distrust simple accounts of complex events and to be prepared for the place human irrationality has in the course of human history. All this equips us to understand the world in which we are to be peace agents. Just as no CIA agent would be sent to an area of which she was ignorant, so it’s folly for us to expect to serve and transform a world we do not know.”

Indeed.

Smith argues that such a “new apologetics” (which, by the way, is a convenient title for something that doesn’t exist) avoids intellectual rigor, but it is clear enough that he is the one advocating for ignoring historical realities that might challenge one’s doctrinal heritage. Yet to articulate that would ruffle some institutional feathers (something a few of his colleagues learned is not to be done).

I hate to break it to Jamie, but there is no “new apologetics.” However, there is renewed interest in discovering more closely what was going on in the first century in Galilee and the Ancient Near East, what was behind early church councils that codified doctrines for all time, and what it might look like to live out a meaningful Christian faith today.

Old Faithful

Smith then goes for the bread and butter of his audience:

But it seems to me that this sort of project is predicated on a particular account of faith that is often left implicit. In particular, it seems to assume that if someone is going to come to believe the Gospel they must be convinced since their belief is a matter of their choice. Or at the very least, the intellectual hurdles that stand in the way of their believing must be removed. If we do that, then the way is clear for them to choose to believe. The new apologetic, in other words, is fundamentally Arminian, perhaps even Pelagian (and yes, I know the difference*). The drive to eliminate intellectual and “moral” hurdles to belief is a fundamentally Arminian project insofar as it seems to assume that “believability” is a condition for the skeptic or nonbeliever to then be able to “make that step” toward belief. While this might confirm a lot of prejudices, it should be said that this is an odd strategy if one is an Augustinian or a Calvinist–since in an Augustinian account, any belief is a gift, a grace that is given by God himself. So if God is going to grant the gift of belief, it seems that God would able to grant and empower a faith that can also believe the scandalous. In other words, God doesn’t need our help.

Here Smith attempts to resuscitate a long-dead theological squabble because he knows mere mention of the word “Arminian” still might rankle a few folks in West Michigan. To get non-Reformed folks up to speed: Arminianism is based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as the Remonstrants. It is known as a soteriological sect of Protestant Christianity. The crux of this Arminianism lay in the assertion that human dignity requires an unimpaired freedom of the will. In other words, one can choose faith or resist it. One can choose to follow Jesus, or not. (Seems fairly obvious on the face of it).

Ah… but how do we pair this common sense, seemingly obvious reality with the doctrine that God has elected people before they were born for either heaven or hell? Forget common sense: nobody chooses Jesus. Jesus chooses you. In a word, Arminianism attempted to give people dignity, to show that faith is not a farce, and that God, in essence, hasn’t rigged the game.

But let’s wake up to the fact that such arguments are about things that have little or nothing to do with a life of actually following the very earthy (and earthly) Jesus of Nazareth, whom one can scarcely imagine had time for such esoteric theological squabbling. Smith is worried we might violate a theological construct from the Middle Ages that almost nobody cares about today. Rather than constructively present a coherent theological impetus for engaging the world and society today, including concerns about peace and conflict, environment and ecology, and human sexuality, Smith would rather us look worriedly over our shoulder at a conflict from 600 years ago about something that no one can figure out conclusively anyway.

But Smith knows this much: in Calvinistic circles, accusing your opponent of being an Arminian ends the argument. Case closed! They’re heretics, so they’re obviously wrong.

In Closing

Jamie Smith’s conclusion: God doesn’t need our help. He can choose us or not. He can save our world from ecological or military disaster just fine without us. He can grow his church without us (wait, I thought we were the body of Christ… but I digress). Why worry about new constructive efforts for living out the faith today? Why bother with things like Christian education? Why even write blog posts on the topic? Such human efforts are surely irrelevant in the face of this austere and omnipotent Calvinistic Zeus. God must be genuinely grateful for such an eloquent defense of his inscrutable ways (though God knows he doesn’t need it).

Much of this seems contrary to the picture one finds in the Scriptures: a God who willingly partners with humanity, and sets them as caretakers over his entire creation (The original Hebrew hides this line in chapter 2: “Just kidding, Adam! Don’t need you at all. Especially if you mess things up.”).

All through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures God not only needs our help, he asks for it.

A Jewish perspective (which, by the way, precedes later “heretical” developments like Pelagianism or Arminianism by just a wee bit) is that God has chosen to partner with humanity. That he does, in fact, need us, and has chosen to need us. To say otherwise is to belittle the hard fought efforts of people such as Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and many, many other unheralded people of faith who work hard every day to bring a bit of God’s healing into this broken creation. And more specifically to Smith’s point on belief: God has used men and women to carry the message of the gospel to people far and wide so that they would believe, from the very beginning.

As Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus:
“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

God doesn’t need us? Someone forgot to tell that to Jesus.

No Interpretation Needed? Part 2

March 5, 2012 Pub Theology, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Last post we asked if it is possible to just read the Bible and understand what it says without having to ‘interpret’ it.

It’s a nice-sounding option, in theory. Unfortunately for us, that option doesn’t exist. In fact:

Is not every devotional reading (silent), every sermon (spoken), and every commentary (written) an interpretation or a series of interpretations of a biblical text?

We cannot escape interpreting the Bible. We are not God. Therefore, we are relative (conditioned by factors that are neither universal nor unchanging).

The entire history of Christian thought shows that Christians in different times and places have interpreted and understood the Bible differently.

Even at any given time and place, such as our own, is there not always a “conflict of interpretations” between, among, and within various denominational and nondenominational traditions?

If it were as simple as reading it and understanding it, there would be less divergence within Christianity. But the reality is that there are manifold ways of understanding the text, just as there is no end to the number of denominations and traditions within Christianity. This does not mean anything goes, or that all interpretations are valid – but merely that the text is rich, deep, textured, and from another time and place, meaning we should never become too strident nor certain that we have ‘the’ interpretation or have it all figured out.

We might be tempted to think that at one point — earlier in history, like in the early church — it was clear and everyone understood it the same. James K.A. Smith reminds us this was not the case:

For Christians, many of the anxieties of hermeneutics (the theory and process of interpretation) are nothing new. Well before we were haunted by the specters of Derrida and Foucault, the Christian community grappled with the conflict of interpretations (to say nothing of the Jewish/rabbinical precedents). One can see such conflicts embedded in the New Testament narrative itself. In Acts 15, for instance, we see a conflict of interpretations of “the law” — and we see a community grappling with interpretive difference in its midst. Despite a common mythology, the early church was not a hermeneutic paradise; rather, debates about what counts as the tradition have been integral to the Christian tradition. The early church was not a golden age of interpretive uniformity; rather, the catholic councils and creeds are the artifacts of a community facing up to the conflict of interpretations.

But often enough, as we noted last time, people simply deny that interpretation is necessary and unavoidable:

“We encounter this general attitude when we offer a viewpoint about, say, some controversial moral or political question to someone who (1) doesn’t like it and (2) doesn’t know how to refute it (perhaps deep down knowing that it is all too much on target) and so replies, “That’s just your opinion.””

Similarly, an unwelcome interpretation of some biblical text may be greeted by the response, “Well, that might be your interpretation, but my Bible clearly says…” In other words, “You interpret; I just see what is plainly there.”

This, however, is simply not the case. We all interpret. It is impossible to do otherwise. We read words or speak words, they combine to form meanings, and we interpret what that meaning is.

This “no interpretation needed” doctrine says that interpretation is accidental and unfortunate, that it can and should be avoided whenever possible. Often unnoticed is that this theory is itself an interpretation of interpretation and that it belongs to a long-standing philosophical tradition that stretches from certain strands in Plato’s thought well into the twentieth century. This tradition is called “naive realism” in one of its forms. It is called naive both descriptively, because it is easily taken by a common-sense perspective without philosophical reflection, and normatively, because it is taken to be indefensible on careful philosophical reflection. (Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation?)

So is there no one ‘right’ interpretation? Well… there is the original intention of the author, and then the original intent of the Holy Spirit… and certainly we must hold that God knows what he meant (means) to say. But the point holds: we are not God. Therefore, there is always a distance between us and that truest understanding of the text. This is where faith and community comes in, and Merold Westphal, in his terrific book, Whose Community? Which Interpretation?, sounds this note exactly:

We need not think that hermeneutical despair (“anything goes”) and hermeneutical arrogance (we have “the” interpretation) are the only alternatives. We can acknowledge that we see and interpret “in a glass darkly” or “in a mirror, dimly” and that we know “only in part” (1 Cor. 13:12), while ever seeking to understand and interpret better by combining the tools of scholarship with the virtues of humbly listening to the interpretations of others and above all, to the Holy Spirit.

My friend Chris put it in very nearly the same way, in response to my first post:

Reading the Bible doesn’t require any special study; understanding it is another matter.

Anyone can “get something” out of just reading the Bible (or any other piece of literature). But if we’re concerned to do our best to “get” what the author(s) intended, then we have a lot of work ahead of us, especially dealing with a collection of ancient books written in ancient languages from ancient and diverse cultures with ancient and diverse systems of law, morality, and religion. If that work is beyond us, then we at least have the work of learning from the experts.

So should you read the Bible on your own, in light of all this? Yes! Of course. God will speak. Just be sure you check with your friends (and maybe a good commentary) before you say, “God told me…”

No Interpretation Needed?

March 1, 2012 Philosophy, Pub Theology, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Are you skeptical about biblical interpretation? Does it seem that someone can just “make it say anything?” Are you one of those who would prefer to just “read it for what it says”?

You’re not alone. Many are intimidated by the vast amount of study some seem to think reading the Bible requires. Can’t I just take the “plain sense” of a text and arrive at what God is trying to say to me?

this_verse — See? It clearly says right here...

When someone encounters an interpretation of the Bible she doesn’t like, she may respond with, “Well that’s just your interpretation. My Bible says this instead…”

After all, much easier to dismiss someone’s interpretation (which involves a bit of their own thinking), than to actually dismiss a passage of the Bible itself. So perhaps we are better off trying to rest on the “Bible” instead of an “interpretation.”

As Merold Westphal puts it:

“Common sense . . . claims to “just see” its objects, free of bias, prejudice, and presuppositions (at least sometimes). We can call this “just seeing” intuition. When [this] view of knowledge and understanding is applied to the Bible, it becomes the claim that we can “just see” what the text means, that intution can and should be all we need. In other words, “no interpretation needed.” The object, in this case the meaning of the text, presents itself clearly and directly to my reading. To interpret would be to interject some subjective bias or prejudice (pre-judgment) into the process. Thus the response, “Well, that might be your interpretation, but my Bible clearly says…” In other words, “You interpret (and thereby misunderstand), but I intuit, seeing directly, clearly, and without distortion.”

Westphal refers to an ad for a new translation of the Bible billed as so accurate and so clear that the publishers could announce: “NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED.” The ad promotes the “revolutionary translation that allows you to understand exactly what the original writers meant.” (Unfortunately he doesn’t mention which Bible made this claim).

The “no interpretation needed” approach says that interpretation is accidental and unfortunate, that it can and should be avoided whenever possible.

What do you think? Is interpretation unnecessary?

Pub Theology Recap January 5

January 6, 2012 Philosophy, Pub Theology, Relationships, Theology Comments are closed

Great night at the pub last night. Nine of us grabbed a pint and settled in for a good discussion, huddled around the table as if seeking respite from the snow drifts just outside.

A. showed up, who promptly styled himself ‘kinda the local guru.’ Then quickly thought better of it and shifted to ‘kinda the local guy.’ He’d been reading up on the history of Islam and noted to us that “Mohammed had to work hard. He fought with people, he had enemies, he bled. He worked to establish a religion. Unlike Jesus. Jesus didn’t have much opposition. He had it easy, just healing people and floating on the water. Mohammed though, man… that guy…”

I asked him if he had converted to Islam, with this newfound admiration of the prophet (PBUH). He said no.

After that little soliloquy we hit the sheet. First question, “Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?” Most people admitted that they did not. R. said that she often takes the New Year as a time to take stock of where things are in her life and seek to continue to grow both personally and professionally. I noted that I sort of do the same. N. (who brought the pretzels) noted that her son always resolves to give up crack cocaine. That way he never fails to live up to his resolution.

We spent some time discussing why resolutions tend to be individual (we can’t make anyone else do something), but also noted the benefits of making resolutions with someone else or with a community of some sort (accountability, mutuality). We wondered about a couple in a relationship making resolutions. S. noted that she sort of does that with her husband, but that then they tend to pursue the resolutions individually, or each in their own way. Yet there is something about a communal effort that can create energy and certainly can hold one to what one has said. The other S. noted that companies and organizations often do the same thing but call them ‘goals’ or ‘plans.’

Then the question (contributed by C., who was down in Kzoo doing PT South) was: “Should Pub Theology have a 2012 resolution?” At this point the question of location came up, with RBB’s upcoming move to 16^th Street. We had heard that the pub portion of the new location was not going to be as big a priority, so it is unclear whether there will be adequate space. There is talk of something new coming into the Warehouse district to take RB’s place, perhaps Short’s or someone else. It would be tempting to stay. Another possibility is the new Filling Station brewery coming in by the library. In any case, Pub Theology resolves to keep meeting (wherever we end up) and being the place in Northern Michigan for beer, conversation, and God.

Topic 2: “Individualism is a poor container for the Gospel.”

This was generally agreed, as S. (with the glasses) noted that “We can’t all play a solo at the same time.” The other S. (reading glasses) noted that individualism tends to cause people to apprehend what they believe is true about the world and why, rather than take someone else’s word for it, or simply buying into the community’s agreed upon take, and tends to cause people to move away from faith, so yes, it is a poor container for the gospel. B. highlighted the fact that Christianity is not meant to be an individualistic faith. It is not simply ‘my spirituality’ or ‘me and Jesus.’ Rather, it is meant to be experienced in community, lived out in community, and that when a group of people together take following Jesus seriously, and live into the Gospel, and live out the Gospel, that it is a powerful statement to those looking on. R. worried that such a focus on community would drown out people’s ability to be individuals. That there would be space for the ‘other’, whether that is someone divorced, or gay, or recovering, or whatever. B. noted that ideally the Gospel is inclusive and calls for a community that is open. Such a community ought to reflect the diversity of individuals who all come together because of who God is and because he has made and called each of them. It was concluded that there is such a thing as good individualism, and good communalism, but that both can go awry if we are not careful.

Topic 3: “In light of the 2012 end of time idea, do you think the redemption of Christ will come in this world — or does it require a new world?”

S. noted that there were 3 billion people on the planet when he was born, and there are now over 7 billion. R. (who refuses resolutions) noted that “The world will end.” B. asked, “Who here thinks they will live to see the end?” Most people said no. But then N. (who was back at long last! and brought the chips) blurted out, “What are y’all talking about?”

As the rest of the table continued to debate the end of the world, I got up to get another pint. This time a Dark Squirrel Lager.

The last three questions all sort of related:

4. What would have to happen for the believer not to believe?

5. What would have to happen for the unbeliever to believe?

6. Is theology (or what kind of theology is) compatible with belief in the constancy of nature?

I don’t have time (or the recall) to give you the rest of the conversation.

But a few highlights:

R. asked, “Why does it say unbeliever? Shouldn’t it be nonbeliever? What does unbeliever mean?”

N. (chips) pleaded, “Damn it! Call it Spirit, energy, essence, whatever! We all believe in it.”

N. (pretzels) noted, “It’s time to start preaching the stuff we’ve known for 200 years.” (referring to biblical scholarship that is often known about by seminaries and preachers but kept from the congregation because ‘they’re not ready for it’.)

And a couple more from the ‘local guru’:

“I think about time differently than most people.”

“Are any of you communists?” (This out of nowhere, in the middle of a completely unrelated discussion)

“Do you think it’s better to show weakness, or to hide weakness?”

And that’s a wrap! If you were there and care to fill us in on more of what happened, feel free. If you weren’t there, but have any thoughts on the above topics – post them below!

Stages of Faith

May 19, 2011 Relationships, The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Stages of Faith: Human Development and the Quest for Meaning
James Fowler, Ph.D. is a developmental psychologist, a United Methodist layperson, and Director of the Center for Faith Development at Emory University. He is the premiere pioneer of the study of Faith development, and his book Stages of Faith (1981) is a ground-breaking classic. Fowler identifies six stages through which pilgrims of faith invariably travel. Below are summaries of the stages drawn from various sources as well as the book itself. Read it through and see what you think.

The first stage:
Intuitive-Projective faith
This first stage usually occurs between the ages of three and seven, and is characterized by the psyche’s unprotected exposure to the Unconscious. Imagination runs wild in this stage, uninhibited by logic. It is the first step in self-awareness and when one absorbs one’s culture’s strong taboos. The advantages of this stage are the birth of imagination and the growing ability to grasp and unify one’s perception of reality. This age perceives the world through lens of imagination and intuition  unrestrained by logic e.g., lives in a magical world in which anything is  possible.

The second stage: Mythic-Literal faith
Symbol and ritual begin to be integrated by the child. These symbols, however, are one-dimensional. Only literal interpretations of myth and symbol are possible. Here the child develops a way of dealing with the world and making meaning that now criticizes and  evaluates the previous stage of imagination and fantasy. The gift of this  stage is narrative. The child now can really form and re-tell powerful  stories that grasp his or her experiences of meaning. There is a quality of literalness about this. The child is not yet ready to step outside the stories and reflect upon their meanings. The child takes symbols and myths  at pretty much face value, though they may touch or move him or her at a  deeper level. Here one sees the world as a story–concrete, literal, narrative family of  ritual and myth e.g., “In the beginning, God created the . . .”

The third stage: Synthetic-Conventional faith
The majority of the population finds its permanent home in this stage. Usually arising in adolescence, it is a stage characterized by conformity, where one finds one’s identity by aligning oneself with a certain perspective, and lives directly through this perception with little opportunity to reflect on it critically. One has an ideology at this point, but may not be aware that one has it. Religious concepts are “tacitly” held – the person is not fully conscious of having chosen to believe something. Thus the name “Synthetic” – beliefs are not the result of any type of analytical thought. Any attempts to reason with a person in this stage about his beliefs, any suggestion of demythologizing his beliefs is seen as a threat. Those who differ in opinion are seen as “the Other,” as different “kinds” of people. Authority derives from the top down, and is invested with power by majority opinion. Dangers in this stage include the internalization of symbolic systems (power, “goodness” “badness”) to such a degree that objective evaluation is impossible. Furthermore, while one can at this stage enter into an intimate relationship with the divine, This stage develops in the teenager to early adulthood or beyond, sees the world through the lens of  the peer community e.g., unconsciously “catches” faith, values, and way of  thinking from peer group or subculture. Tends not to question the accepted ways of thinking e.g., “if the Bible says . . . it must be true” or “if my church says . . . then it’s the Truth.” At this stage it is difficult dealing calmly and rationally  with issues that touches on one’s identity.

One of the hallmarks of this stage is that it tends to compose its images of  God as extensions of interpersonal relationships. God is often experienced  as Friend, Companion, and and Personal Reality, in relationship to which I’m  known deeply and valued. I think the true religious hunger of adolescence is  to have a God who knows me and values me deeply, and can be a kind of  guarantor of my identity and worth in a world where I’m struggling to find  who I can be.   At any of the stages from two on you can find adults who are best described by these stages. Stage Three, thus, can be an adult stage. We do find many persons, in churches and out, who are best described by faith that essentially took form when they were adolescents. The name “conventional” means that most people in this stage see themselves as believing what “everybody else” believes and would be reluctant to stop believing it because of the need they feel to stay connected with their group. It turns out that most of the people in traditional churches are at this stage. And in fact, Fowler comes right out and states that religious institutions “work best” if the majority of their congregation is in Stage 3. (Now THAT explains a lot of the preaching we hear that sounds destined to discourage people from questioning! To properly assure their continuance, churches apparently need people to remain in Stage 3. )

When a person cognitively realizes that there are contradictions between some of his authority sources and is ready to actually reflect realistically on them, he or she begins to be ready to move to the fourth stage.

The fourth stage: Individuative-Reflective
This is primarily a stage of angst and struggle, in which one must face difficult questions regarding identity and belief. It is ideal that a person reach this stage by their mid-twenties, but as has already been discussed, it is evident that many adults never reach it. If it happens in the thirties or forties or even later, it is much harder for the person to adapt. At this time, the personality gradually detaches from the defining group from which it formerly drew its identity. The person is aware of him or herself as an individual and must–perhaps for the first time–take personal responsibility for his/her beliefs and feelings. This is a stage of de-mythologizing, where what was once unquestioned is now subjected to critical scrutiny. Stage four is heavily existential, where nothing is certain but one’s own existence, and disillusionment reigns. This stage is not a comfortable place to be and, although it can last for a long time, those who stay in it do so in danger of becoming bitter, suspicious characters who trust nothing and no one. But most, after entering this stage, sense that not only is the world far more complex than his or her stage three mentality would allow for, it is still more complex and numinous than the agnostic rationality of stage four allows.

Meanings in stories become separate from the symbols themselves, so the stories are demythologized. (In losing the literal meaning of the religious symbols, people can lose ALL meaning of the symbol and that is how you wind up with so many atheists and agnostics at this stage.) This process can result in grief and guilt in some cases, and can take several years to work through. But in the place of the literal symbol, the person gains the ability to make comparisons and whatever meanings they retain are explicitly held (and thus more authentic in that they are personal.)

The strengths of this stage lie in the capacity for critical reflection (and the willingness to face truths that may cause distancing from comfortable thought patterns and thus pain.) But a weakness of this stage is that the person may put excess confidence in the rational, conscious mind, thus ignoring unconscious and spiritual forces that become more prominent in the next stage.

Stage five: Conjunctive faith
Here one moves from stage four’s rationalism to the acknowledgement of paradox and transcendence. It is in this stage that, in Washburnian terminology, one chooses regression in the service of transcendence. One develops a “second naivete” in which symbolic power is reunited with conceptual meanings. It was Barth’s and Ricoeur’s common conviction that theological interpretation of the Bible ought to lead us beyond a critical preoccupation with the text to a fresh encounter with the divine reality to which the text bears witness. In this stage a person grasps the reality behind the symbols of his or her inherited systems, and is also drawn to an acknowledging of the symbols of other’s systems. People in this stage are willing to engage in dialog with those of other faiths in the belief that they might learn something that will allow them to correct their own truths. To get to this point, it is critical that the person has moved through the demythologizing phase of stage four. This stage makes room for mystery and the unconscious, and is fascinated by it while at the same time apprehensive of its power. It sees the power behind the metaphors while simultaneously acknowledging their relativity.

In stage five, the world is re-sacrilized, literally brimming with vision. It is also imbued with a new sense of justice that goes beyond justice defined by one’s own culture and people. Because one has begun to see “the bigger picture,” the walls culture and tradition have built between ourselves and others begins to erode, and one can work through one’s cultural and psychological baggage. Stage Five is a period when one is alive to paradox, and, though it is not easy to live on the cusp of paradox, one understands that truth has many dimensions which have to be held together in paradoxical tension. It is an overwhelming, ecstatic stage in which one is radically opened to possibility and wonder. One becomes committed to a form of justice that extends to those outside the confines of tribe, class, religious community or nation. With this very inclusive worldview, people at Stage 5 are in an excellent position to make important contributions to society.

Stage six: Universalizing faith
The final stage is reached only by the very, very few. Examples Fowler names are Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa. In a sense we can describe this stage as one in which persons begin radically to live as though what Christians and Jews call the “kingdom of God” were already a fact.  These people experience a shift from the self as the center of experience.  Now their center becomes a participation in God or ultimate reality. There’s  a reversal of figure and ground. They’re at home with a  commonwealth of being. We experience these people on the one hand as being more lucid and simple than we are, and on the other hand as intensely liberating people, sometimes even subversive in their liberating qualities. Persons described by stage six typically exhibit qualities that shake our usual criteria of normalcy. Their heedlessness to self-preservation and the vividness of their taste and feel for transcendent moral and religious actuality give their actions and words an extraordinary and often unpredictable quality. In their devotion to universalizing compassion they may offend our parochial perceptions of justice.

Pub Theology Recap April 21

April 27, 2011 Philosophy, Pub Theology, Relationships, Theology Comments are closed

TRAVERSE CITY (AP) – Surrounded by some new art, and sitting beneath a sign that designated the space as purgatory, about fifteen people of various lineage gathered at the Pub during Holy Week, or more precisely, on Maundy Thursday.

What exactly is Maundy Thursday?

Great question – but they weren’t there to answer that. (Though it’s apparently also known as the Thursday of Mysteries.)

Some wonderful brews on tap, not least of which was the Darkstar Stout flowing from the cask. (You can never go wrong with the cask).

First topic: What is your earliest memory?

PT042111 — if i could only remember back far enough...

There were several good ones. Here’s a taste:

– “I remember being spoonfed a sundae by my mother at Dairy Queen while sitting in the stroller…”

– “There was an old barn across from the apartment complex we lived in. I remember distinctly sitting on the hill by our apartment, watching a large barn across the street burn to the ground. I was three.”

– “Something about being on the stairs, and my sister wasn’t around yet, which makes it about the only memory I have from then.”

– Mine: “I was probably four, in the basement with a friend. My mom was doing the laundry in the room next to us. We were throwing plastic bowling pins up at the naked lightbulb. Eventually we managed to hit it – throwing glass and darkness all over us. There were screams.”

– “My earliest memory is of my older brother having his dirty diaper changed, which means I must have been about six months old. Wait… that can’t be right.”

– The best one: “I have no particular memory of my early years. Just some vague feelings.”

There was general debate about when the earliest you can remember is… Some said three, others said four. One claimed to have a memory from much earlier.

I noted that my kids watch videos of themselves from when they were babies and toddlers, and we all sort of wondered about what that would do to their memories as they grow up. (I make a year-end video of the kids every December – Lubbergho. Perhaps I’ll post one on youtube one of these days).

It was a great opening conversation, and we went various places from there, hitting on a few of these topics:

1. Have you ever felt truly alone?
Describe the situation. What did you do?
Are there practices that help you in those moments?

2. What is your favorite day of Holy Week?
Do you connect more with Good Friday or Easter?

3. What do you believe happened on the cross?

4. “To believe in the gospel in today’s day and age, one must first understand that language does not only denote objective realities.”

5. Does all knowledge derive from experience?

6. Do atheists get respect in our culture? Why/Why not?

We wrapped up the evening by musing on the following poem:

Alone

I am afraid

The gulf between us is vast

As all eternity

The frozen hand of death

Touches my throat

Catching my words unspoken

Alone we die

Together we live

Reach out now

Help me live

In love together

We cannot die

If you have a thought on the above, or an earliest memory you’d like to share, post it below!

Continental Philosophy, or What I Understood Of It

April 11, 2011 Culture, Philosophy, Readings, The Text, Theology, Travels Comments are closed

Just recently returned from the fourth Postmodernism, Culture and Religion Conference entitled: The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion. The conference was at Syracuse University and included some of the best thinkers in Continental Philosophy. What follows will be a very poor, non-academic attempt to make some sense of the whole thing.

“What is continental philosophy?”, some of you might ask. Good question. When you find out – drop me a line. Actually, it often refers to philosophy that developed in the 19th and 20th centuries in mainland Europe, in opposition to much of the analytic philosophy happening in Britain. Important names paving the way for this include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, among others.

Here are some common themes, borrowed from wikipedia:

First, continental philosophers generally reject scientism, the view that the natural sciences are the only or most accurate way of understanding phenomena.

Second, continental philosophy usually considers these conditions of possible experience as variable: determined at least partly by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy tends toward historicism. Where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems, capable of being analyzed apart from their historical origins (much as scientists consider the history of science inessential to scientific inquiry), continental philosophy typically suggests that “philosophical argument cannot be divorced from the textual and contextual conditions of its historical emergence”.

Third, continental philosophy typically holds that conscious human agency can change these conditions of possible experience: “if human experience is a contingent creation, then it can be recreated in other ways”.Thus continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political transformation.

A final characteristic trait of continental philosophy is an emphasis on metaphilosophy. In the wake of the development and success of the natural sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine the method and nature of philosophy. In some cases (such as German idealism or phenomenology), this manifests as a renovation of the traditional view that philosophy is the first, foundational, a priori science. In other cases (such as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism), it is held that philosophy investigates a domain that is irreducibly cultural or practical.

If any of that made sense, you’re in good shape. If not, read it again a time or two. Here’s a final thought: “Ultimately, the foregoing distinctive traits derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that the nature of knowledge and experience is bound by conditions that are not directly accessible to empirical inquiry.” In other words, there’s more than meets the eye. Sensory experience and the material world can only get us so far. If you’ve ever been to an evening of Pub Theology, you know these kinds of ideas come up again and again.

It is this line of thinking that makes continental philosophy more open to questions of God, theology and religion than its analytical counterpart. In this conference comprised primarily of philosophy and religion professors of secular universities, the themes of God and religion were ever present.

pcr4logo — Postmodernism, Culture and Religion 4

A few important names present included Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris, John Caputo, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Syracuse University, Philip Goodchild, Professor of Philosophy, Nottingham University, Merold Westphal, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Fordham University, B. Keith Putt, Samford University, Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity, Harvard University, and Thomas Altizer, who was not formally involved in the conference, but did not fail to make his presence known through insightful and always lively comments and questions. Also there was Jim Olthuis from the Institute for Christian Studies. It was especially meaningful to have Caputo and Westphal there, as they are retiring from their academic posts (though probably not from writing and speaking!).

Paper topics that made complete sense to me: “Plasticity in the Contemporary Islamic Subject“; “Future Blindness“; “Postmodern Apocalypse: Placing Levinas & Derrida in Line with Transcendental Methodology“; “Non-Philosophy and Meaning-use Analysis: Explicating Laruelle with Brandom“, and finally “Dying to be Free: Extinction and the Liberation of Praxis in Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound.”

But for all the tough paper topics, there were also ones that made more immediate sense to me: “Does the Religious Intellectual Have a Future? Harvey Cox, Post-Secular Spirituality, and Living Religiously in Public“; “The Broken Binary & Interstitial God: Finding Faith in the Margin of the Text“; “Radical Theology and the Dangerous Memory of Jesus“; “‘Eating Well’ in Church: In-carnating an A/Theological Materialism”; and the very clear: “Philosophy is What it Eats.”

So what was I doing there, as a pastor?

Philosophy professors — Caputo, Malabou, and Goodchild

Great question. Mostly I needed an excuse to put a ton of miles on my new van. Actually – as soon as the first session started, Christy was wondering the same thing. The first presenter in the panel we chose started reading her paper and, while a very profound paper, almost never looked up and had very little voice inflection. In other words, she could have been reading an obituary or grocery list. I worried we had picked the wrong panel (there were often 4-5 panels on various topics going on at once). But then we remembered that this was an *academic* conference, not a *church* conference, and that at these things you read your paper, you don’t preach it. So once we were able to focus, and the big words and unfamiliar names began to become more familiar, we began to realize this was about stuff we care about. Stuff we all care about: issues of faith and reason; God and theology; knowing and unknowing; certainty and uncertainty; life and death. The very same things I deal with as a pastor, and we all deal with as human beings. Issues of vital importance for the Christian who is seeking to engage our world today. And not incidentally, a recurring topic that continually came up was, how do we connect some of this stuff to real life? How do we engage the culture in thinking seriously about important topics? It was cool to meet student after student (as well as professors) who thought it was excellent Christy and I were there. They wanted to know what we were doing, what our community is like, and how we apply of this kind of thinking to our work. (The irony is many in academia long for such ‘real-world’ activism, and how people like me, in the so-called ‘real-world’, long for the high-level thinking of academia. The grass is always greener).

A great example of how philosophy and life in the church connect is found in the book by John Caputo: What Would Jesus Deconstruct? In this book Caputo draws on the deconstruction tradition of Jacques Derrida to tear down some of the ossified walls that have built up in the church over the years – and allows the light of day to penetrate. This book is a delightful read and I would recommend it to anyone. From the backcover: “Many in the church who are wrestling with ministry in a postmodern era view deconstruction as a negative aspect of the postmodern movement. But John Caputo, one of the leading philosophers of religion in America and a leading voice on religion and postmodernism, sees it differently. In this lively and provocative analysis, he argues that in his own way Jesus himself was a deconstructionist and that applying deconstruction to the church can be a positive move toward renewal.”

John Franke, professor of theology at Biblical Seminary, notes: “This is a marvelous little book. It enables readers to understand deconstruction as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God and provides a glimpse of what this concept might look like in the hands of Jesus as applied to the church. This will be difficult therapy, and many of us will be inclined to resist. However, let us remember that while discipline is painful in the moment, it produces a harvest of peace and righteousness in the long run. May the church learn from the wisdom found in these pages.”

Another person who has gained a lot of traction in making some of these connections is Peter Rollins, an increasingly popular writer and speaker. Pete has a PhD in philosophy from Queens University in Northern Ireland, and has made his readings of philosophy become incarnate in both his work at Ikon, a faith collective in Belfast, and in his books and speaking events. He recently spoke at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, and his work is so intriguing in making real, tangible connecting points that he was the subject of one of the panel discussions at this conference. An excellent paper looking at his work theologically and philosophically was delivered by religion professor Creston Davis: “The Cosmic Double-Cross: The Psycho-Christ Event”, and another paper was delivered by sociologist Gerardo Marti entitled: “Peter Rollins and the Deconstructed Church: How Pub Churches, Continental Philosophy, and Provocative Preaching is Shaping the Future of Emerging Christianity.”

If you’ve read Pete’s book of parables: The Orthodox Heretic, and Other Impossible Tales, you’ll appreciate the power this kind of thinking can have to push us into rediscovering the kingdom of God in our thinking and acting.

Another very intriguing paper was delivered by Daniel Peterson of Seattle University and G. Michael Zbaraschuk of Pacific Lutheran University entitled: “Giving up God for Lent: Resurrecting the Death of God.” It gave a lot to chew on regarding whether in evangelicalism we are worshiping the God who is, or a God we have invented; if the latter, then perhaps that God needs to die.

One of things I took from the conference is that we may have very different ideas about what different parts of faith are – doctrines, teachings, etc., but the bottom line on many levels is – how am I living it out? What is the material reality present because of my theological convictions? How does this play out in real life?

In any case, it was an excellent time and will surely continue to push my own thinking, living and commitment to living out a life of following Jesus. Made some new friends, including our host Wendy DeBoer, PhD student at Syracuse, and Dan Wood, theology student at Loyola in Chicago (fellow crasher of Wendy’s pad), and other students from the Syracuse Religion Department and elsewhere, including a crew from Cornerstone University (fellow Michiganders!), Harvard Divinity School and UC-Berkley. Also hung out with some old friends, including Pete Rollins, ate some good food, and hit a post-conference party with most of the folks involved – where a bit of alcohol cleared up everything. Also met a professor from Dordt College at the conference – showing that this stuff infiltrates even the corn-fields of Calvinist conservatism! (OK, that was unfair).

So if we ask, along with Caputo, “What would Jesus deconstruct?” what would we find? The answer is, first and foremost, the church! See my next post for a deconstruction of that deconstruction.