You are a Theophany

Every single person is a theophany. May we all see God’s image in each and every person God puts in our path, and welcome them as we would welcome God. 

Genesis 1.27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Matthew 5.14-16 You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid… Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Luke 9.48 Jesus said to them, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.”

The glory of God is humanity fully alive, and human life is the vision of God. (Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.20.7)

You are a theophany, made to shine the Light of Christ to others. So… shine!

Theology and Compassion, Objectivity and Subjectivity

One of the pastoral and practical tools I use to evaluate theology— besides whether it is Biblical and Creedal and rooted in the Trinity and Incarnation— is this:

If you cannot preach it to hurting people, or pray it with a forgiving heart, it’s bad theology. If you won’t preach it, and can’t pray it, you shouldn’t believe it.

This is to say that our theology must integrate Christlike Compassion as its first and foremost effect on our life for it to be healthy theology.

A Provocation on Western versus Eastern Theology

In the Western Churches (which include Roman Catholicism as well as all Protestant varieties) we love to debate Soteriology: What it means to be saved, how we are saved, and what are the roles of Divine grace, human free will, faith, and good works in saving us. Throughout History we see Augustinians versus Pelagians, Catholics versus Protestants, Calvinists versus Arminians (as well as Calvinists versus Calvinists versus everyone else). And a thousand variations of similar debates that center around ideas such as whether God’s decrees are Supralapsarian or Infralapsarian or Sublapsarian, or whether prevenient grace entails or merely enables salvation, or the extent and intent of the Atonement. 

On Provocations

I have a great many short and incomplete thoughts that I think might be worth discussing. Call them "provocations" to thought and discussion. I hope they give you something to ponder and meditate on. I will be posting them under the title of "A provocation on..." These will be a couple of sentences, and not more than a paragraph. I will keep them all topically under their appropriate topic, as well as under the topic of provocations.

Childlike Faith and the Neverending Story

I watched the Neverending Story with my kids this morning. This movie impressed me deeply as a child with a view of imagination, and multiple dimensions of reality, which shaped me at a deep level. In many ways this movie and several other books I read as a young person “baptized my imagination” to experience our co-authorship, with God, of the great unfolding Story of Creation and Redemption centered in Christ. What I did not realize until watching this movie as an adult: 

First, this movie may be the best illustration of Jesus’ saying that the Kingdom of God belongs to those with childlike faith which I have ever seen. 

Second, it is a potent critique of living in a world culture of Consumerism, in which every Corporation and advertisement seeks to co-opt our imagination, and stop us from dreaming, with the lie that their products can satisfy our every desire, and bring us to true happiness. 

Credo: The Story that Reads Us [A Mini-Systemic Theology]

This was originally written in 2006 in partial fulfillment of requirements for Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. It is fairly representative of my current thought, although in several ways I have built on, or superseded, what is written here. This is especially true in matters dealing with Science, World Religions, and Socio-Economic Justice.

This is the FULL 18,000 word original version that was trimmed to around 10,000 words to be turned in. Note that all endnotes have been removed from this version, due to the limitations of the blog format. However, all sources cited and consulted are found at the end of the essay.

A Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, send forth your Spirit that I may say what needs to be said, in space allowed, and bear witness fully to your Father's Glory and His Story which writes us all. Amen+

On the Boundaries and Tasks of Ideology and Philosophy

I'm fleshing out some ideas for teaching philosophy next year, and at the beginning of the class I take students through an "Ideological Toolbox", meant to introduce them to the basic tasks and subjects within philosophy. So, below are some notes from me "thinking out loud".

Ideology refers to the symbolic maps we use, as individuals and as a society, to navigate reality and lead us to the realization of our ultimate values. Note that an ideology can come in many forms. Ideology can appeal to a transcendent source, and thus be a form of “Theology”. Or ideology can claim to stay proscribed within empirical reality and present itself as a form of science or psychology or sociology or political philosophy or economics or cultural critique. 

What is worth learning?

Recently a colleague sent me an article summarizing Harvard professor David Perkins entitled "What's Worth Learning in School?" This is a worthwhile and incredibly broad topic, so I was both eager to read what was said, and also hesitant. 

On Poetry and Religion

The spell cast by good poetry
And the role played by good religion
Overlap in this

To make familiar terrain
Unfamiliar and strange

To experience the old
As new again

To listen to the ancient story
With the ears of a child

Idol Therapy

When taken at their best
Which is unfortunately far too rare
Religion and Skepticism
Are after the same thing
To smash the idols
Which ensnare the mind
And blind the eyes
And bind the heart
To oppression and addiction
To cruelty and hate
To death and destruction

And if you can ignore
The glaring exceptions
To these generalizations

So-called Western Faiths
With prophetic fury
Obliterate the idols
Which obstruct our eyes
So our Vision is clear
To see the Transcendent Source
Who lies beyond sight

While the so-called Eastern Paths
Show us that all creatures under heaven
Even the gods themselves
Are finite images
And partially opened windows
To see glimpses of the Infinite
Beyond yet within

All while Agnosticism groans
Whether and what God is
Is beyond what we can say
And Atheism bluntly declares
Nothing is God
And
God is Nothing

And taken at their best
Despite all their worst
They are all
Correct

Holy Crap

This is a poem inspired by Philippians 3.8 and it is not for the easily offended. So if you are easily offended, please read something else. With that said, here we go…

When Jesus wrote

Jesus only ever wrote down 
one thing
and it vanished from the ground
taken by the wind
washed away by the water
just like the shame
of the woman caught in sin

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: How the liturgy shaped the worldview of early Christians

A 2004 paper written for the History of Christian Doctrine, exploring the extent to which ancient liturgies both express early Christian theology, and also were instrumental in shaping the worldview of early Christians. This paper looks at extant Christian liturgical materials used around the ancient world up to circa 400 CE as evidence of early Christian belief and theological formation.

1. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: The role of liturgy in worldview formation

How are the words that we pray and say and sing in worship connected to what we believe?  How did the worship of early Christians shape their beliefs and actions?  The ancient Latin tagline "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi" (literally: the law of prayer is the law of belief) has a lot to say about this.  This maxim, first popularized by Prosper of Aquitaine between 435 and 442 (Wainwright, 224-225), tells us that how and what we pray shapes how we believe and hence, how we live.  The converse is true as well.  What we believe will eventually be reflected in our prayers, our worship, and our lifestyle.  This means that our worldview, what it means to think and believe as a Christian, is somehow implicit in our liturgy and prayer life.  That is true now, it was true for Prosper, and it was true for the early Church as well.  What it means to be distinctively Christian, and believe as a Christian, should be available to everyone in our worship, at least in theory.

Because of Jesus

While I have a deep and abiding hope in the ultimate purposes of God to restore all of creation through Jesus Christ, when I ponder the near future I tend to be a bit more cynical. We have wars and rumors of war. We have warnings of ecological apocalypse. We face a rampant consumerism that turns people in the developed world into little more than zombies, and turns laborers in the developing world into little more than slaves. The mainline religious establishment which values social justice, civil society and education seems to shrink, while more fundamentalist religious movements that promote exclusion, anger and fear seem to grow. And all the while our government seems to be bogged down in an intractable partisan quagmire.

The near future can seem bleak indeed.

So, it is rather odd for me to encounter a week's events that bring optimism. First off, the Affordable Healthcare Act was upheld. And while it is pretty horrible compromise legislation that was heavily neutered, it is better than nothing for millions of uninsured, and a step toward the National Healthcare system that any reasonably civilized country should have. Next, Marriage Equality was upheld. In the words of one man I talked to: "This means I am fully human now!" Then the President sang Amazing Grace at a funeral and acted as our "Pastor in Chief". And then, to top off an incredible week, the Episcopal Church elected Michael Curry as our 27th Presiding Bishop.

Suddenly it feels like the tectonic plates of cultural gridlock might be shifting. Maybe just a little. And that gives me some near term optimism...

Why Epistemology could help save or damn us all

A Weather Map: Not helpful in driving from Dallas to Chicago. You will see why this is important later on.

There are many ways to divide and categorize human groupings. Some of the major ways to group humans these days are "religious" versus "secular" and "conservative" versus "liberal". And then much ink and many words are spilt over how these types of divisions are absolute and share nothing in common with each other. Hence the "culture wars".

I actually think that these divisions tell us very little about how people in these groups actually function.

I think a far better dividing line-- at least at this juncture in history-- is to look at how people do epistemology, and divide people into two epistemic tendencies: Probablists versus Infallibilists.

Why Studying Theology is good for EVERYONE

A colleague recently sent me a great article from the Atlantic on why everyone should "Study Theology, Even If You Don't Believe in God". I think it made several great points which I agree with wholly. I read it and it is very much in line with what I frequently tell people who ask me about theology and religious studies.

However, there are a couple of things I would also like to add about why Theology is for everyone, because everyone is a theologian (a point first brought home to me by Stanley Grenz in his book "Who Needs Theology?"). My standard schtick on the study of theology is this:

The Good Old Days were not so good

The other day my dad sent me an email that reminisces about how good, and simple, and inexpensive things were when he was a boy in 1955. Some of the list is sentimental and cute, harkening back to an idyllic age that people remember as children (precisely because they were children and were not aware of the complexities and contradictions of adult life). But much of the list is politically charged in a "let's turn back the clock" kind of way.

So, I sent my dad back an email that said this:

Conservatively Progressive, Radically Traditional and Liberally Creedal

The "dancing saints" icon at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church is a great visual example of Creedal theology combined with a radical social vision.

This week Ross Douthat at the NY Times wrote an article asking whether Liberal Christianity can be saved. His article basically tied radical social decisions (such as ordination of transgender persons and blessings of gay and lesbian unions) to doctrinal sellout (such as liberals supposedly being syncretist at worst, and bland at best). And he then tied doctrinal sellout with numerical decline, in such a way that numerical decline is the primary indicator of whether a church body is being unfaithful to Jesus Christ by accommodating to culture (while, conversely, numerical increase is the primary indicator of faithfulness).

Surfboards or Swimming Pools?

I'm a know it all, and I know it. I've had opinions as long as I can remember, and they are always the right opinions. Ask me why, and I will tell you. Whether by genetic predisposition, social nurture, demonic deception, or divine gift, I have been given the gift and/or curse of loving knowledge (and teaching others what I know). When I was a non-Christian, I knew why I did not believe in God, and I thought I knew why Christians used God as a "crutch". And I would argue with anyone who tried to tell me different.

Must we become [worldview] Jews to become Christians?

The following is a letter I wrote to Bishop NT Wright about his constant emphasis on the 1st Century Jewish background of the New Testament. I am a big admirer of Wright, and I think he is largely right on in his "New Perspective" on Paul, as well as his strong emphasis on Resurrection as THE Christian Hope. I think his emphasis on the historical and cultural context of the New Testament is also right and necessary. Yet, sadly, it is also inaccessible for most people. If he responds to this email, I will post the reply.