Exclusion and Embrace, Part One: The Cross as our example…

Miroslav Volf's subtitle to his book Exclusion and Embrace is 'A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation'. As a Croatian, Volf has experienced firsthand the horrible atrocities that have taken place in the Balkans. Volf, who was giving a lecture on embrace, was asked by his mentor and fellow theologian Jurgen Moltmann this burning question: "But can you embrace a cetnik?" (Cetnik is a term for a Serbian fighter, and when Volf was asked this the cetniks had been putting people into concentration camps and raping women, destroying churches and cities alike). Volf replied, "No, I cannot- But as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to." This is the context for how Volf begins his argument. But under what justification does one embrace the other, especially when this "other" has committed horrific crimes and has displayed hatred to you, your family, or your people? In what ways can you embrace the other and how does this happen?

Volf begins by correctly pointing to the cross. In his introductory chapter, Volf uses John Howard Yoder and Moltmann's views of the cross to give an outline for how we must understand not only how the atonement works but how it is a model for the Christian who seeks to live like Jesus. Yoder claimed that for any understanding of social ethics we must point out the most seminal example, Christ and his cross. Moltmann provides the understanding of the cross by arguing that by the crucifixion, Jesus identifies with or has "solidarity" with the oppressed but is also supplemented with the theme of atonement for the perpetrators. Victims are liberated from their oppression and those who oppress are liberated from their injustice. For Volf, the cross is ultimately a "self-donating" act and should be imitated by the church. But as we understand Christ's self giving love, we must also see the self giving love of the truine God. "This self giving love is scandalous because of the all too frequent failure of self donation to bear fruit…Though self donation often issues in the joy of reciprocity, it must reckon with the pain of failure and violence" (pg. 26). And yet this is what Christ is calling us to. Our identity must become that of Christ, one of self donation, solidarity, and forgiveness. Volf further explains what this self donation that leads to embrace means: "The will to give ourselves to others and "welcome" them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about other , except that of identifying them in their humanity" (pg. 29). And even though we must seek grace prior to anything else, Volf recognizes that "The will to embrace is indiscriminate, the embrace itself is conditional", thus articulating that those who refuse to be redeemed of their wounds must face judgment and that we must demand justice (pg.30).

 This theme of identity leads to Volf's next point that he explores in his first chapter. The shifting of identity, which is most emphatically stated in the call of Abraham, is the call of the Christian community. This will be part two in my series on exclusion and embrace. But first I have a couple of questions to ask of you:

Does the church promote this kind of "embrace" or reconciliation? I believe we offer a simple view of atonement most of the time but not a full view of God's reconciling work.

And:At what point do we know that we have begun to take up the reconciling work of Christ?

What does it mean to take on this work practically in our individual and communal lives? What does it mean for us to give ourselves to others, victims and perpetrators alike?

I will post soon!!!

I have been mighty busy lately, and I just scrapped a post that I have actually worked on for a couple of days. Dang. Anyways, I am going to actually plan out some posts for the near future, here they are in no set order:

 (1) The Historical Jesus and the current quest and its implications for the church

 (2) A series of posts on my current read, Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf. Excellent topic: forgiveness, but with social implications for both the church and the world.

 (3) My plans for the next couple of years, involving a trip to Europe and my attempt to find a grad school (may need your help with this!)

 (4) And a general, “Where am I now?” post. Which every blogger should post from time to time. For some of us that is a daily post!

Ok I hope I have not lost many of you due to infrequent posting. I will be back Friday. Til then….

The Problems with Evangelical Theologies, Part 2 or How many pieces to this puzzle are there?

"The Bible was not written in a text-oriented culture but for an oral culture. So these documents were meant to be heard. When you read them out loud in Greek, you notice alliteration and poetry and all kinds of things going on that are totally lost in translation. I think the oral dimension of the biblical world, very much connected to storytelling, is a crucial dimension and is a key to understanding the theology in those texts." – Ben Witherington

 As Witherington stated in his article, "Paul operated out of his storied world". And really, we all do. We all live in a much larger story. It is a story that we reference to when we try and comprehend things, a story by which we tell others about our life, and a story by which we also add layers to. Paul's storied world was that of God as a creator (of the world and of a community started by Abraham), of Exodus (Moses) and kingship (David), of exile and the hope for a return to land and to justice. The Christ event rocked Paul's storied world, and yet it made sense. The scriptures pointed to it and it was fulfilling all the hope that Israel was looking for and what the world needed. This event changed Paul's world and that event is all he talked about. Now, of course, Paul did talk about certain theological "truths" and "doctrines" that needed to be stated for the new communities that grew from this Christ event. And yet, his context and his articulation of these things all fall under the metanarrative that he lived by. Witherington goes on to say:

"When Paul thinks about sin and the fall, he thinks about Adam. When he thinks about the law, he thinks about the story of Moses. When he thinks about faith, he thinks about the story of Abraham. And, obviously, when he thinks about salvation, he thinks about the story of Jesus. So these big-ticket theological ideas are grounded in stories."

I think what we must question in response to this is: "What is our current story?", "What story am I living in now and what about it needs to change and what about it can be strengthened?" Paul's story was moving in a trajectory towards salvation and yet he at first did not even recognize it. He was part of the story that was developing, but initially he wanted to squash the story because he didn't see how it fit. And on some level, it didn't. It challenged his story, and yet was shaped out of it. Paul began to recognize where his story needed to change and where it needed to stay the same. We must do the same. For most Americans, our metanarrative has been manifest destiny, prosperity, social darwinism, the search for self-worth and self esteem, the protestant work ethic, etc. It has been many things, and as we move from the macrocosm to the microcosm, individuals begin to nuance this even further to fit their own local context. Much of it is contradictory to the gospel, it promotes death and injustice instead of life and shalom. And yet, God is at work in our stories. We all long for certain things and act in certain ways that do fit the gospel. We must not lose our own stories because God wants our stories to be shaped by His. Not consumed but transformed. He sees where there must be continuity and discontinuity, He sees where there must be negation and where there must be support. We may be broken and cracked, but we do have pieces to start out with. Pieces of a puzzle that we had no clue how to fit together previously until God stepped into our stories and showed us how they fit. The life, death, and resurrection is the clue to our stories, the clue to salvation, and the clue to history.

Thank God for resurrection. Have a great Easter Sunday.

Maundy Thursday

Just a bit of info for you:

 Today is Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday). Maundy is a Middle English word derived from the Old French word mande from the Latin mandatum novum do vobis, which concerns the commandment to love one another as Jesus loved his followers. Some traditional services even practice the washing of feet, which reenacts Jesus' own act of service in his washing of the disciples' feet.

At 7 pm tonight, Rivendell is hosting a communion service at TU's Baptist Student Union. Please feel free to attend as we gather to remember, pray, and participate in the Eucharist.

Also, some friends of mine from OU are participating in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. They still need donations so please feel free to donate any funds for this cause. You can link to their team page here.

Peace

The Problems with Evangelical Theologies Part 1, or Will you pass the butter please?

Before you become unglued over the title and label me a heretic, please read the following article here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/23.66.html

Ok, now for my response…

We started out with a story, a multifaceted and deeply complex story, yet it was and is moving in trajectory towards a vision of hope for humanity and for the glory of God. That is my simple view of the Bible so far. Many have theologized and systematized these Hebrew and Christian scriptures in an attempt to shed more of a light on the truth that is contained in them. Out of this need to extrapolate doctrines and truth statements out of the text, many nuances or "distinctives" have been created that have marked some Christian theologies from others, and consequentially has produced divisions and denominations that devoted followers could support and rally around these respective distinctives. Let me say this before I start, I would consider myself now (after a long period of sifting through various theologies and distinctives), more in line with a reformed mindset. Yet, and I stress, this is in support of what it means to truly honor the Semper Reformanda ("always reforming") and in light of that I would also stress that my orthodoxy would best be described as 'generous'. I can resonate and agree with a liberationist, a Calvinist, an Anabaptist, or a Catholic quite nicely. And yet, I realize that there is an incompleteness to all of these various theologies. Theologically and exegetically, I could argue just about every point in the "distinctives" of each one. And I think, ultimately, that is what Ben Witherington is trying to express here. He points out the Calvinist, Arminian, Pentecostal, and Wesleyan groups mostly but I think you could pick apart other groups as well.

Why is this so?  I think our theology sometimes works like butter on a slice of bread. If we only have so much butter and a lot of bread, we try to spread the butter as much as we can and cover the space to give equal distribution to the whole slice. And yet as we do this, when we take a bite, we cannot taste the butter as much as we would like. The taste is not as strong as we would desire it to be. Here is what I am trying to get at: In the Bible, there are certain "truths" that come out at us. I believe that these truths, the main core of the Christian faith, is expressed in the creeds, the Apostle's and the Nicene. I hold to those dearly. Everything else, I believe, is ultimately up for grabs. The text and the creeds are the "butter" of the Christian life and yet so many times we want to spread it to places that it cannot go because we are not given as much butter as we would desire. This does not mean that God is unwilling or incapable to give us these truths but I think He wants to articulate a story to us first. As a story, the Bible does not articulate every area of theology that we can question or create. We want the text to go places where the text just will not go.

There are certain decisions I make about the text when I read it. I sift through the various stories and statements and make a decision on what I believe is the most accurate. This is not full-proof.  There are places where I could argue for both predestination and open theism, for limited atonement and for the inclusion and reconcilation of all people to God, for pre-/mid-/post-millenialism and amillenialism. The text is so multifaceted and complex in this manner. We just all need to be more honest about it.

Nonetheless, I do not think this should stop us from developing distinctives. If we did that, where would Christian imagination go? My point is that we must not have so much hinge on our distinctives, for I believe concerning these we should be more critical. I think we would fair better if we would honor the spirit of this declaration: "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty; in all things charity." Our arguments aren't about what is truth, but about what we hold as the essentials of our shared truth.

 This was part 1 of a 2 part post. I will have more on this in the next couple of days, as well as a post on the current quest for the historical Jesus. Part 2 will concern living in a 'storied' worldview. Take care.

“Why don’t you just tell me what movie you want to see?” – Kramer

My sister Amber, has requested that I write a post concerning the movies I recommend of late or want to see in the near future. I have decided to acquiesce and therefore here is a short list of some films I have enjoyed recently (in no subsequent order):

(1) Lord of War - Fictional tale about an arms dealer who profits off of war and death. Rethinks the idea of WMD's.

(2) Syriana- What is the real price of oil? A haunting story about the lengths we will go to preserve this product.

(3) Elizabethtown- First of all, Cameron Crowe made an excellent soundtrack to the film, but at the same time I do love movies about road trips, and I really enjoyed this one (I even ignored Orlando Bloom's poor acting job!)

(4) The Constant Gardener- Great story and great acting.

(5) Sometimes in April- HBO produced drama depicting the genocide of Rwanda. Unbelievable….

Okay, now to movies that I am looking forward to watching:

(1) A History of Violence – I just hear great things about this one.

(2) Capote- Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor. Enough said.

(3) The Corporation- documentary on how big business transforms culture.

(4) Good Night and Good Luck- film about McCarthyism and how many people responded to it. Might have some insightful applications to our contemporary context.

Well, there we have it. If you have seen any of these, please let me know what you thought and give me any recommendations you have for future viewing. Take care.