Thursday, June 17, 2010

You Are Not Alone

You’re Not Alone…You’re Not Forgotten

Written on 9/3/05 by Susan C. Corrigan, Wethersfield, CT
In response to Hurricane Katrina

You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When the storm rages around you,
When the water and wind overtakes your everything,
When you fight and cling to life itself,
You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When chaos and violence threatens your safety,
When horrors of death are before your eyes,
When hunger and thirst ache within your bodies,
You’re not alone… You’re not forgotten…
When no one is taking charge and all control is lost,
When help and relief are just empty promises,
When helplessness and questions of the world’s abandonment rise within you,
You’re not alone… You’re not forgotten…
When politicians discuss what party is to blame,
When racial dividers cry malice against color,
When stars stand on their soapboxes and go home to their mansions and wealth,
You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When the ball games play on and its fans stand and cheer,
When the far away shifts at work move on without notice,
When the earth continues to turn and the sun rises and sets,
You’re not alone… You’re not forgotten…
When you cry out for mercy and help from above,
When you desperately seek the God to be found,
When you call for The Rock, and The Shield, and Deliverer,
You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When God is your refuge and your strength,
When He is the ever-present help in trouble,
When you call upon His promises of deliverance,
You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When you set your eyes upon Jesus,
When you have faith in his unfailing love and sacrifice,
When your hope is rooted in God above men,
You’re not alone… You’re not forgotten…
When this world is not the end of the line,
When heaven and the afterlife are kept in your sights,
When you believe that the first will be last and the last will be first,
You’re not alone…You’re not forgotten…
When you fear what kills your soul, not your body,
When “Praise to you LORD” is sung amidst hardship and pain,
When peace beyond all understanding is filling your soul,
You’re not alone… You’re not forgotten.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

First Church of Wethersfield and my Friend Susan

I met Susan Corrigan in September, whose poignant poem, You Are Not Alone will be published in the next blog posting, as my wife Sue and I began attending First Congregational Church of Wethersfield. First Church had been on my horizons for several years. I had known that they dissolved their fellowship with the United Church of Christ several years previously and that in having a strong Bible focused center to their congregational life they would be quite conservative theologically, and most likely, I thought, politically and socially. What we found at First Church is a congregation biblically focused and strongly rooted in its New England Puritan and 18th and 19th century Congregational heritage, while very much attuned to the complexities and challenges of grappling with the Christian pathway in a contemporary, largely middle class suburban setting.

That is, in its social dynamic and church polity, First Church continues to share strong similaries with the UCC religious culture. The primary difference is its strong biblical focus, reflecting the larger Reformed, Puritan and Evangelical roots of New England Congregationalism shorn of much of the more recent theological focus of the UCC denomination which came into existence through a series of mergers in 1957. What I also discovered at First Church was a considerably diverse theological focus among the church members within a broad-based Bible-focused evangelical center that would be impossible to type cast as fundamentalist or narrowly conservative.

What stood out even more was the biblical and theological literacy of the laity, experienced through a Sunday morning adult study group and a monthly Christian book club in which the group discussions paralleled what one might experience or hope to within a seminarian context or in a study group for ordained clergy. In this respect, First Church clearly exhibits the core Protestant principle of the ministry of all believers. In fact, throughout this past year my wife and I spent at First Church, the only contact we had with the clergy was that of shaking hands and exchanging a few pleasntries after the workship service and that was alright with us.

Among much else, Susan Corrigan and I share a passion for English Puritan devotional theology. Susan introducted me to the important writings of Jeremiah Burroughs whom I spent the greater portion of the fall slowly reading--slowly, in order to allow his many profound insights sink deeply into my own consciousness. In the meantime I introduced Susan to John Owen's three volume classic, Overcoming Sin and Temptation. (http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Sin-Temptation-John-Owen/dp/1581346492)

Susan and I spent a couple of months slowly reading this text and finally meeting for an in-depth discussion, a text whose depths is literally incapable of being exhaustively plummeted. This type of biblical and thelogical hunger as exhibited in our theological fellowship is far from atypical among the lay members of First Church in Wethersfield in which the ordained clergy play an important secondary role in the life of the congregation.

The year that my wife and I spent at First Church was one of the most rewarding church-based experiences of our lives. Now it is westward ho as she and I begin our trek to San Diego. To learn more about First Church of Wethersfield, go here (http://www.firstchurch.org/).

Friday, June 11, 2010

What Faith Proclaims and the Challenges and Openness of Daily Life

Groaning Inwardly Eagerly Longing for the Revealing of the Sons of God

For some, the issue is less the truth claims of Scripture, including any "implausibility" of belief in a philosophical or theological sense than the significance of "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) in providing the resources of living in the power of its claims in light of the complexity and the problems of daily life. Such problems, whether persisting family conflict, unemployment, ill-health, deep psychological anxiety and fear, addictions of one sort or another, loss of economic and social status, and the like are among the many perplexities which we all encounter in various ways at different points in our lives.

In raising these problems there is always the issue of how deeply one does trust God in Christ to be "all in all" in these matters. To draw upon biblical imagery, to what extent do we maintain a fundamental trust of grace breaking into our lives ever anew even amidst the seeming darkness, as a promised potentiality of hope in things unseen; a hope which calls us to our better selves in becoming fulfilled through the power of the living Christ delivered to us through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

In promising the peace that passes understanding, radical Christianity offers no easy panaceas in response to the personal and public problems of living faith out amidst the dilemmas of a broken world. The brute reality is that faith finds its bearing amidst the cross-bearing challenges of facing the problems head-on without self-pitying, sentimentality, cynicism, contempt of others, self-contempt, or self-justification. These attitudes and the like are very likely to not only flourish, but to define us at least for a time in the midst of what we may be facing, especially in times of deep stress or severe temptation unless a deeper sense of reality in making every thought captive for Christ emerges.

Clearly, a sense of escapism may be read into Christianity, sometimes justified, sometimes not, which, it should be added, could be attributed to any world view, secular or religious, which offers another perspective beyond the immediate to perceive the sometimes unbearable given in a more comprehensive vein. Christianity, then, cannot be legitimately critiqued because of its claim to envision reality beyond the given, without rejecting other "myths" that promise something comparable. Such may include even a deeply cynical philosophy or world view which at some level transcends the facts of the matter, but which provides the allure of a salvo even if it is that of nurturing a wound as an escapist antidote to a failed sense of self-actualization, a cultural myth of great power embodied in the American Dream.

What then does Christianity offer that other perspectives, religious or secular lack? I cannot even begin to answer this in a way that might be viewed as even plausibly convincing to one who may not be persuaded in which even God in Christ can but knock at the door, which requires some assent, however feeble for God as revealed in Christ to enter into one's reality, however so elusively. Moreover, anything I could possibly say could be viewed as utterly ludicrous or hopelessly lacking sensitivity even among those in the Christian camp who have experienced loss or pain of a very deep nature; a loss that can shake the very foundations of one's faith. I can only speak from what I know, as well as my weaknesses and my own sense of apprehensions against similar loss; and not merely I, but from the cumulative testimony of followers of Christ through a 2000 year period.

Among much else to what we do testify is to a hope--a hope and an expectation that occasionally rises to the level of a sense of lived certainty that in Christ we find our true identity in contrast to any other constructed reality in the very midst of the problems that perplex us which and have our names written on them so deeply. There is a transcendence here, but only by way of entering into the pain rather than escaping from it in which the pain itself is absorbed into the healing, offering us the hope of becoming, in the words of Catholic priest Henry Nouwen, wounded healers even as we may remain tempted to hold on to the pain. In the longing imagery of the Apostle Paul:

"I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage from decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, [which is the very] redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were save. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it in patience" (Romans 8:18-25).

Neither for Paul nor for us does the reformation of self through Christ come cheaply, nor without at times, a great deal of struggle; for autonomous self identity continues to press into us in very powerful, persistent, and subtle ways, promising the allure of a pathway it can never deliver (Genesis 3:1-7), but which we nonetheless crave. Thus we are engaged in spiritual warfare, a perspective sometimes viewed as melodramatic, but I don't think so. I know that I for one crave security, comfort, certainty, autonomy, respect, self-fulfillment, and love within a well carved out safe zone to which I often take to the point of idolatry even if I do not always recognize it as such. That is, I seek my own internalization of the American dream, an illusion that often leads to delusion, if not desperation, despair, and adulation. I know how idolatrous this myth is, in no small measure because when any of these "safety zones" are threatened in me I can get quite agitated or fall into a fatalistic funk in which "the old man" rises to the surface once again in which the waiting for God in Christ to intervene can seem interminable with many failings of body, mind, and spirit along the way.

Yet, even in the worst of it, I do not simply give up, but keep pressing into Christ, in no small measure because I am absolutely convinced, as the hymn writer puts it, 'all other ground is sinking sand." This, at a very deep level I "know" to be true even though I could not remotely prove it or even seem plausibly convincing to someone not similarly persuaded. Moreover, for someone, whether Christian or non-Christian, who has experienced pain or loss at a much more profound level of depth beyond what I have undergone, I do not remotely propose to be persuasive at the experiential level. There are haunting questions within as well as without the Christian revelations and we but continue to see darkly, even as we do proclaim to see Jesus, the one and only. At this point, I can only resonate with the very words of the Apostle Paul that:

"The spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts [God] knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes with the saints [those called to the faith; as saints and sinners] according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26-27).

It is in this very groaning of the Spirit, and therefore of God for us, in striving with our own groaning for new creation amidst the pain and longing of the old that we do find hope; in a groaning that goes on as long as creation itself remains in a state of eager waiting; where we as those walking in faith of Christ, are called to die daily in order to be reborn daily in a "new man" reality in the midst, to draw on biblical language, of mortality in its eager longing to put on immortality in order not to be naked, but to be more fully clothed in new creation. In the words of devotional writer Oswald Chambers,

"If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you--and His experiments always succeed" in which emerges "the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Christ" (My Utmost for His Highest, June 13).

No doubt, Chambers points to an ideal than to the lived reality itself, at least as experienced in our mortality, though to a promise in the indwelling of eternity even in our present experience pulled by the lure of putting on immortality in our desire to be further clothed. In the meantime, we hunger, we thirst, we cry out, we long, we hope, we pray, we bond as the body of Christ amidst the sometimes unimaginable trouble we often face with the hope, nonetheless, that the peace of Christ has overcome the world. Come Lord, Jesus, come!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

The Faith Once for all Delivered to the Saints in Light of Contemporary World Views to the Contrary

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11)

Self-Perception and the Indubitable Reality of God as Radical Other

This is a particularly vexing issue today in that two fundamentally not entirely resolvable precepts have attained a powerful pull in our contemporary culture. The one is the predominance of self-perception, without which it would be difficult to fathom how one could function at least in our western setting. Whatever its ultimate truth (and the Bible itself is clear about the importance of personal consciousness and conscience), to deny or even downplay its centrality as a core axiom of personal identity would be a most unfortunate mistake. Yet when developed into a fully blown axiom accepted both as self-evident and at some inexpressible level as the truth--that is, as far as anyone can come to any notion of "truth" in the contemporary era which I argue is inescapable even in its very postmodern denial, takes on a religious aura in its own right. It is such a denial expressed in the guise of a self-evident truth statement that I would characterize as a major idolatry of our time.

No doubt faith comes to believers through their self-understanding, but that to which it points, the revelation of God through Christ, extends to a reality beyond the self that cannot be reduced to any level of self-perception. Granted that the faith proclaimed speaks directly to the self even in language beyond self-reference, making any claim of transcending self-understanding exceedingly problematic and at some level, irreducibly circular. Self-circularity may be unavoidable in a faith stance that proclaims to reveal itself to consciousness--even consciousness collectivized in the body of Christ. At the very least, the proclamation of God revealed in a particularly unique manner in Christ needs to extend beyond self-referential reductionism in order to gain an appreciative grasp of what it is and more scandalously who it is that is being veiled through the fragile instrumentalities of human understanding. For the very basis of faith is the belief "that he exists," without which one lacks an axiomatic starting point that makes further inquiry into the phenomenological experience of the Christian pathway on its own terms, impossible.

This struggle to transcend the self in proclaiming the revelation of God was a challenge mightily struggled for in the neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, who in his partial success opened up a fresh taproot into a transcendent theology which at the least broke the stranglehold of the hegemony of a religious orientation grounded first and foremost in feeling. Feeling, what Barth formally referred to as “actualization” remained important, though Barth’s more fundamental contribution to 20th century theology was the emphasis he placed on “objectivism;” that is, the reality of God as radical other who also lives within us as a theological; bulwark against what Barth and others viewed as an excessive reliance on self-understanding as the basis of rather than the outgrowth of faith in a fully-orbed biblical theology grounded ultimately in the awesome depth of a personal yet infinite God revealed most fully to human beings in and through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Son of Man.

Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich, central figures in the neo-orthodox school of early-to mid 20th century theology, accepted and sought to extend the implications of Barth's dialectical theology in grappling with the ineradicable tension between faith and culture. However, they rejected his emphasis on dogmatics as grounding point, and opted instead for some version of an existential theology based on the centrality of self in critical dialogue with the biblical God and 20th century European philosophy.

The Gap Between the "One Truth" Claim of Faith and the Enduring Reality of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

The seemingly counter problem is the belief in a pluralistic world view in which in principle, one idea or reality is as equally valid as another, whether one is examining world religions or different realms of religious and secular thought. Thus, while noting that there are obvious differences between religions, especially among those that are monotheistic and those that are not, a commonly held belief is that at the most fundamental level each religious tradition is ultimately a pathway into the inexpressible or what Rudolph Otto refers to as The Holy.

Whether one is speaking of diverse religious or secular perspectives, and there are many world views, the extent to which they are compatible with each other based on a core belief in egalitarian pluralism is a major issue in itself. It is this, which needs to be viewed as a faith stance as powerfully adhered to as any "traditional" belief. Assuming this to be the case, that all world views, secular or religious, are faith stands at the axiomatic level, then the counter question needs to be asked, on what grounds is this presupposition of pluralism grounded; to further press, what are the underlying assumptions upon such a conjecture buttressed? In asking these questions I am not categorically rejecting the claims of a pluralistic universe (William James), but am seeking to press into a better understanding of the underlying frames of belief that ground all claims of knowledge. What I am challenging is any taken for granted assumption as an ultimate world view and countering it with the claims of the Bible that ultimately, God is all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28). Obviously, this cannot be proven, though there is a great deal of first-hand testimony and “evidence of things unseen” that, in my view, merit a great deal closer look than is commonly granted, though knowledge in its own right without the salvo of faith is insufficient and will not likely be persuasive on its own grounds.

Whatever the difficulties, a key stumbling block in coming to terms with Christian faith claims as reflected in 20th century philosophy and cultural life is the knotty matter of seriously grappling with any notion of "truth," some serious notion upon which Christianity is based. This namely is the truth claim that God exists and that he is revealed and embodied in the full human sense in Christ and only in Christ, though reflected in part in other revelations even as the knowledge of Christ through the prism of faith can only be grasped and lived out in part.

This grappling with “truth” is obviously a difficult philosophical issue that I can only begin to address at this point. The core issue is whether there can be any such reality as truth even as the search for it, however imprecisely one defines it, seems to be built into the hard wiring of human existence. Thus, one might say (and I can't "prove" this) we are meant for the truth and can never rest satisfied unless that desire were met in at least fundamentally reorienting our lives in moving toward it. Thus, at the very least truth servers as a clarion call to human fulfillment and satisfaction, however much the gap between the desire and attainment, which, I argue, is unsearchable and ultimately beyond comprehension, persists.

The fundamental claim and the scandal of radical Christianity is Christ's proclamation that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) in which no other truth claim can possibly compare. On this profession satisfaction in the full sense of the term can only be found in a thorough embrace of Christ as the fullness of God in human flesh. This is an incarnational faith revealed to human beings through the Spirit of God, as an essential dimension of God himself in his Trinitarian fullness. Its entry requires the way of the cross emblematic of utter self-denial as the basis itself of coming into the glorification of God revealed in and through Christ consciousness, which as New Adam engulfs and humanizes our own. It is this denial of old self to aspire toward new self in Christ that, in juxtaposition to the many exigencies of personal life and more visible public history that may be one of the most troublesome stumbling blocks to a solid embrace of the Christian faith. Yet, it is a direction established by God himself as revealed in the Old and New testaments to counter our own innate selfishness, a major source of much alienation and pain we cause others as well as ourselves in the very process of living our lives in which God through Christ became our vicarious High Priest.

To restate a core contention of C.S. Lewis, either there is something fundamentally true about the core New Testament claim that in Christ the fullness of God in human flesh resides or that the claim of incomparability in which Christ is the Alpha and Omega of human existence and experience is profoundly flawed to its core. If the latter pertains, the claim needs to be needs to be categorically rejected even as Christianity as a metaphor of one way to God or the inexpressible, among many other ways may have merit at least for those to whom the metaphor speaks.

At some root level it is impossible to evade the dilemma on the need to decide on the unconditional claim of Christ as the fullness of God in human flesh who both models and offers salvation to all who receive him. However smoothly or subtly one seemingly slides by the possibility of a decisive encounter with the living God, is at some core level a choice itself with indeterminate, but substantial, though not irreversible consequences in which the door of God’s revelatory grace may or may not be open to a particular person at another time. Now very well may be the appointed time if you hear the voice of God ever so faintl. For seeking to make a "decision" for Christ simply when one will without the grace of God intervening, is on the operative assumptions of Christian biblical theology an untenable impossibility. For the wind blows where and when it will.

However improbable all this may seem, it is impossible to attain first-hand experience of the depths of the Christian revelation without entering into and remaining in its pathway of understanding which entails a subtle blending of the will with the very prompting of God, however that ineffable presence may become manifest. The veracity of such a revelatory truth can only be revealed in the movement in faith itself in which "the good shepherd" will make his voice known (John 10:1-18). While there is a certain sureness in God's revealed voice (John 10:4-5)such knowledge remains only partial since given the natture of who God is, it is impossible to know him fully (Deuteronomy 29:29). Rather, the Christian pathway is a life from faith to faith in a mode of greater knowing where sight as the breadth and depth of God's glory is beyond our capacity to fathom and hence to perceive even as the promise of greater fullfillment extends into eternity where immortality swallows up mortality (1 Corinthians 15:50-55)

The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith: A Perpetual Discussion

"And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6)

"The excellency of a believer is, not that he has a large apprehension of things, but that what he does apprehend, which perhaps may be very little, he sees in the light of the Spirit of God, in a saving, soul-transforming light; and this is that which gives us communion with God, and not prying thoughts or curious-raised notions" John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classical Works (p.117).

The next set of posts are intended for those who have had some vital connection with Christ, who can grasp the significance of the preceding quotations as the very basis for believing and radically committing to God within the context of our fallible and flawed human condition, yet who, at some level have somehow lost the intensity and sureness of that connection through a broad array of factors which make an earlier faith stance, however naive or sophisticated, no longer tenable. I do not claim to have an adequate response, since the Christian pathway at its root is one of faith in search of greater knowledge in which the latter can only be processed by the former, and can only be by the very nature of its content, extremely partial in scope. As limited as the following may be in providing responses that one might describe as satisfying, as someone who has walked in such space through a world view that I would refer to as Christian agnosticism, I would like to offer my thoughts.

The Gap Between the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith

A common notion is that Paul "invented" Christianity" in which the march from the initial teachings of Jesus in proclaiming the kingdom of God became as interpreted in the gospels, written from between 70-100 AD, Christ as that proclaimed as the Son of God. No doubt something emerged after the death of Jesus that was not fully explicit in his earthly ministry and there may have been some interpreting back from the Gospel writers to the historical personage. Nonetheless, the traditional liberal time line of a late proclamation of the risen Lord is overblown if we take Paul as the earliest direct witness as to what was believed by the earliest followers in the 30s. With Paul's earliest writings; the letters to the Thessalonians completed in the early 50s, one can draw on plausible historical evidence that Paul's conversion in his encounter with the "risen Lord" could have been as early as the mid-to late 30s. One can assume as well through reasonable interpretation that for an organized Jewish prosecution of the followers of Christ to have occurred there had to be a visible Christian community in place that warranted such concern.

What one might also discern is that the vision of the resurrected Christ surprisingly "kicked in" sometime after the death of Jesus even as in the immediate aftermath of his death, the disciples were dispirited if not downright despondent. What that something was I cannot say, but it seems indisputable that what was perceived was some type of communal "seeing" of the risen savior that depended on the exercise of radical faith. This perception of seeing seems indisputable, whatever it was that they actually saw and was profound and downright shattering in the most fundamental sense as characterized most poignantly in the Pentecost experience (Acts 2). This "seeing" is the primary evidence that needs to be explained rather than the claim of the empty tomb in that there is no available corroborating evidence for the latter even as the legend of it fit in well with the sightings.

None of this proves anything in any indisputable sense. However, it does provide evidence that a late explanation for the risen Christ as an act of the church that only came to full fruition in the Gospels, especially John's late (circa 95 AD) Gospel is faulty. In short, this core assumption of 20th century liberal biblical scholarship necessitates serious rethinking in light of Paul's early testimony and the evident beliefs of the earliest followers, which the work of British biblical scholar and early Christian historian N.T. Wright has done so much to open up to some fresher perspectives. For whatever might be thought about these matters cannot be based on the argument that the early church and the earliest followers of Jesus believed something fundamentally different about the reality and significance of the resurrection and about the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit as a deposit for things hoped for but not seen until the ultimate unveiling in the eschaton "when God will be all in all" (1Corinthians 15:28).

What actually happened during the immediate period surrounding the execution of Jesus is not at this time totally clear based on the historical record. Simply put, one cannot "prove" the resurrection based on the evidence given, particularly since what is being claimed, that God was in Christ reconciling the world (2 Corinthians 5:19) is well beyond that which can be totally grasped by reason or concrete historical evidence. One thing that is clear is the profound shift in the belief of the early followers based on their collective perception that they had attained some first-hand perception of what they took as the indubitable reality, however ultimately veiled, of the risen Christ and its powerful impact throughout the ancient world.

The faith is revealed in part through history, but more fundamentally through a historically realistic narrative that includes but transcends the mere facts of the case. What is clear, especially as documented in the major books of N.T. Wright, the vision of early 20th century biblical and early Christian scholarship of a "late" Christianity as the outcome of the church as reflected in all of the gospels, but especially John is substantially overblown if we take Paul as our first primary resource. However much theological development took place throughout the first century, it is at least an extremely plausible that as documented in Paul's letters the core foundation (even a biblically-grounded basis for the Trinity) was encapsulated in Paul's letters written in the 50s and 60s which emerged from a coherent and consistent two decade theological development extending back to the late 30s.

The crucially important issue of the historical validity of the resurrection itself I will need to leave for another place. I'll let it rest here with the thought that the central issue is less historical argumentation itself, particularly if one accepts the broad picture Wright presents in his two key books, Jesus and he Victory of God and The Resurrection and the Son of God. The more fundamental issue has to do with the relationship between religion and science on the notion on whether (a) any such trans-national phenomenon like the resurrection is possible, which most would agree in the affirmative, or (b) remotely likely, given the laws of nature and the universe. I cannot take the time to address this crucial matter here, other than to note two things; (a) the earliest followers testimony emerged through the prism of faith in which "seeing" required believing in the most fundamental sense. However, I note in passing that Thomas was granted the right, following the testimony of the others, of seeing first, interpreted by the Christian community as a lesser form of faith; (b) that whatever did occur in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Jesus affected the disciples profoundly with a fundamental re-orientation of their view of the outcome surrounding the events of Gethsemane and Golgotha in which Christ became victor rather than vanquished.

Whatever did happen and whatever actually affected this change in establishing a religious movement that has had an enduring and world-wide impact, there was nothing self-evident or guaranteed about the outcome as it did emerge in history before the actual unfolding of the events that ultimately gave shape to the New Testament and the formation and widespread dissemination of the early church. These events cannot simply be explained away through “natural” causations without taking the “God hypothesis” seriously into account regardless as to how scandalous such an interpretation might be. At the very least, serious ongoing investigation into these matters remains essential both among those within the household of the Christian faith as well as those outside the camp whether representing other religious communities or purely secular perspectives.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Seek Him While He Is Near

"And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6)

"The excellency of a believer is, not that he has a large apprehension of things, but that what he does apprehend, which perhaps may be very little, he sees in the light of the Spirit of God, in a saving, soul-transforming light; and this is that which gives us communion with God, and not prying thoughts or curious-raised notions" John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works (p.117).

The next two to three posts are intended for those who have had some vital connection with Christ, who can grasp the significance of the preceding quotations as the very basis for believing and radically committing to God within the context of our fallible and flawed human condition, yet who, at some level have somehow lost the intensity and sureness of that connection through a broad array of factors which make an earlier faith stance, however naive or sophisticated, no longer tenable. I do not claim to have an adequate response, since the Christian pathway at its root is one of faith in search of greater knowledge in which the latter can only be processed by the former, and can only be by the very nature of its content, extremely partial in scope. As limited as the following may be in provideing responses that one might deecribe as satisfying, as someone who has walked in such space through a world view that I would refer to as Christian agnosticism,I would like to offer my thoughts.

The Gap Between the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith

A common notion is that Paul "invented" Christianity" in which the march from the initial teachings of Jesus in proclaiming the kingdom of God became as interpreted in the gospels, written from between 70-100 AD, Christ as that proclaimed as the Son of God. No doubt something emerged after the death of Jesus that was not fully explicit in his earthly ministry and there may have been some interpreting back from the Gospel writers to the historical personage. Nonetheless, the traditional liberal time line of a late proclamation of the risen Lord is overblown if we take Paul as the earliest direct witness as to what was believed by the earliest followers in the 30s. With Paul's earliest writings; the letters to the Thessalonians completed in the early 50s, one can draw on plausible historical evidence that Paul's conversion in his encounter with the "risen Lord" could have been as early as the mid-to late 30s. One can assume as well through reasonable interpretation that for an organized Jewish prosecution of the followers of Christ to have occurred there had to be a visible Christian community in place that warranted such concern.

What one might also discern is that the vision of the resurrected Christ surprisingly "kicked in" sometime after the death of Jesus even as in the immediate aftermath of his death, the disciples were dispirited if not downright despondent. What that something was I cannot say, but it seems indisputable that what was perceived was some type of communal "seeing" of the risen savior that depended on the exercise of radical faith. This perception of seeing seems indisputable, whatever it was that they actually saw and was profound and downright shattering in the most fundamental sense as characterized most poignantly in the Pentecost experience (Acts 2). This "seeing" is the primary evidence that needs to be explained rather than the claim of the empty tomb in that there is no available corroborating evidence for the latter even as the legend of it fit in well with the sightings.

None of this proves anything in any indisputable sense. However, it does provide evidence that a late explanation for the risen Christ as an act of the church that only came to full fruition in the Gospels, especially John's late (circa 95 AD)Gospel is faulty. In short, this core assumption of 20th century liberal biblical scholarship necessitates serious rethinking in light of Paul's early testimony and the evident beliefs of the earliest followers, which the work of British biblical scholar and early Christian historian N.T. Wright has done so much to open up to some fresher perspectives. For whatever might be thought about these matters cannot be based on the argument that the early church and the earliest followers of Jesus believed something fundamentally different about the reality and significance of the resurrection and about the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit as a deposit for things hoped for but not seen until the ultimate unveiling in the eschaton "when God will be all in all" (1Corinthians 15:28).

What actually happened during the immediate period surrounding the execution of Jesus is not at this time totally clear based on the historical record. Simply put, one cannot "prove" the resurrection based on the evidence given, particularly since what is being claimed, that God was in Christ reconciling the world (2 Corinthians 5;19) is well beyond that which can be totally grasped by reason or concrete historical evidence. One thing that is clear is the profound shift in the belief of the early followers based on their collective perception that they had attained some first-hand perception of what they took as the indubitable reality, however ultimately veiled, of the risen Christ and its powerful impact throughout the ancient world.

The faith is revealed in part through history, but more fundamentally through a historically realistic narrative that includes but transcends the mere facts of the case. What is clear, especially as documented in the major books of N.T. Wright, the vision of early 20th century biblical and early Christian scholarship of a "late" Christianity as the outcome of the church as reflected in all of the gospels, but especially John is substantially overblown if we take Paul as our first primary resource. However much theological development took place throughout the first century, it is at least an extremely plausible that as documeted in Paul's letters the core foundation (even a biblically-grounded basis for the Trinity) was encapsulated in Paul's letters written in the 50s and 60s which emerged from a coherent and consistent two decade theological development extending back to the late 30s.

The crucially important issue of the historical validity of the resurrection itself I will need to leave for another place. I'll leave it here with the thought that the central issue is less historical argumentation itself, particularly if one accepts thr broad picture Wright presents in his two key books, Jesus and he Victory of God and The Resrrection and the Son of God. The more fundamental issue has to do with the relationship between religion and science on the notion on whether (a) any such trans-national phenomenon like the resurrction is possible,which most would agree in the affirmative, or (b) remotely likely given the laws of nature and the universe. I cannot take the time to address this here, other than to note two things; (a) the earliest followers did so through the prism of faith in which "seeing" required believing in the most fundamental sense, even though Thomas was granted the right, following the testimomy of the others, of seeing first, interpreted by the Chritsian community as a lesser form of faith; (b) that whatever did occur in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Jesus affected the disciples profoundly and fundamentally re-oriented their view of the outcome surrounding Gesthemene and Golgatha in which Christ became victor rather than vangusihed

The Gap Between the "One Truth" Claim of Faith and the Enduring Reality of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

This is a particularly vexing issue today in that two fundamentally not entirely resolvable precepts have attained a powerful pull in our contemporary culture. The one is the predominance of self-perception, without which it would be difficult to fathom how one could function at least in our western setting. Whatever its ultimate truth (and the Bible itself is clear about the importance of personal consciousness and conscience), to deny or even downplay its centrality as a core axiom of personal identity would be a most unfortunate mistake. Yet when developed into a fully blown axiom accepted both as self-evident and at some inexpressible level as the truth--that is, as far as anyone can come to any notion of "truth" in the contemporary era which I argue is inescapable even in its very postmodern denial, takes on a religious aura in its own right. It is such a denial expressed in the guise of a self-evident truth statement that I would characterize as a major idolatry of our time.

No doubt faith comes to believers through their self-understanding, but that to which it points, the revelation of God through Christ, extends to a reality beyond the self that cannot be reduced to any level of self-perception. Granted that the faith proclaimed speaks directly to the self even in language beyond self-reference making any claim of transcending self-understanding exceedingly problematic. While there may be a self-circularity of a faith stance that proclaims to reveal itself to consciousness--even consciousness collectivized in the body of Christ, at the very least, the proclamation of God revealed in a particularly unique manner in Christ needs to extend beyond self-referential reductionism in order to gain an appreciative grasp of what it is and more scandalously who it is that is being veiled through the fragile instrumentalities of human understanding. For the very basis of faith is the belief "that he exists," without which one lacks an axiomatic starting point that makes further inquiry into the phenomenological experience of the Christian pathway on its own terms, impossible. This struggle to transcend the self in proclaiming the revelation of God was a challenge the neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth struggled mightily for, but was only partially successful. Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich, central figures in the neo-orthodox school, accepted and sought to extend the implications of Barth's dialectical theology, but not his dogmatics, and opted instead for some version of an existential theology based on the centrality of self in critical dialogue with the biblical God and 20th century European philosophy.

The seemingly counter problem is the belief in a pluralistic reality in which in principle, one idea or reality is as equally valid as another, whether one is examining world religions or different realms of religious and secular thought. Thus, while noting that there are obvious differences between religions, especially among those that are monotheistic and those that are not, a commonly held belief is that at the most fundamental level each religious tradition is ultimately a pathway into the inexpressible or what Rudolph Otto refers to as The Holy.

Whether one is speaking of diverse religious or secular perspectives, and there are many world views, the extent to which they are compatible with each other based on a core belief in egalitarian pluralism is a major issue in itself, which, I believe needs to be viewed as a faith stance as powerfully adhered to as any "traditional" belief. Assuming this to be the case, then the counter question needs to be asked, on what grounds does one adhere to this presupposition and what are the underlying assumptions upon which it is buttressed?

A key stumbling block in coming to terms with Christian faith claims as reflected in 20th century philosophy and cultural life is the knotty matter of seriously grappling with any notion of "truth," which at some level Christianity is based on--namely the truth that God exists and he is revealed and embodied in the full human sense in Christ and only in Christ, though reflected in part in other revelations.

This is obviously a difficult philosophical issue that I can only begin to address at this point. The core issue is whether there can be any such reality as truth even as the search for it, however imprecisely one defines it, seems to be built into the hard wiring of human existence. Thus, one might say (and I can't "prove" this) we are meant for the truth and can never rest satisfied unless that desire were met in at least fundamentally reorienting our lives in moving toward it. Thus, at the very least truth servers as a clarion call to human fulfillment and satisfaction, however much the gap between the desire and attainment, which, I argue, is unsearchable, persists.

The fundamental claim and the scandal of radical Christianity is Christ's proclamation that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) in which no other truth claim can possibly compare. On this claim satisfaction in the full sense of the term can only be found in a thorough embrace of Christ as the fullness of God in human flesh; an incarnational faith revealed to human beings through the Spirit of God, as an essential dimension of God himself in his Trinitarian fullness.

To restate a core contention of C.S. Lewis, either there is something fundamentally true about the core New Testament claim that in Christ the fullness of God in human flesh resides or that the claim is profoundly flawed to its core. If the latter is the case, the claim needs to be needs to be uncategorically rejected even as Christianity as a metaphor of one way to God or the inexpressible among many other ways may have merit at least for those to whom the metaphor speaks. At some root level it is impossible to evade the dilemma on the need to decide. This is so even though, "deciding" without the grace of God intervening, is on the operative assumptions of Christian biblical theology an untenable impossibility in which evasion itself, however smoothly or subtly one seemingly slides by the possibility of a decisive encounter with the living God, is at some core level a choice itself with indeterminate, but substantial, though not irreversible consequences the result

However improbable this all may seem, it is impossible to attain first-hand experience of the depths of the Christian revelation without entering into and remaining in its pathway of understanding in which, it is claimed, its veracity will be revealed at least in part, since by the nature of who God is, it is impossible to know God in full (Deuteronomy 29:29), but only from faith to faith in a mode of greater knowing where sight as the fullness of God's glory is beyond our capacity to fathom and hence our capacity to go.

The Gap Between What Faith Proclaims and the Dilemmas and Challenges of Personal and Public Life

For some, the issue may be less the claims of Scripture, including any "impossibility" of belief than its significance in providing the resources of living in the power of its claims in light of the complexity and the problems of daily life; problems which seem enduring, perplexities which I have encountered (and continue to do so in various ways at different points in my life). There is much within this critique with which I resonate particularly when confronting the many realities that come at us whether in private or public life which offer no easy panaceas. Clearly, a sense of escapism may be read into Chrsitainity, sometimes justified, sometimes not, in which, it might be added any transcendent world view which offers another perspective to perceive the sometimes unbearable given in a more comprehensive vein. On this, then, Christianity cannot be legitimately critiqued because of its claim to envision reality beyond the given without rejecting other "myths" that promise something comparable, even a deeply cynical philsophy or world view which at some level may be beyond the facts of thr matter, but which provide a sense of salvo even if it is that of nurturing a wound.