The Line of Exclusion

Nic:

I am following suit. The conversation from yonder can continue hither. I would like to talk a little about unity and about what might be a valid basis for exclusion.

Steve K (I offer the following as a response to the latter comments of the post Circle of Inclusion):

Perhaps it is hasty to say that the unity of Emergent Village is a pretend unity. But I would like to interrogate a little what kind of unity this is, and what is meant by saying that Emergent Village is a place where everyone is included within it, ie. unified within the big tent (my comments here will draw heavily on Pope Benedict XVI’s “Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions).

The first thing that I would like to establish is that there are at least three ways of talking about specifically Christian unity: 1) Orthodoxy in the ancient sense of right worship or “glory”, 2) Orthodoxy in the modern (and diminished) sense of right belief or opinion, and 3) Orthopraxy, or right practice. I know that others here have tried to introduce other ‘ortho-’s. I am listing the ones that I think we can intuit historically. If someone else wants to discuss others, then by all means bring them into the conversation.

As an Orthodox Christian, I believe that the true criterion for Christian unity is 1) Orthodoxy in the ancient sense of right worship. What Christ promises the Samaritan women at the well is that the time is coming and has now come when the worshippers of God will do so in Spirit and in Truth. God himself reveals what is right worship (here I draw on Father James Bernstein’s “Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity”) to the Jewish people in the very detailed instructions that He gives to them regarding the tabernacle and the temple. The earliest Christian liturgies, both the Eastern and Western rites (Orthodox/Byzantine and Catholic/Latin) are based off of the instructions of God to the Jewish people because they combine elements from 1st Century Jewish synagogue and temple worship.

Of course the central moments of both liturgies is the recapitulation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, which is the Eucharist or communion. If the structure of the liturgy as a whole traces back to the revelation of God to the Jewish people, this central element of both liturgies is instituted by Christ Himself at the last supper, and is also prefigured in the feeding of the 5,000 and the changing of the water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

This first criterion, that is right worship is actually the most strict criterion because it includes the other two within itself. Someone who deviates from the faith that has been handed down from the Apostles (that is, someone who believes other doctrines or heresies) is not able to offer right worship, because they are no longer worshipping the same God in Spirit and in Truth (which also means according to the patterns and forms that are revealed and instituted by God Himself and which allow us to partake in the orderly and eschatological worship that is written about in the book of Revelation). So believing certain things about God is important if I am to offer right worship to God. The beliefs are important, but only insofar as they are a part of a much more wholistic vision for individual and ecclesial life.

Someone like Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ, can no longer offer truly Christian worship and was thus excluded from this worship. Since the central element of this worship is communion, Arius is excommunicated or excluded from communion. If Arius were to be given communion in spite of his beliefs about God, it would only be an illusory and symbolic unity. It could be the unity of eating the same bread and drinking the same wine, but it could never be the sacramental unity that both the Orthodox and Catholics have tried to defend. How can Arius be united to other Christians through partaking in the real body and blood of Christ when he denies who Christ really is?

What is more, one can also be excluded from worship if one is not paying attention to 3) Orthopraxy or right practice. Thus someone who has not adequately prepared for communion through prayer, fasting, and repentance (or confession) is also excluded from communion. In order to worship rightly, one must also be behaving rightly, which means living a life of love and self sacrifice for others.

This unity of worship lasted for over 1000 years, and even when communion was broken between the East and the West, they were still in agreement about what the criterion for unity is, namely, right worship. It is only with the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Modernity (two events which coincide almost perfectly) that 1) is diminished to mean simply 2) Orthodoxy in the modern sense of right belief or opinion, and is then capable of being opposed by a third criterion, namely, 3) Orthopraxy or right practice.

I apologize for the length of this comment, but I think that it is very important to get clear about what kind of unity and inclusion Emergent is pioneering here.

What then is the unity of Emergent Village? It does not seem like it can be 1) Orthodoxy in the ancient sense of right worship, because Emergent Christians are not at all united in worship. If I had to identify a Protestant denomination that comes close to accepting 1) as the criterion for unity, I would say that it is the Anglicans who standardized their worship through the Book of Common Prayer, which gives the structure and guidelines for worship as well as belief. What it means to be an Anglican is simply to utilize the Book of Common Prayer.

Unfortunately, Anglicans fall short of 1) in some significant ways because the Book of Common prayer, by trying to bring together both Protestants and Catholics is intentionally vague about how to understand the Eucharist, the central act of the liturgy. Thus they have pre-communion prayers that make it sound like the Eucharist is purely symbolic, or nothing more than a remembrance, and other prayers that make it sound like it is a genuine sacrament – that is, a mystery of God in which God is really present in the Eucharist since it is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ who heals us as we partake in his glorified humanity (it is only the personal preferences of the parish priest that determine which prayer is used). So while the unity of Anglicans may be a unity of actions, it falls short of being a unity of worship.

Again, my central question: what is the unity that Emergent advocates? It is not number 1) Orthodoxy in the ancient sense of right worship, because Emergent has no interest in standardizing worship among its various constituents who are to remain in whichever denominations and churches they find themselves in. It is obviously not 2) Orthodoxy in the sense of right belief or opinion, since so many on these boards are interested in belittling this sort of unity, which has lead to the thousands of Protestant denominations (here I would agree with most of you in saying that 2) has been a pretty poor criterion for unity, but I would advocate 1) which as I have shown, already includes 2) within a robust and more wholistic context, namely the individual and corporate life of the worship of the Church).

Therefore, if these are the three options that we accept for what it means to be unified as Christians, we are only left with 3) Orthopraxy or right practice.

I encourage anyone who is dissatisfied with this conclusion to articulate what another criterion might be and we can discuss whether it is a legitimate option or not.

More specifically, those practices that are most pertinent to maintaining unity within the big tent of Emergent are the willingness to engage in conversation with anyone and the unwillingness to exclude anyone from conversation because they are different. There also seems to be a stronger claim among some here that we are not to try to change anyone at all, since this is a mark of arrogance rather than of the kind of love that is at the center of Emergent Village. What is more, we are all to be ready at every moment to be changed by others because if we hold too tightly to the faith as it has been revealed and passed down, we are closing ourselves off to others and to what the Holy Spirit might be inviting us to through them.

But if the basis for Emergent unity is 3) Orthopraxy, then it is those who practice inclusion at all costs who are truly Emergent and those who insist upon the truth, even when it excludes are actually in violation of the criterion for Emergent unity.

What then is the basis for Emergent unity?

Todd,

I’m sorry I don’t have time to truly give your comment a proper response. I appreciate what you’ve written though and the questions you are raising.

Again, I’m sorry I don’t have a more thought-out response for you right now than this, but here’s what I have: I think there’s another basis for “Emergent unity” and that is the Holy Spirit of God. That’s what ultimately binds all of us together, right? All who are in Christ have God’s Spirit.

OK, having said that, I think there is also a sense of unity in a definition of orthodoxy that is based on a smaller set of “essentials.” And, like I’ve tried to articulate on the other comment thread (probably not that articulately), there is a sense in which the way we hold our beliefs (particularly that larger set of “non-essentials”) is very important, perhaps as important as what the beliefs actually are.

Lastly, many in Emergent have an appreciation for what Peter Rollins calls “suspended space,” so we don’t deny who we are or what we believe but we enter into conversation with one another with epistemic humility and an openness to being converted by “the other” (in actuality, what the Holy Spirit is speaking into our lives through the voices of those we encounter).

Those are, like I said, very undeveloped thoughts, but hopefully they give the beginning of an answer to your question about the basis for “Emergent unity.” I think it’s an interesting question, and again I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into starting this discussion on this comment thread. Good on ya. And shalom.

Gosh Todd. Great Googly Mooglies. I hardly feel worthy to respond to your erudition.

But I thank you for adding solid content to the debate. Your questions, concerning Christian Unity, are not those I had anticipated evoking (but that is exactly what you get when you commit to Conversation).

And I am not sure that they are quite mine, at this point in time. But I do acknowledge they are “our” questions: I feel deeply connected with the Body of Christ, as manifest in all times and places.

Where you “bind back” in the best sense of the word “religion”, I strain forwards, guided largely by imagination, which as I understand it is a synomym for faith. Your perspective informs mine, but I would be hard pressed to start asking my community to pass your test of Christian Unity.

I do not want to be evasive here. I need to hear all points of view, while remaining true to the one given me.

Neither am I suggesting I’ve answered all you have raised; this is but an introduction to engaging with what you bring to this suspended space.

Once again, thank you.

Wow!

I think I must be rather more modern than I might wish for: as a professional theologian I found Todd’s erudition more inclusive than Nic’s poetic version!

However, and far more prosaicly, I lean towards Nic: the very concept of a definition of Christian Unity sounds more like exclusion than inclusion – the very concept that the boundary of the church needs to be defined (or even could be!) I find rather strange.

Some of us here see the ‘emergence’ of Christianity as a continuous process of growth and change, in which the end bears little resemblance to the beginning (I don’t know if anyone here would defend Don Cupitt’s new book, but it is an extreme example of a perspective present here). Others continue to return to the source and every time we do so something new emerges. I see myself in that tradition. As I have returned to the source, I have noticed that Jesus called the disciples to follow him, not to worship him. In following, I have no idea where I am going, nor can I choose my companions. All I can be sure of is that those around me have chosen to follow also.

Nic,
Thank you for a poetic, soulful and passionate posting.
It emanates the beauty of Christ’s love.

I was blessed by your inspiring words.

so poetry has more weight than truth because it gives us all a funny feeling inside that we call the holy spirit? Bunk!

Nic:

I think on the other post you talked about a howling drunk man who interupted your Christian meditation at South Africa’s Burning Man festival. I appreciate that example and think that it illustrates what I have tried to articulate here: when it comes to unity of worship, we can’t help but exclude (and this is not a bad thing). It sounds like you interacted with the howling man charitably. We might even say that you did not actively exclude him. But can we say that he was included within your worship in any real sense?

In terms of your response, I would resist the identification of imagination and faith (we have interacted around imagination on these boards before). I think that for the concept of faith to be meaningful we have to define the object of faith. So in terms of historic and traditional Christianity, the object of faith has been Christ, the Son of God, very God of very God who came into the world to save sinners (of whom I am chief – by adding this I combine an Orthodox pre-communion prayer with the Nicene Creed). This is a “binding back,” but it is a binding back to what has been revealed by God and passed down to us through the Apostles and their successors.

What sort of faith do we get when we “strain forwards” guided by imagination? More specifically, what is the object of this futural faith? Surely it is not something that we come up with out of the void with our own imaginations? Is it a picture of some cosmic and eschatological Christ that looks radically different from the one that we see when we “bind back”?

Simon Hall:

I agree, this sounds a lot more like exclusion than inclusion. One of the main things that I would advocate is that exclusion is not necessarily a bad thing (after all, I belong to the Orthodox Church which practices closed communion and claims to be the true Church of Christ in the sense that it alone has held to the fullness of the faith revealed by God and delivered by the Apostles).

I think it is problematic to try to return to the source (the Scriptures), without first acquiring the mind of the Scriptures, which means the mind of the Christian tradition (and here I would especially stress the Patristic period and the first 1000 years of Church history before the outbreak of schism and rampant error). When we look back at the ancient testimony with modern eyes, we tend to see what we want to see and not what is actually there. The image of contemporary critical scholarship and the historical Jesus is especially fitting here: we look down the well to try and get a glimpse of the historical Jesus and only see our own reflection.

The last part of your comment illustrates perfectly the type of conclusions that I am uneasy about. Do you think that we can follow Christ without believing that He is God and worshipping Him? Steve K talks about finding a smaller set of essentials and I would think that the divinity of Christ would be near the top of that list. If the list does not include the divinity of Christ, then you are right, those who utilize the list as a source for Christian unity mean something very different by the word ‘Christian’ than was meant in the first centuries of the Church.

I appreciate your comment because it illustrates precisely why it is hard for those in the Emergent conversation to articulate what that small set of essentials might be (by the way, thank you for using this language Steve K). I wonder what would happen if emergence Christianity did try to produce a smaller set of essentials. Aren’t there those here who would resist any attempt to do this as an act of exclusion?

Steve K:

I think that your initial thoughts are a good starting place, and I would like to ask a few more questions.

I am going to evade the question about the Holy Spirit as the basis for unity, because I think that to even talk about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have to make a number of dogmatic commitments that have not yet been made. In Orthodoxy, while the Holy Spirit is understood as the Spirit of God, who proceeds from the Father alone (this is a sticking point between Orthodox and Catholics), He is no less the Spirit of Christ. Christ is the image or icon of the Father, who makes present the incomprehensible and transcendent God of apophatic theology, and in the same way, it is the distinctive work of the Holy Spirit to make Christ present. The Holy Spirit is the only person of the Holy Trinity who is not revealed by another (the Father is revealed by the Son, and the Son by the Spirit), and His task is more humble and less visible one of making Christ present in the sacramental worship and theology of the Church, as well as in the individual life of the believer as he or she is conformed more and more to the likeness of Christ which is a reclamation of the likeness of God that we lost at the Fall even while we retained the image (this is Ireneaus, but I am also indebted to Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church).

Thus the question of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the question of Christ. Who is He? When we answer this question we get into the beliefs that we have such a hard time agreeing upon. Not only who is Christ, but also what does it mean to be in Christ? What kind of beliefs and/or actions are necessary for the indwelling of the Spirit which will then serve as the hallmark of our unity in Christ? Again, the essential question seems to be what does it mean to be ‘in Christ?’

I am nervous about using the Holy Spirit alone as the basis for unity, because there are many spirits, not all of whom are holy, and we are commanded to test them. Thus it is one thing to say that all Christians have the Holy Spirit, but then we need to figure out what it means to be Christian. You yourself talk about the Spirit in two very different ways: on the one hand as the Spirit that all Christians share as Christians, and on the other as the one who invites us into something different (conversion) through all of our interactions with others. Do you mean with other Christians? If so, we would have reason to believe that the Spirit could be speaking through them (if we could first get clear about what it means to be a Christian or to be “in Christ,” which I suspect would mean getting clear about the smaller set of essentials, whatever it may be). But if you mean any other person whoever they may be, then the Spirit is no longer limited to those who are “in Christ” but is always already dispensed to everyone. In this second case, it should be obvious that this spirit who speaks through our interactions with anyone, whether they are Christian or not, could not be the Holy Spirit who also serves to unify Christians so that they are Christ’s body the Church, unless of course we want to say that everybody is already a part of the Church and that we are all already unified, which seems like an abuse of language.

In regards to your other points, if we can agree to a definition of orthodoxy in terms of a smaller set of “essentials” (I assume that you mean essential beliefs) then what are these essentials? If we know them right now, then we should not hesitate to proclaim them, for they are the core around which our unity is based. But then, by proclaiming them, we will be exclusive in some sense since every affirmation also entails a negation.

If we do not know what this smaller set of essential is right now, then the only thing that could unite us is our determination to discover what it is and our commitment to the practices that will enable this discovery. Thus we could commit to certain epistemic practices (one of which would be the notion of suspended space) which will hopefully and eventually allow us to discover what the smaller list of essentials is that unites us (or will unite us). In the meantime, our only unity is a unity of practices, in this case the epistemic and ethical practices that will allow us to charitably pursue the list of essentials that none of us seem to be able to articulate in the present.

Simon
“The very concept that the boundary of the church needs to be defined (or even could be!) I find rather strange.”

I resonanate with your caution here. It harks back towards the old idea that “God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose centre is everywhere”. There have been those deep within the Western Christian (Mystical) Tradition such as Meister Eckhard who took this to heart.

Andrew
Well thanks my friend. It’s so good to have what is poetic simply accepted on its own merits.

Vlad
I think you are bringing in a whole suitcaseful of assumptions in your dismissal.

“Funny feeling inside”? I find this statement trite, judgemental and vapid, I’m afriad.

What I will say is you see a strong distinction between truth and beauty. I’m not claiming my words are beautiful, but I strive to enter into beauty, where I do find God.

And by entering into the poetic, I am not exiting “truth”. I think we would do well to bring these two poles closer together. Its an artifact of Modernity to separate them.

Anyway, despite my dismissal of your dimissal, I still thank you for contributing!

Todd
For the record, the meditation I spoke of was not run by “Christians”. I do not know what the contents of their belief structure was, I just went along. All I know is in that mix, I worshipped God.

But good question: “can we say that he was included within your worship in any real sense?” My worship in that moment was to extend acceptance to him, as I perceived him to be in pain. But that’s not going to pass your test, I don’t think.

“we have to define the object of faith”
I understand the need to ascribe uniqueness and particularity to the Lordship of Christ. But that is not the only way: we can also see Christ in others, and in the All. Both are valid. I’d excersise caution in elevating “objectivity” over “subjectivity”.

“what is the object of this futural faith”. For me, this is Christ, who will be the All in All, the Lord of the Cosmos, and the savior of All men, especially those who believe.

“the void [of] our own imaginations” Here, Todd, your assumptions are clear – you have already defined imagination as a void, and if I read you correctly, you see a void as being unorthodox. I see void as being part of the God journey – part of the primal choaos/ xaos which is present in Genesis 1. This state still forms part of what we can call the “via negativa”, and as such part of a valid journey with God.

We can take this further, but I stick to my heterodox assertion that imagination = faith.

“Is it a picture of some cosmic and eschatological Christ that looks radically different from the one that we see when we “bind back”?”

No, it is a picture of THE cosmic and eschatological Christ that looks radically SIMILAR TO the one that we see when we “bind back”.

I love you Todd, but you drive me krazy sometimes ;)

Nic:

When we discussed imagination before here. I see the imagination as faculty that produces images, but in can never really produce images out of the void. All images come from somewhere, they have a heritage, and part of what makes the creative use of images so powerful is the novel juxtaposition of these heritages. But strictly speaking, it is impossible to create an image out of nothing. Every image that we create bears the mark of other images.

What makes me nervous about stressing an imaginative faith (in the sense of imagining what Christianity might be as opposed to what it has been) is that we exchange the library of traditional images (perhaps not even entirely) for those of our contemporary culture which we accept uncritically. But these other images come with a history and it can be a history that does not harmonize with that of the Christian tradition. So while I would laud all attempts at a rebirth of the distinctively Christian imagination (like Lewis and Tolkien, a good Anglican and Catholic), I think that we should resist the use of imagination that looks forward to something else whatever it may be rather than to the divine revelation that is located in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church.

The terms “objective” and “subjective” are of limited usefulness when talking about the truths of faith, since we do not at all proclaim the kind of objective truth that was sought after in the Modern period. When I said that faith must have an object, what I meant is that we must have faith in something or rather in someone. Obviously I think that our faith is to be in Christ. This faith is subjective, or perhaps more appropriately, intersubjective, because we are not able to approach the object of this faith (divine revelation, who is Himself a subject (Jesus Christ), without relying on the testimony of other subjects (the Prophets, and Apostles), and becoming ourselves authentic subjects through ascetic struggle which promotes the process of deification (I thank both Kierkegaard and the Fathers of the Eastern Church for this last point).

As far as order and chaos go, I would resist any attempt to synthesize them. God calls order forth out of chaos or nothingness. If we try to assert that the chaos or nothingness is a part of God or necessary to God’s creative process, then we exchange the path of distinctively Christian thinking for that of Hinduism and Buddhism.

I am touched that you love me, but wonder what the significance is of my driving you crazy with a ‘k’ – sometimes I wish you Emergents could just be more clear! :)

Peace.

Todd, First, I want to commend you on your command of language, history and thought. You are a great thinker and I can appreciate that very much.

I have been silent because I wanted to listen to what would show up in the post. But I would like to respond.

One of the reasons I think I am now resistant to creating a distinct belief set is because my understanding of faith has changed, fairly dramatically.

When we locate our understanding in a distinct list or belief set, we inevitably locate our faith in the list, which is a human construct and I would offer is the same thing as works. And what we end up with are distinct creeds, covenants, and statements of belief. We argue over these lists, hoping we get it right. But Jesus didn’t say believe in a list. I think he understood we’d fight over it and probably get it wrong.

I would again say, as in the previous post, my faith is not in my own construct, but in the PERSON of Jesus. I may hold certain understandings of Jesus and what he did. But my faith is made complete in Jesus believing correctly for me.

I would suggest a distinct alternative to your understanding of unity, one that exists outside of our own constructs that we can devise, create, or becomes subject to.

We are first human created in the image of God. Our unity is based in the dignity established by God. It transcends belief because it is not a human construct. It is objective in that it was established by God.

We can reject it or we can accept it. I believe the call to love, which was the perfection of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, established by Jesus, made possible by the Holy Spirit, and reflected the Father, was the personification of what it meant to be human. To follow was to engage love, which restored, validated and/or held someone’s dignity.

When we believe in Jesus, our differences are hidden by the cross, which allows us to cross lines and establish unity based on our humanity. And it was the cross that re-established our dignity once and for all.

Thanks, Nic, for an inspiring post. This is the kind of stuff i have been kicking around with friends. Great food for thought. i always enjoy your posts! You make me think.

EP

Vlad,
Your comment is reminiscent of an atheist’s argument. I’m prepared to embrace your comment, however, without the poetic and particularly metaphor, there is no way of describing the Spirit or Godde. The fact that most of the teachings of Jesus fall into the area of the poetic, for example, the parables, the imagination of the Kingdom, the beatitudes and the prophetic demonstrates that truth regarding godliness is not empirical but shrouded in mystery that requires the poetic.

To quote scripture, which I know isn’t very cool..

“Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. “2 Corinthians 3:3NLT

This tells me that the truth is matter of the heart not the head.

In many ways this is at the heart (excuse the pun) of the inclusive/ exclusive debate. Who are we to judge the heart of a person? Yes, as Christians we have been through lectio divina, solo scriptura and 2000 years of tradition, but what will always count is the letter written on the heart.

Even the atheist is included in this circle.

Be blessed and may you feel the blessing as a blissful sensation.

Todd
“we exchange the library of traditional images … for those of our contemporary culture which we accept uncritically”

NO! We extend, through the imagination, the deep mystical orthodox root, to a contemporary context.
I feel you are equating Imagination with current culture.

For me, imagination is exactly what enables our christian critique. If we do not “see” a better way, a way rooted in the All of God, we can never attain to a critique, we will constantly be reacting to the culture.

Divine revelation is only partly in scripture and in tradition. It is also writ large in the cosmos. We’ve talked about this before: Wesley I think said revelation was in reason, scripture, tradition and nature. I extended this to include imagination, and a few other aspects.

I am expansionist, you are preserving. You ask “Why?” and I ask “Why not?”. But let’s make it work. I value grounding, rooting, precisely because I naturally value their opposites: imagination and freedom.

As for chaos, I view it as a necessary counterbalance to order. Both are constantly in a dialectic relationship. What we are seeing here in emergence, and in this conversation, expresses the chaotic nature at the fringes of orthodoxy. But these are not just the outer extremes of orthodoxy, but very possibly its forward, cutting edge. That implies what today is emerging is tomorrow orthodox. No Orthodoxy was ever established without doubt, suffering and chaos.

As for the gratuitous spelling errors, well that’s just because I felt like making a lowbrow “mistake” at that point. Poets – you can’t take them anywhere.

I love this!

The theologian Tom Wright has a habit of saying, ‘Probably 20% of what I believe (about my faith) is completely wrong; the problem is, I don’t know which 20%.’

Any conversation between people who subscribe to this view will always be open and friendly. If one joins the conversation with the assumption that difference is always ‘schism and error’ on the part of the other, then the tension will rise rapidly.

Todd, I certainly believe that Jesus is God, although (if you have seen me, you have seen the father) you may find my understanding of God rather un-Orthodox!

Nic, I wonder if this is where you were pointing us when you began? Perhaps it’s for the best. I certainly find some Christians to be more ‘other’ than the Muslims and ‘don’t knows’ I meet every day!

As a christian with a regenerated heart, yes, but we are to test the spirits. This means we need to match what we are “feeling” to the scriptures, since the scriptures are the upheld revelation of God. Not every spirit we feel is holy. Not every time we get a bad funny feeling is the problem external. It could be a problem of the heart

Vlad,
Thanks for entering into the conversation, as this is what Nic’s posting is all about- Conversation.

I realise that we will view things quite differently on a number of issues, which for me is no problem. St. Paul reminds us: “I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.” Romans16:19

Andrew
“without the poetic and particularly metaphor, there is no way of describing the Spirit or Godde” – that’s a great point.

It would appear that faith is inherantly metaphorical. The only proviso I’d make is that the Christian worldview has at its heart time and space, aka Incarnation. So in addition to the poetic, the timeless, and the metaphorical, we want to see a God who is active in history, and not exlusively in the realm of imagination. (I think Todd might agree.)

I have a question that everyone seems to duck in these conversations.

What do you do when the person “seeking” inclusion demands everything their way…their view…their ideas.

It seems to me even an inclusive group must have exclusion at some points…Is this possible…to be inclusive and exclusive simultaneously?

Mark,
I like the way you are thinking. I think that inclusive means accepting others regardless of their point of view. As Peter Rollins put it… It’s placing our priorities in the following order:

1.Belonging 2.Behavour 3. Beliefs

... and not the other way round!!

Mark,
I didn’t really answer your question.

My answer is YES we can include and exclude at the same time.

I love the paradox!!

I would offer that inclusion comes regardless of belief. Love is not based on belief but on God’s distinction of our dignity.

But it is possible for someone to exclude oneself, which allows for the paradox to exist. The group includes while the individual excludes. Both exist at the same time.

I think that to have meaningful conversations that there needs to be enuf shared to communicate well and that this brings exclusion back into the loop.

I’m not sure we can exclude exclusion from our conversations, but we can hope to include more people in our local conversations. This extension of conversation partners can be done as part of our faith-commitments and generally does go hand in hand with a willingness to let aspects of our received understandings of that faith dissolve.

All:

My wife is back in town. I went from having all the time in the world to pour myself into a digital existence, to now paying much more attention to my actual life. I apologize for not having as much time for the conversation here.

Nic:

Dialectic relationships have more to do with Hegel than they do with Christianity. While Hegel thought that philosophy and Christianity basically express the same truths, which are nothing other than those cultural and intellectual positions that allow (the world-)Spirit to come to self-consciousness and which progess according to the rational structure of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, it is Kierkegaard who opposes this and shows (in his “Philosophical Fragments”) how different Christianity is from German Idealism.

In what sense does the God of the Scriptures need chaos to create? Another related question might be, is Christ an agent of chaos? Since all things are to be recreated in Christ, or in other words, are to be made into new creations, is there some sort of necessary chaos in Christ’s life and mission?

Nic you also say that conversations like these are, “the chaotic nature at the fringes of orthodoxy. But these are not just the outer extremes of orthodoxy, but very possibly its forward, cutting edge.”

This statement makes very large assumptions about the nature of Christian belief, of which I would identify at least the following:

1a) That we can be on the chaotic fringes of orthodoxy without being heretical, 1b) heresy need not worry us, 1c) there have not been genuine instances of heresy historically, and 1d) it is clear and obvious to all what is heresy and what is not (again based on what criterion, since no one here will articulate one?) which is why we can uncritically inhabit the chaotic fringes of orthodoxy without being the least bit afraid of heresy.

2) Truth is progressive, and because truth is progressive, Christian truth or belief is also progressive. We are engaged in an epistemic and theological process by which the nature of God is becoming clearer and clearer to us. This is what makes it possible to move beyond the old dogmatic formulas which spell out the Apostolic understanding of God’s ultimate revelation of Himself in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God the Word incarnate.

The problem that I have with saying that Christian thinking is progressive is that God reveals Himself decisively in Jesus Christ. Christ is not being further revealed to us in a way that rivals how He was revealed to the Apostles. So if we think that knowledge is progressive, it can only be on the basis of something other than revelation. Hegel himself thought that truth is progressive because reason is progressive. One thing that is not progressive is revelation. I would draw the further point to say that Christianity is not progressive. I would thus side with Kierkegaard over Hegel, and note that on the face of it, Kierkegaard also appears to be more Christian.

Jonathan:

It is important to be critical of different theological positions, because as you said, these are the words of human beings that must fall short of God as He is in Himself (this insight itself is given to us by apophatic or negative theology).

I would like to point out, however that your account about humans being created in God’s image and thus having dignity, which love adequately respects and responds to, and which Christ restores in a real way through his own life of reconciliation (you did not put this last point exactly this way, but I am giving you the benefit of the doubt) is itself theological. According to your own words, it is also therefore a human construct.

So why should I accept your human construct rather than all the other ones that you don’t want to interact with? I think that charity demands that I interact not only with your construct, but with all of the others. Thus, as I tried to articulate on the other post, part of being loving is to take people’s beliefs seriously and to try to correct them if I believe that they are in error. This is not to be arrogant or exclusive, but to be lovingly commited to finding truth both for my own sake and for others as well. This is a project that I am commited to. Can you commit yourself to it as well?

I also think that it is important to note that while all theology consists in our response to what God has done, there seems to be at least some theological truths that we cannot deny without denying what God has done in addition to the (human and theological) words about what God has done.

I would include many of the dogmatic and doctrinal statements about Christ in this category. If we deny them, we deny not only the human words about Christ, but also the activity of God in Christ. Thus someone like Arius was not inviting the early Church to reflect on what God had done, but was in fact diminishing what God had done through denying the divinity of Christ.

It is Christ himself who asks the questions: “Who do people say that I am?”, and “Who do you say that I am?”

This is the beginning of theological discourse. Thus theology may consist of human words, but they are human words with a divine mandate (that is, assuming that certain theological assertions are true, like Jesus Christ being divine for one).

I think it is a little disingenuous to assert that you believe in Jesus, and that you have a relationship with Jesus while refusing to say anything more about what Jesus is like (ie. your beliefs about Jesus). Do you show the same reticence when it comes to facts about your friends? Isn’t part of the proof of your friendship with others the fact that you can make some authoritative claims about what they are and are not like? Here we might say that no one can ever prove their friendship, no matter how much they say (this would be true of both our relationship with Christ and with others).

But total silence in the face of Christ’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” does seem to disqualify us from a robust relationship with the One Who asks this question. I don’t say this because I am commited to modernity or to modern and logical argumentation, but because I think it is very important to respond to this question (an activity that was occuring long before modernity ever began its assault upon the Church).

I do not know what you mean by love being the perfection of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. What do you mean by love if it is something that requires right belief as well? Typically loving actions would be the definition of what is meant by orthopraxy.

Andrew:

Your last point makes clear what I was trying to say in my first comment, which is that I think that the true criterion for Emergent unity is Orthopraxy or right practice.

If our priorities are: 1) Belonging, 2) Behavior, and finally 3) Belief, and in that order, then we must recognize that 1) and 2) do not rise above the level of practices, probably those of inclusion and love respectively. If Emergent ever gets to 3) Beliefs, then it would rise up to the level of Orthodoxy in the modern sense of right belief.

Does anyone think worship is important anymore? Is there true or right worship? If there is, why is this not a priority (according to Rollins)?

Steve Hall:

I don’t know whether your view of God is unorthodox or not, you haven’t articulated it. If I am encouraging anything here it is that we should be less cautious about saying precisely what we believe even if that does put us at odds with others and act as a means by which others are excluded. Love without truth is saccharine and empty. I have never argued for truth without love, as I believe that love is indispensable.

As an autobiographical note, you all might be interested to know that I was called a heretic for certain beliefs (that heaven and hell are the same place, or that there is a better model for the atonement than the penal-substitutionary view) by Evangelical Protestants, only to later discover that my beliefs were more in keeping with Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and I have now converted. Thus part of the reason that I am urging everyone to get clear about beliefs here is because I believe that those who seek really do find. Of course, I believe that beliefs are ultimately important within the more wholistic context of an individual and corporate or ecclesial life of worship.

Peace.

Todd, you said, “So why should I accept your human construct rather than all the other ones that you don’t want to interact with?”

I have in no way said I expect you to. This is your choice.

You asked if I can commit myself to correcting people when in error. That’s a pretty big task. At what point does that end. I think this is where you and I see it very differently. I do not seek someone like Shafer, as example even listening, so I really don’t spend a lot of time correcting. So no, I do not find myself compelled in any way to that regard. Jesus let people walk away.

I have also in no way invalidated the idea of theological constructs. Like logic, I find them extremely valuable. They deepen our faith in such important ways. I just hold that their purpose is to experience, not create salvation.

If Jesus today asked me who He is, I would say, The Christ, the Son of God. I hold that to be true. But my holding does not make it true in a cosmic sense. It simply validates in my life what has always been true.

You also said, “I think it is a little disingenuous to assert that you believe in Jesus, and that you have a relationship with Jesus while refusing to say anything more about what Jesus is like”

I guess I don’t understand why you keep saying I don’t want to express what I believe about Jesus. My original point was not that I didn’t believe anything but that my friend was using it as a point to exclude or create division. I even told you I’d love to sit down over beers and talk theology. I think you’d be a great conversation.

My comment about love as orthodoxy has to do with our humanity. True orthodoxy was revealed in our fruit. It didn’t matter what we thought we believed. It mattered what the fruit of our lives revealed we believed. The tree could only produce one kind of fruit. So when we loved, it revealed we were orthodox. A friend of mine calls it orthodoxopraxy. ;-P

Todd
I know the concept of the dialectic is Hegelian, and chose to use it anyhow. I have not made the distinction you have, based on other factors. I just think that dialectic is a good discription of how some things happen – evolution, both natural, social and intellectual.

In fact, we are engaging in dialectic right here. You propose A, I propose B, and we have a discussion to produce a synthesis C. We all grow, or at least, I feel I do.

I think I shall now call it the dialectic of Love. I take your eridition to heart and change my mind. I repent of my unqualified use of the Hegelian term. Metanoia, right here, right now!

I do not think God needs chaos, but I think that chaos is an inevitable by-product of Life. I do not quite see Christ to be an agent of chaos, other than our lives are often turned “upside down” by our encounters with him. And he promised not peace but “a sword”. To have your soul and spirit divided asunder does not sound like the Paragon of Order to me.

Todd, I see you are concerned about heresy. I’m heterodox by nature and inclination, so do not really see heresy as an issue. I am interested amongst other things, in knowing something of the mind and heart of God. Anyhow, yesterdays heresy very often becomes tomorrows orthodoxy. Tell me there are things you now hold to be orthodox that were not once anathema. Christ himself was anathema to his own tradition.

“One thing that is not progressive is revelation.” I disagree entirely I am afraid! By this, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was clearly known to Adam. No way! God revealed himself through the ages.

Hebrews 1 saith “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…” Is this not progressive revelation?

I think this is the crux of where our worldviews clash. I see God as journey, you as a fixed, ideal, perfect person. I think you to be more the Greek and I more the Hebrew in our thought.

Should the “conversation” ultimately lead to:.

The Guilt of the sinner in the hands of a Holy God?

The Blood of the innocent shed for the guilty?

The need for Repentance?

The fact that there is no way to Heaven other than through The Cross?

These are not popular topics in postmodernism, but they are Biblical essentials, aren’t they?

Nic:

It is one thing to look at the progressive revelation of God in the Bible, which leads up to the decisive event of the incarnation, and quite another to be looking for how revelation is progressing even now.

The scandal of particularity is that something universal, timeless, and complete occured in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think that this affirmation has traditionally gone hand in hand with being a Christian.

But this affirmation is also against progressive revelation, and especially its Hegelian variety. What are we building towards? What vision eludes us that we have not already seen when we behold the incarnate Christ?

If the revelation of God is ultimately Christ, the only way to assert that there is progressive revelation is to assert that Christ is being progressively revealed to us. But do you really think that we have a better and more thorough knowledge of Christ than the Apostles did? Do we have a better and more thorough knowledge of Christ than those in the early Church who very frequently endured martyrdom?

Dialectic is fine as long as we are talking about a purely human pursuit of knowledge and truth. But the minute that we accept that God has crossed the gulf between Himself and the world in order to reveal Himself to us, then we are no longer dependent on the back and forth of dialectic and the syntheses that it produces. If all utterances are merely human utterances, the method of dialectic makes sense, because each utterance is possible and perhaps even plausible and can help us to articulate better and better ways of thinking if we take it seriously. But if God has spoken, then dialectic is not our best methodology, because all utterances are no longer equal, and we are not adrift without a guide. Woe to the human being who presumes to enter into dialectic with God!

If it is true that yesterday’s heresy is today’s orthodoxy, can you please provide historical examples of this claim.

At what point did Arius become an orthodox Christian? Or the Gnostics? Modalists? Etc.

If you mean some other heresies that have since risen up to constitute orthodox Christianity, I would like to know what they are. I cannot think of what they might be, and would appreciate it if you put a little more flesh on the claim that heresy produces orthodox Christianity.

Jonathan:

It is true that Jesus just let people walk away. But this did not occur before He confronted them with their errors. Remember his long speech that keeps repeating the phrase, “Woe to you teachers of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites.” Even here we have the loving Christ, but he shows his love by confronting the pharisees and condemning their error, which I would say is also a call to repentance (which puts His ministry in continuity with John the Baptist’s).

Todd
I think I might need a holiday after this. But you ask very good questions that I am prepared to answer.

Overall, I agree with your view that “The Incarnation” (as in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, as opposed to ongoing “cosmogenesis”) attained a certain “completeness”, as in Jesus’ “It is done”: The work of salvation from God’s perspective – the propitiation for sin – was acheived.

However, that salvation is only completed in reality when man becomes fully sanctified, i.e. accepts the work of grace by faith. My emphasis throughout is the human side of the question.

Having said that, there are also views that God remains incomplete because of his own choice to love his creation. But let’s leave that aside here.

“What are we building towards? What vision eludes us that we have not already seen when we behold the incarnate Christ?”

What we are building towards is the making real the work of Christ. I believe that I am nearer to that goal now that I was 30 years ago. The work is Christ continues in me, and so there is this journey in which God is constantly being incarnated.

I get the impression that behind your asertions lie certain doctrines regarding the progressive revelation of God in time, and as much as you challange me to give account of my opinions, I am not sure you have really deconstructed your own.

One key aspect that seems lacking in your view is the contextual. If you ask me if we have a better understanding of the gospel than the apostles, perhaps the answser is no, however, we live in a totally different world to them, a different context, and so the gospel must be re-incarnated into our context afresh. It appears that Orthodoxy, as proud as it is to be a “straight line to glory” and an unbroken continuity to the apostolic era, has some blindness in this area.

I’m interested in and positive about Orthodoxy for these very reasons, but it is not above reproach. In fact one of my foundational mentors has been Nikolai Berdyaev, who wrote “The meaning of the creative act” (1917) in which he asserts, as an Orthodox philosopher, the ongoing nature (The 8th day) of Gods creation, on a grand scale.

“Woe to the human being who presumes to enter into dialectic with God!” Well woe then to Abraham who bargained with God concerning the fate of Sodom, woe to Jacob, who wrestled with God, and woe to Job, who conversed with his creator.

Todd, even God changes his mind: “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. (Exodus 32:14)”

Again, I admire the Rabbinic method of discourse, while you seem to taken with the Greek notion of the Ideal.

When I say that “yesterday’s heresy is today’s orthodoxy”, please, I am not saying ALL “heresy” leads to orthodoxy, or that Arius is automatically to be accepted as orthodox. I am merely saying, that Orthodoxy evolves, and it often has to accept the views of those it once outlawed.

Galileo’s work on Copernicus’ heliocentric astronomical model (1610) is but one case in point. We now accept that the Earth revolves around the sun, but the Catholic Church sheepishly admitted to their error in handling his case only in the early 1990’s. 380 years for the Custodians of Orthodoxy to repent … should we all sit around waiting for the Church here?

As a recent example, look at how the charismaniac movement became establishment. Look at how the hippy Jesus people became the Vineyard. C’mon Todd, this is basic prophetic pattern, throughout the biblical narrative!

It is my bold assertion that much of what makes the ragtag theological tribe known as emergent, will tomorrow become accepted and celebrated by those who reject it today. I do not belive I am alone here, what do you think of Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy” or Phyllis Tickle’s “The Great Emergence”?

Chris
Thanks for your list of questions. I agree these types of questions do not appear to be “popular” in the emergent conversation (if thats what you mean by postmodernism). That does not mean they are not there.

Have you considered that the emergent view is trying to build something that goes beyond these fundamentals? They ask the kind questions that those who seem fixated on issues of atonement (and very often on one particular theory of atonement – Penal Substitution) ignore completely.

Hebrews 5 and 6 discusses this: “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation … ”

The Emergent Conversation is a space allowing us to move towards this maturity.

Thanks for the reply,

Respectfully,

The Hebrews passage is a chastisement because readers left the essentials. Now they were being rebuked for having to learn them all over again. The essentials must always be in view, or as with the Hebrews readers, they would forget where they came from through spiritual atrophy.

Maturity is impossible if there is no reaffirmed foundation. The NT is written with that thought clearly expressed. Those doctrines I mentioned above were shouted by Paul again and again in the Epistles. Why? Because those churches were in error and the essentials were being ignored, thus he reaffirmed them, consistently. 1 Corinthians 2:1-3 is as basic as the Gospel gets, Paul made this matter so simple.

We inherit The Kingdom, we don’t build it. I cannot inherit what I build, obviously someone else builds so that I may inherit. Jesus teaches His Fathers Kingdom is by invitation, and that invitation was written in His blood. I am guilty of His innocent blood, as are we all, but if we never hear that message, we can never inherit that Kingdom. Mark 1:14-15 calls us to repentance and believe the Gospel.

He taught The Gospel as His suffering for lost sinners. Jesus, in His own words viewed Himself as a ransom for many. Not all, but those who believe the Gospel message, as He taught it. All those who repent and call upon His name will be saved. Mark 10:45 acts 4:12

This is a conversation worth having.

“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” 2 Timothy 4:3

The truth is we are all sinners and on the day of judgment we will be found guilty before God for it says “there is no one who does good, not even one” Psalm 14:3, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 lists who will not inherent the kingdom of God Revelation 21:8 goes on to tell of whats going to happen to them. Without Jesus we are going to hell, they need to know where their eternal destiny lies not “how to make them have the best life now”. Are they going to bring what they get in this life with them when they die, no they won’t which is why the gospel is so vitally important their souls are at stake.

To all of you who listen to the teachings of emergent church I ask you to compare it to one in Revelation 3:14-22.

Nic:

You last comment is one of the clearest that you have offered, and I thank you for that.

Your first three or four paragraphs are great. You articulate points that we hold in common (and I applaud you for this not only because I like it when people agree with me, but more importantly because it is a common base from which to have a real conversation in the first place).

I think that one point of disagreement, or at least a lack of clarity is regarding the notion of progressive revelation. You are right to point to your own individual life and to note your progress in sanctification. As an Orthodox Christian I would say that it is impossible to know God without constantly and perpetually growing in holiness. This is the process of deification or theosis, by which one becomes like God. In the theology classes that I had at Mars Hill Graduate School (a friend of Emergent) the professor highlighted the point that there is evidence that the Wesleyan emphasis on sanctification was actually inspired by Eastern notions of deification.

Perhaps here we have a good example of contextualization (Wesley contextualizes the Eastern concept of deification to fit his own Western context and the result is Wesleyan sanctification). I have thought about contextualization and do not believe that Orthodoxy is deficient in this regard. But we do need to get clear about what contextualization is and what it presupposes if we are to engage in it.

First of all, contextualization requires something that is contextualized. For the sake of including as many people as possible within this particular mini-conversation, we might say that what needs contextualization is the Gospel, although we would still need to get clear about what the Gospel even is. This is something that I was trying to get at with my original comment. One part of our unity as Christians might be that we are united around the Gospel, but then we would have to spell out what this is, which is an activity that only the fundamentalists seem keen on doing here (something the last few comments highlight).

Once we establish what the Gospel is, that which is to be contextualized, then we can devote our time and energy to translating it in such a way as to make it suitable and salvific within every particular social, cultural, and linguistic context. This is the second essential moment of contextualization, for there is not only something which is contextualized, but also a context into which the contextualization occurs. But the first stage is to have the message itself (if we still think that the proclamation of the “Good News” is some sort of message, either spoken, written, embodied, exemplified, etc). One of the main questions that I have been trying to ask here is precisely this question, what is the Gospel? What more traditional Christians are looking for from Emergent Village is some assurance that however unorthodox their methods may be for spreading this message, the message itself is indeed the same (again, one problem I would have here, and that I even have with my own language as I type this is that it is too easy to think of “the message” only in terms of beliefs, which I have identified as the modern and diminished meaning of Orthodoxy).

What we have failed to establish then is whether the message itself is something that is progressively revealed, which I take to mean progressively revealed in the life of the world, or in other words, world history and the history of ideas (in which case it would be something very much like Hegel’s view of the progression of World-Spirit, and would preclude contextualization as I have talked about it hear, replacing it instead with something like discovery), or whether the message is something unchanging and faithful that is proclaimed by those who are witnesses to the divine revelation, even though it may take any particular individual a lifetime to fully comprehend, appreciate, and appropriate it, once it is translated. The latter case is very much like what you wrote in your first few paragraphs about sanctification, and your own personal growth in knowledge of God, and is a progression that I think we must highlight. In the Orthodox tradition this is done by recognizing that it is first and foremost the saints who testify to the Gospel – which is nothing other than the transformative power of God that is made available to us in Christ. They are uniquely able to testify to it precisely because they are the ones who have appropriated it.

On my blog there are a few entries where I contrast Hegel and Kierkegaard. If the kind of progress that we are interested in is personal progress, great, we have a more distinctively Christian champion in Kierkegaard, and especially in his notions of the progression of a human life through the three existence-spheres of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. But if what we mean is something like Hegel’s World-Spirit, then we have departed far from what Christians have always thought about the nature of God, divine revelation, and especially the union of these two categories in the person of Christ (anyone wanting to verify this contrast should read Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments).

In Orthodoxy, there is a strong concern with contextualization, and I have not mentioned it before now, precisely because it is so foreign to Protestantism in general and emergence Christianity more specifically. I said before that in order for contextualization to occur there must be something that is contextualized and a context into which it is contextualized. In Anglo-American missiology this has tended to be the Gospel message itself as it is translated into the cultural and conceptual languages of those who receive it. But in Orthodoxy, what we are most concerned with contextualizing is the human person, and the context into which the human person is contextualized is the divine life of God. The main way that this contextualization occurs is through the sacramental worship of the Church which raises the individual up into the context of the Kingdom of God, which is identified with the eschatalogical worship that is offered in Revelation and testified to in Isaiah. This is why the liturgy is called the Divine Liturgy – it is a means by which the Church as a corporate body with Christ as its head and composed of individuals ascends to God. This is also the reason for my hesitance to fool around with worship and to create liturgies that are tailor made to our own cultural contexts. The point is not to stay what we are but to ascend to God. We are the objects of contextualization, and it is God Himself Who is the context.

I wish to address only a few more of your points, and hopefully briefly, as I too could use a break.

In regards to heresy and orthodoxy, I don’t think that any of the examples that you listed are genuine examples of something that is heresy turning out to be something that is actually orthodox. We cannot call the Charismatics or the Jesus People heretics without abusing the traditional meaning of this word. You might be right to point to Galileo and the Catholic church, but this occurs after all Orthodox Christians would say that Catholics departed from the true faith (in 1054). Again, if our goal is to get clear about what is going on, we should start with a definition of orthodoxy – which has typically been that which is believed by all Christians, and which Orthodox Christians would say was securely guarded by the Seven Ecumenical Councils. While the geocentric view of the universe was held by most or all people, it is not central to the Christian faith and thus should not be identified using categories of orthodoxy, or what all Christians have believed, and heresy, a straying from these beliefs. I have heard that David Bentley Hart offers a completely different account of the confrontation between the Catholic church and Galileo in his new book Athiest Delusions (Galileo is not presented as the free-thinking and scientific hero that our culture has taken him to be). I hope to check it out eventually, but don’t know when I will get the chance.

The distinction between Greek and Jew is not a very useful one (and here I am not trying to evoke the words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans). Obviously when we make this distinction, both of us will try to accuse the other of Greek thinking and try to take up the mantle of Hebraic, or as you put it, Rabbinic thinking. One point that I would challenge you on is your conception of Rabbinic thinking and especially regarding its faithfulness to traditional Hebraic thought with its robust role for the person of the prophet and God’s Word or divine revelation. Rabbinic thinking, of which Midrash is the major practice only emerges in the period of God’s silence and is an attempt to put a fence around the Torah using human reason and discussion. In other words, Rabbinic thinking emerges in the period of mutual influence between Greek and Hebrew thinking and cannot be so cleanly dissociated from Greek thought.

I think that my own thinking here has been faithful to the Hebraic spirit in my determination to take divine revelation seriously (something which I would also want to say that the Rabbis have tried to do). Who is more Greek, the one who thinks that the Torah is the Word of God which He gives to us to liberate us and raise us up to the divine life, or the one who sees it as so many human words that are imperfect and in need of further progression, clarification, expansion, etc. (perhaps especially in the period of emergence)? Chaim Potok’s books are good examples to discussions like these which have also been occuring within Judaism itself for at least the last 50 years. Is the Talmud divinely inspired? Can we use historical-critical scholarship on it? More importantly, is the Torah divinely inspired? Can we use historical-critical scholarship on it? Our answers to these questions speak to our assumptions about the reality or unreality of divine revelation (God has spoken!), which is the central Hebrew category, and something which is absent in Greek thinking and in much of contemporary cultural understandings of the nature of God.

When I said, “Woe to the person who presumes to engage in dialectic with God,” I was actually thinking about Job. What is interesting about Job is that he questions God and God answers. But the “discussion” that they have at the end of the book, is not really a discussion between two interlocutors, and especially not in the pursuit of some sort of synthesis. Job questions God, and God proceeds to question Job. God’s questions to Job evoke what God’s questions always evoke in those whose hearts are seeking God – namely, repentance. Job is a mere human, and should not have questioned the One who creates the heavens and the earth. Of course, we might say that these questions bring Job into relationship with God. Asking questions is incredibly important, and it is important precisely because we are ultimately concerned with answers (a scene from Lewis’ The Great Divorce comes to mind). Here the answer is Job’s humilty, repentance, and awe before God, the Existing One.

It is one thing to cry out to God, to question and challenge God. Here we have the example of the Old Testament righteous ones who you name. These activities can be part of what it means to walk with God. It is quite another thing however to deny what God says in response to our questions, or perhaps what is more true, to ignore what He says through His prophets and Apostles and to turn to false prophets or endless discussions to determine what He might have meant and to see whether he could give us a word that is more in keeping with who we already are – some sort of synthesis between our current position and God’s initial answer to our questions. When we challenge and question God, while carefully listening for His answers we walk with God, while when we ignore his answers (or His questions to us) we walk away from Him. Again, we are faced with a great either/or.

Peace to you Nic. Thank you for talking. I am sure we will talk again. If you (or anyone else) are ever in Seattle, please look me up. We could get a beer, and we wouldn’t have to tell Schafer (jk Schafer!).

Todd
I appreciate what you have written, and the whole exchange.

Though we (or our thoughts) are very different in certain ways, we at least are willing to learn from each other. It is a good sign.

I shall rememeber you should I have the good fortune to get to Seattle.