A big theological concept for me is Jesus Christ as unique revelation of God to humanity. All that humans can really know about God is known through revelation. Human reason can give us some pretty good ideas through speculation and via negativa. We speculate that God is all of the great things that we are not; all-knowing, all-powerfull etc... We are imperfect and make mistakes, so it is a pretty good guess that God is perfect and does not make mistakes. So we think, but reason can only take us so far. Why worship a perfect creator who clearly planned to make an imperfect world, if said creator cannot make mistakes?
We could continue on the path of reason. Perhaps free will and the human choice to sin are the real reasons why this world is imperfect. This is the classical Christian perspective after Augustine. The perfect God of reason is preserved and the utterly corrupt nature of human existence is reinforced. In this rational system, Jesus can only be Savior in the sense of dying on the cross to save humanity from its corruption. Perhaps this is an over-simplification, but it logically follows that if all of the problems of the world stem from human sin, then in order to save the world one must do something to counteract human sin. To the ancient mind, a sacrifice (or penalty) must be payed to God (or the gods). This is how Jesus' very real and human death on the cross was rationalized.
I will not try to disprove this position. It makes perfect rational sense and it is worth believing as millions of people over the past two thousand years have. It represents a satisfying and attractive cosmology. It essentially says that God is good and perfect and that humans are utterly corrupt, so God, in infinite wisdom, provided a means to make up for this corruption. I admit that there are also parts of it that are not satisfying or attractive, namely the violent propitiation as the only means for saving the world. This is not something that the modern mind understands intuitively. However, I want to maintain that it is a perfectly valid way to experience Christian faith.
I merely want to point out that this view represents a limited human point of view and is only a part of the Biblical witness. Jesus did many things beyond dying on the cross for our sins. If that were the case, our canon might as well be the second chapter of Genesis, a harmonization of the passion narratives found in the Gospels, and a few chapters from the Epistle to the Romans. I cannot say that I have a better rationalization of faith. Theology as a human exercise will forever be imperfect.
I wanted to make a point about Jesus as unique revelation of God. Jesus' teachings and actions reveal who we are as human beings and reveal who God is as a God. Jesus reveals our pain and our weakness in contrast to the power and wholeness of God. Jesus reveals our utter dependence on the things that are beyond our selves and beyond the relationships that we choose to forge. Most of all, Jesus reveals the great need of relationship with God; our Creator, our Sustainer, and the Ground of our Being. To be without God in this world is to be utterly lost. Jesus came so that we do not have to be.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
I have called my blog Countermelodies because I tend to think of things in dialectic tensions. I am also a musician and I experience the tensions of counterpoint as the real driving force behind music. Without dissonance, music would not have motion, it would not have color, and indeed it would not be music. Would it not drive you crazy to listen to a single tone frequency for any length of time? Even that single tone frequency is dissonant in a way because it is a vibration, the equilibrium of the medium that it passes through is disturbed. Consonance is a matter of perception. Beauty is in the eye, or ear, of the beholder.
Human discourse is like music. The same could be said about human thought. Many different tunes go on all at once. Sometimes they react with one another and occasionally they match in perfect unison. Our inherent epistemology, how we think we know what we know, is constantly being challenged by forces external and internal to ourselves. So even my own far flinging flights of philosophical fancy stand on shaky soil at best, even if I have an academic to support my arguments. The post-modern in me wants to say that nothing can truly be know about anything, but the enlightenment thinker wants to believe that there is a rational explanation for everything that happens. My faith tells me to trust that God will make everything known in time and that all of this human speculation is ultimately pointless. The world tells me to stop thinking so much and get a real job.
My mind constantly considers tensions. I get stuck on those difficult passages of scripture and am skeptical of the hermeneutic jumping jacks that commentators do to try to explain them. Interpreting ancient texts is probably the most difficult job that anyone has ever thought of, but our culture seems to value it, and indeed needs talented people to do it. Yet, here is another tension, the traditional Brethren in me says that the Bible contains a "plain sense" that can easily be understood and obeyed by anyone, regardless of educational level. Lord, I wish it were that easy. We try to balance this view by saying that these texts must be read and interpreted in the community, but that line where the community becomes god to us is almost invisible. The best that we can hope for is that we all read through eyes of faith and that God will forgive our collective errors. God help us all if there is only one true way to think about and to read scripture.
Well, if you made it this far into my ramblings maybe you share some of my struggles and frustrations. I want to treat the Bible as something wholly other, a text to be revered and honored above all else and yet something to be feared because it is indeed a dangerous book. God spoke, and people had the audacity to write it down, as if mortals could truly understand and obey the Almighty. Jesus came as God incarnate and people still thought that they could capture that special revelation in blots of ink on parchment and papyrus. Yet even if we take our imperfect attempts at translating the copies of copies of copies that we have literally, the Bible still has the power to cause you to lose your life in order to take it up for real in the name of Jesus. You could end up giving away all of your possessions and actually love your enemies.
I just don't know how to begin to describe my hermeneutic approach or my specific style of biblical criticism. I cannot say that I trust the text, but neither do I consider it worthless. I like to have some background on the context that it was written in, but many texts have been shaped over decades and even centuries, including their sources of oral tradition. The words have power, and they contain life, but they also cause pain and suffering to people on the margins. I want to consider these readers when I am interpreting a text. The text has problems, riddles, and confusions. I have problems, riddles, and confusions. The reacting countermelodies that we call the text and the reacting countermelodies that I call I both exist in a broken and fallen world. Maybe we need to pray to Jesus for the salvation of the Bible.
Human discourse is like music. The same could be said about human thought. Many different tunes go on all at once. Sometimes they react with one another and occasionally they match in perfect unison. Our inherent epistemology, how we think we know what we know, is constantly being challenged by forces external and internal to ourselves. So even my own far flinging flights of philosophical fancy stand on shaky soil at best, even if I have an academic to support my arguments. The post-modern in me wants to say that nothing can truly be know about anything, but the enlightenment thinker wants to believe that there is a rational explanation for everything that happens. My faith tells me to trust that God will make everything known in time and that all of this human speculation is ultimately pointless. The world tells me to stop thinking so much and get a real job.
My mind constantly considers tensions. I get stuck on those difficult passages of scripture and am skeptical of the hermeneutic jumping jacks that commentators do to try to explain them. Interpreting ancient texts is probably the most difficult job that anyone has ever thought of, but our culture seems to value it, and indeed needs talented people to do it. Yet, here is another tension, the traditional Brethren in me says that the Bible contains a "plain sense" that can easily be understood and obeyed by anyone, regardless of educational level. Lord, I wish it were that easy. We try to balance this view by saying that these texts must be read and interpreted in the community, but that line where the community becomes god to us is almost invisible. The best that we can hope for is that we all read through eyes of faith and that God will forgive our collective errors. God help us all if there is only one true way to think about and to read scripture.
Well, if you made it this far into my ramblings maybe you share some of my struggles and frustrations. I want to treat the Bible as something wholly other, a text to be revered and honored above all else and yet something to be feared because it is indeed a dangerous book. God spoke, and people had the audacity to write it down, as if mortals could truly understand and obey the Almighty. Jesus came as God incarnate and people still thought that they could capture that special revelation in blots of ink on parchment and papyrus. Yet even if we take our imperfect attempts at translating the copies of copies of copies that we have literally, the Bible still has the power to cause you to lose your life in order to take it up for real in the name of Jesus. You could end up giving away all of your possessions and actually love your enemies.
I just don't know how to begin to describe my hermeneutic approach or my specific style of biblical criticism. I cannot say that I trust the text, but neither do I consider it worthless. I like to have some background on the context that it was written in, but many texts have been shaped over decades and even centuries, including their sources of oral tradition. The words have power, and they contain life, but they also cause pain and suffering to people on the margins. I want to consider these readers when I am interpreting a text. The text has problems, riddles, and confusions. I have problems, riddles, and confusions. The reacting countermelodies that we call the text and the reacting countermelodies that I call I both exist in a broken and fallen world. Maybe we need to pray to Jesus for the salvation of the Bible.
Friday, August 17, 2012
I have been out of the blogging world for quite some time. I doubt that I ever was in the so called "bloggosphere," since my posts have never generated very much conversation. The internet does not feel like an authentic forum for ideas as face to face accountability is lost, if there ever was such a thing. Debates, especially when it comes to theology and faith, have had a very bloody history, even before Luther supposedly nailed his theses to the door. So, perhaps internet anonymity keeps actual blood from being spilled, but maybe some of us need to bleed for our faith from time to time. I am not ready to stand in line for that, but it is a very real potential cost of discipleship to any system of belief that challenges the things that are wrong in our God given reality.
I find it hard to make a faith statement without resorting to heady theological jargon that one might find in the creeds and in the lofty prologue of John's Gospel. The best that I can say is that my most direct and powerful experience with the Divine is when I consider the figure of Jesus Christ. The Almighty God, the creator of all that is seen and unseen, could have set the proverbial watch and let creation sort itself out. The perfect One, who exists in infinity, did not have to bother with icky, imperfect, and sinful matter. Yet this rational principle, this pre-existing logos, became flesh in a simple man, of a carpenter's family, in ancient Palestine. The tribal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, became known as God to all nations through the life, death, and resurrection of this Jesus, who became known as the Christ, the anointed one of God.
Some people may require more specifics in a faith statement, and some may not be able to handle the assumption that there is a God in the first place. It is faith enough for me that God cares enough to enter into history as a human being, to suffer with humanity, and promise life in the fullness of time. I believe in Jesus and I believe that by studying the canon of scriptures set by the church, by praying, and by worshiping in a faith community I will come to know him better and in turn be able to live a life that is pleasing to God. I may not be there yet and I may not know exactly where I am going, but at least I know that Jesus lights my path.
I find it hard to make a faith statement without resorting to heady theological jargon that one might find in the creeds and in the lofty prologue of John's Gospel. The best that I can say is that my most direct and powerful experience with the Divine is when I consider the figure of Jesus Christ. The Almighty God, the creator of all that is seen and unseen, could have set the proverbial watch and let creation sort itself out. The perfect One, who exists in infinity, did not have to bother with icky, imperfect, and sinful matter. Yet this rational principle, this pre-existing logos, became flesh in a simple man, of a carpenter's family, in ancient Palestine. The tribal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, became known as God to all nations through the life, death, and resurrection of this Jesus, who became known as the Christ, the anointed one of God.
Some people may require more specifics in a faith statement, and some may not be able to handle the assumption that there is a God in the first place. It is faith enough for me that God cares enough to enter into history as a human being, to suffer with humanity, and promise life in the fullness of time. I believe in Jesus and I believe that by studying the canon of scriptures set by the church, by praying, and by worshiping in a faith community I will come to know him better and in turn be able to live a life that is pleasing to God. I may not be there yet and I may not know exactly where I am going, but at least I know that Jesus lights my path.
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