A Crisis of Particularity - Part 2

Hi there Nic,
A fascinating topic!!

Isn’t it in many respects the paradox of the broad brush of inclusiveness that allows for the unique and private spiritual experience to be acceptable in what has become in many respects a democratic faith?

However, the flip side of this paradox is that we struggle to define our faith as being unique in a broader sense.

To use the notion of particularity as an important element that helps define post-modern Christianity in some respects could be seen as an attempt to allow a laissez- faire approach which I believe could inhibit, in some respects, communal Christian life. However, a specific focus in a “church” setting on an exclusive particularity in the modern era has resulted in an enormous diversity of denominationalism and sectarianism. The post-modernist is now reactionary to this status quo.

In many respects this crisis for “individual particularity” results in a quandary of how to unravel a model that will create both the communal, as at the same time a place for the individual.

Is this not solved through the work of the Holy Spirit?

Please share your thoughts on the question around the individual’s personal experience of God and the role of the Holy Spirit in allowing at the same time for community.

Be blessed
Andrew

Andrew – you are not the first to raise the question of the quandry of community and the particular.

Particularity is not the same as individualism. As we explore our particularity we become authentic and intimate communities. John Wimber spoke of Gift Clusters, which is a fitting metaphor of bearing the common fruit.

The Glory of God manifests in such communities, and is I believe inhibited in environments which are uniform, conformist and pander to LCD – the Lowest Common Denominator.

The Unity of Spirit spoken of by Jesus is not the result of eradicating difference, or the rote confession of creeds, but rather elevating servanthood, which is a willing submission to Love, bringing out the very best in each part to the Holy Whole, and doing so in the concrete, incarnate here and now.

Emergents really would do well to rediscover metaphysics—which has been vilified by both modern and postmodern philosophy. The medievals gave a lot of thought to the question of community/universals and individuals/particulars,so let’s not reinvent the wheel! For more, see my http://tinyurl.com/c5urzo

I’d rather burn in hell FOR ALL ETERNITY than worship your god for a nanosecond. Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it, churchie!

Goliath- u would rather burn In hell? Fascinating. Do u understand that Nic is not a typical church goer? I myself don’t go to church and I think your in the wrong place to be calling people “churchie”. Go visit the way of the master website to see what “churchie” is all about. And also, I would rather live in hades than listen to some dumbass named Goliath talk about churchiness. Go somewhere else. This is not a traditional church, if it’s even a church at all. However…. If you’d evervlike to pass the “peace pipe” I’m game! So…. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I don’t care what you consider a “typical church goer.” I loathe the god you worship, and I would rather burn in hell than worship such a monster.

You worship the exact same god that Fred Phelps worships, by the way.

Goliath
Welcome to the conversation.

Let’s start at the beginning: what in your terms is “the god we worship”?

Nic, this topic reminded me of the incarnational-missional approach I read about in Alan Hirsch’s ‘The forgotten ways’......fascinating!! =]

Goliath

Fred Phelps is a hate monger and does not represent the rest of Christianity. The God that I worship is a God of love and grace. God does not hate homosexuals as Phelps purports. God love all people regardless of who they are. God even loves Phelps. I am sorry for the transmogrified picture of Christianity or the God that we worship that you have recieved via Phelps voice. We Worship a loving God, a God that wants every person to experience his love, grace, and forgiveness.

Goliath,

I agree with Jared..Fred Phelps has anti-Christian views of God, and he is a profoundly disturbed person who attracts support from other profoundly disturbed people.

I actually know quite a bit about how that works, since I have plenty of personal experience with people who have used theology as a way of expressing their own very twisted and self loathing psychology.

I would add this little bit—that there are many people who assume that Fred Phelps speaks for mainstream American Christianity, but they are wrong. Many of them are cultural outsiders to American Christianity and see him as a frightening example of the evils of American religion (and he is one), but fortunately, he is a pretty extreme case that does not at all reflect the thoughts and feelings of the majority of those conservative Christians who support bans on gay marriage. (And there are plenty of us Christians who do not support those bans.)

Brian

Fred Phelps is just as much of a Christian as any of you people, thus you worship the same god that he does.

As for explaining what your god is, why do you ask questions to which you should already know the answer?

Goliath,

I love your vigor!!

In the Bible, God says: “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!”

I feel your heat and I’m sure God feels it too!!

Maybe it would be better to ask you to explain your view of “your” God.

Be blessed

Andrew

Goliath
You have a lot to learn about conversation.

Many of us are asking you a reasonable question, in order to understand where you are coming from.

We do not ask you to like us, or to agree with us, and we respect your view even if it rejects us.

But where we draw the line is, if you cannot match honesty with honesty, then this is not a conversation that I for one feel is constructive.

I agree with Andrew – tell us more about “your god” or if you like, your belief, be it atheistic, agnostic or whatever: put it in your terms; please play fair.

And also, do you have anything to say about the original article, which is about “particularity”?

Beth
Tried to post to your site, but blogger … aargh!

I like your “primer in metaphysics” a lot.

But I am curious as to why you do not feel postmodernity can offer a resolution. You have sort of posited a post-postmodern or pre-modern alternative, suggesting that your and my understanding of postmodernity/ism might differ.

But I appreciate you urging us not to reinvent the wheel.

Mags
I have been meaning to read Alan Hirsh for 3 years, thanks for the comparison and the reminder!

I like your use of the term “particularity”. The other term that I think would work is one that was created by Stephen Toulmin. Toulmin spoke of the “intellectual ecology” of ideas.

Everything in our society seems to push us beyond our habitat, beyond our environment, to larger and bigger realities. Regardless, the needs of a farmer in Iowa will always be much different than the needs of a native of Bedford Stuyvesant. And neither of these people have much in common with someone who grew up in Orange County. Globalization tends to mass produce for those in all three of the above environments. Needs are perceived to be similar because the media invents and develops our sense of choice. Even when MacDonald’s, for example, comes up with a lobster sandwich for those from Maine, it still ends up looking and tasting like a hamburger with Tillamook cheese for those from Oregon. Our personalities, our urges and wants and desires, must conform to the marketplace.

All of our decisionmaking is thus defined by the dominant archetypes and models that are displayed for us by the commercial world. It is ours to choose yes or no, to conform or not to conform, but this does not constitute a real choice because it is determined by our decision to accept or reject the dominant model. If I am not, for example, a red state republican born again Christian who likes to listen to praise music and is accustomed to a power point projector in worship then I am a blue state democratic liberal
Christian who prefers the hymnal and traditional forms of worship. There is no room for a third or a fourth position. Quite frankly, it often leads me to a place where I want to deny Christianity all together because neither position completely and accurately mirrors my beliefs. I am required to choose between up or down, high or low, right or left and I frequently want to develop a fourth payment method.

Jeff
We should render to Caesar what is his – the ecomomies of man, be they captialist, communist, or barter, while we live a vision altogether different.

That vision is the economy of Gods boundless grace. While this is always difficult to define and even more difficult to do, it means we DO have a “third of fourth” choice, I believe. Or maybe you feel the constriction so strongly that that doesn’t seem possible?

I enjoy the fact that you are applying your thinking to the larger US context, but I think a more global, transnational POV would perhaps give you more alternatives… just musing.