Honzo February 13th, 2008
Dan, at brendoman.com refers us to two lists of God’s that are rejected by two groups, Christians and Atheists.
The question becomes: Why do you believe in only one of these - and what makes that one so special to the point of rejecting all the other ones? I encourage you all to answer that question as it is a worthy one.
Brendoman.com :: Gods we don’t believe in
This is my best answer so far. What’s yours?
Honzo January 5th, 2008
In order to continue this post series, I find that it is necessary to stop for a moment to talk about what I mean by Postmodernity. It is a slippery concept, one that is often misunderstood and vilified to the point that most people do not know what in the world it really is.1 I can say this for certain, because I have and do both. After years of trying to first vilify and then trying to understand what exactly this postmodernity stuff is all about, this is what I have come to and how I have come to use the term in my writing.
In the most basic sense of the term, postmodernity is the system of thought, the way of constructing the world, that succeeds modernism. Remember, modernism demanded from its adherents that there be one final and comprehensive way of viewing and constructing the world to which everyone must adhere. When this cracks, multiple ways of viewing and constructing the world emerge from its ashes, thus Postmodernism is the sum of the systems of viewing the world that emerge after the cracking of modernisms hegemony. Not only is postmodernism the sum of the systems, it is also the collection of the ways in which people deal with the emergence of a plethora of acknowledged (after all, there have been these competing systems forever, postmodernism merely gives them a voice, rather than dismissing them after the first discrepancy) of systems as they interact with one another.
Think about a set of cities that all are controlled by a central capital. The central city administers and controls all functions of daily life not only for the cities, but for the people within the cities. This is modernism. Now imagine that all of the cities throw off the rule of the central city and rule themselves. This is postmodernism.
No longer does one ask what the central authority says must be done, must be followed, must be thought and impose it on the lives of Others. Instead there is an acknowledgment of a basic fact of existence - that each city sees the world in a different way. To force23 them to be like Us is an act of tyranny of the central authority on the lives of Others. Remember, there are some things in this world that are not verifiable. I know math, I know how many apples are in my fridge. However, I can’t show that God exists objectively, I can’t demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that my version of Jesus existed in history without making leaps of faith.
Replacing the above are questions about competing narratives.4 You are now free to choose the city you live in. Will I move to the Mormon city or the Baptist city? I dunno, what is their narrative like? Does it make sense? These are the sorts of questions that are asked. The cities’ narratives compete with one another for the membership of the citizens of the state.
Is there a denial of truth here? Not at all! That is the central conservative critique of postmodernism, is it not? Isn’t there one way that things actually are? Is there not one and only one reality? I think that there is. I don’t think that there is a necessary denial of truth in postmodernism, at least the way I use the term.5 Instead, there is a shifting of the questions that are being asked.
This is where the idea that all postmoderns deny truth comes from. When you are talking about the collection of cities and are wanting to talk about their truth claims, you can only talk semi-objectively about what each city thinks the truth is, not about if each city actually has the truth. Once you start doing that, then you are really speaking about the set of truth claims that the city that you are in proposes. Note that all of this is independent of the actual “truth” that is out there.6 Any time that someone says anything, they are saying it from their position in time, space, culture, and community. Objectivity, as a concept, is dead.
I see postmodernity, not as a vile beast that threatens the Kingdom of God (or the Realm of the Child of True Humanity lol), but as a better way of viewing the world and its communities,7 something that allows me to disagree with these other communities without writing them off as useless. Postmodernity allows me to love them as fellow images of God, the whole while without abandoning the tenets of my religion as it has been revealed to me by God.
Now, a great many people have defined and used postmodernism in a great many ways. It is a malleable concept, one constructed by people for their uses. I am sure some of you consider yourself postmodernist and would describe it in different terms; others might point to other postmoderns and their absolute denial of truth to refute the above - just remember that not all elements of this set are the same.
Finally, the way I am using this term, there is no “Philosophy of Despair,” as Travis so polemically put it, to call it such is to demonstrate one’s misunderstanding of it.
I’ll try to address the what narratives are and why they are so important in my next post.
Honzo December 26th, 2007
A while ago, I was asked why exactly I believe. I have been pondering this the last few days and I think I can give a semi-intelligible answer. If you had asked me this a few years ago, I would have given my best modernist response. You all know how it goes, right? First, you begin with logical proofs of God’s existence. I would have gone all ontological, teleological, and even cosmological on them.
After establishing the claim that a God exists, I would have moved on to which God exists. I would have pulled out my McDowell’s. You, know, present all the evidence for biblical prophecies coming true, see the prophecy about the city of Tyre, prophecies about Jesus, historical/textual evidence for Jesus’ life, all the standard apologetic answers.
So, after establishing the existence of God and that her revelation to us is the Bible, I would then open the old girl up and start to point out what I believe. After this 30 minute process I would then gladly accept the person to whom I was speaking’s conversion and salvation. Another person checked off the rolls of hell. Right?
No. The person would/should not have believed me. After all, for each claim that I made with evidence, they could/should have presented countering claims to the existence of God, to the authority of the Bible, and to the person/history/nature of Jesus. I could present my claims and they present theirs. Both of us would have left convinced the other was wrong. I can go into the specifics of the various arguments if needed, but my point stands without them.
In addition, if I would ever stop to listen to the other’s claims, I would more than likely leave the conversation with my faith shattered. Why? Because my faith (as was every idea) was predicated on modernist understandings of verifiable truth claims. That is, the only thing my modernist brain was wired to accept as fact was truth claims that could be scientifically verified. I naturally assumed, from a position of faith, that my claims were so. However, (switching to real life, instead of hypothetical’s) when I started to truly evaluate those claims, I found that they indeed were not as verifiable as I had thought them to be. Each of the logical proofs of God has their problems. The Gospels are not histories as we think of histories. The list goes on and on.
What then? My modernist categories through which I have been trained to view the world demand I abandon these unverifiable truth claims. However, if I were being honest with myself, I really could not bring myself to accept the opposite position either, because it too could not be scientifically verified. How do you test for God? What is your control? The essential questions of religion lay outside the realm of science, which can only access observable and testable data. The modernist categories are simply not adequate for evaluating the claims of religion.
For instance, while the Gospels cannot prove who Jesus was, there was also no way to disprove their claims as well. We simply do not have access to that type of information, given the sources available to us. I found that just about everywhere I looked into my religious beliefs, they were not able to be verified (or denied) through this modernist method of verification. I could speak in terms of probabilities, but never in certain terms. As an honest (as honest I could be) modernist, I found myself at an impasse. Given that the modernist categories are inadequate, one needs to find new categories, post-modern categories, through which one can evaluate the claims of Christianity. Doing so eliminates the need for badly researched pop-apologetics and theologies and opens the door for deeper inquiry.
So what then? Enter experience, community, and relationship, stage right. These will be the subjects of part 2.
Honzo October 22nd, 2007
Here are some good, bad, and discussion promoting links from around the ‘verse.
LCMS Invites Emerging Guru Dan Kimball from Slice of Laodicea by Ingrid
The human embodiment of Christian unity, Ingrid, freaks out because Kimball, who does not hate McLaren, is speaking in St. Louis at the Missouri Lutheran Church Snod. A small apocalypse ensues. I like that she envokes the Book of Concord in her argument for scripture alone. That and the guilt by association. (Bonus Link: See CRN.Info’s take on Ingrid’s post)
The Source of Submission from Challies Dot Com
Tim Challies argues for the location of original submission before the fall, not as the result of it. Some of his arguments hold some water, others are full of holes (4, 6, 7, 8, 10).
Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms? from Maverick Philosopher by William F. Vallicella
By far the best post of my morning reading. Vallicella describes how atheist’s arguments against the existance of god often do not address the world that theists put forth.
jr. September 5th, 2007
“[Your dream to become great] is the dream of every living creature, the desire that is the very root of life itself. To grow until every space is a part of you. It’s the desire for greatness. There are two ways of fulfilling this, however. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up until and destroy it until there is nothing left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, “Only I will be great, and to make room for me, all the rest of you must give up even what you already have to make room for me.” – Ender Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
“7Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. … 19 We love because he first loved us.” – John the Elder (1 John 4)
What does it mean to say that God is Love? For much of our history, Christian theology has spoken of God’s central attribute as existence or glory or something of the like. But John is claiming something all-together different. John tells us that “God is love”, and another writing from that same community defines Love as Sacrifice: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). But what then does it mean to say that God is Sacrifice? To sacrifice is to give up that which we value. Giving up that which is not dear to us is hardly sacrifice; rather, to sacrifice is in a very real way to give of ourselves, to give that which comprises our identity. So imagine a God who is defined not by self-glorification or –gratification, but by self-emptying, self-sacrifice. Imagine a God existing in three persons who are engaged in an eternal dance of joyful, selfless giving. This sort of God finds glory not in self-aggrandizement, but rather in selfless giving. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. It is this sort of God who, out of the overflow of joy and sacrifice, the overflow of Love, creates a world filled with being who, like himself, have a will that they can willfully sacrifice (for one cannot be selfless if one has no Self to give).
But here, of course, is the steep cost of Love. Beings created in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, can choose to sacrifice, or they can choose not to sacrifice. We can choose to give of ourselves or we can choose to preserve our Selves, to fight and to battle until we have created a space in which only We exist. This is the essence of Sin: that we would choose to preserve I at the expense of the Other, rather than to give I in service, in sacrifice to the Other. This tendency to think first of ourselves, to work for self-preservation, has been at work in us since the beginning, and we are nothing if not creatures of habit.
This Self, this Sin has infected us all since the beginning. We Self-full beings see the beauty of creation through the lens of Self; we tend to ask only “how can this serve my needs?” Rather than work with God to cultivate his Garden, we have chosen instead to do as we please, and in doing so, we serve to unmake that which God called good (Genesis 6). In choosing not to serve God even as God gives himself to us, we have become captives in our own minds, unable to see or care for anything beyond that which is good for I. We have lost what it means to abandon our Selves, to live for something other than I, and so have been cut off from God, unable to enter into his Garden of giving, of true Life anymore.
Thanks be to God that he did not leave us in this sorry state! Rather, he gave once more of himself, emptying himself of his divine nature and taking the form of a slave. He came to We who could tolerate no Other and he refused to be one with us. Rather, he offered us a different way to live, a way that did not demand the preservation of the Self, but rather offers the Self in acts of Love, of Sacrifice. We could not tolerate his Otherness, his difference, and yet still he gave himself to Us, and let us have our way with him. We did what any Self does when it feels threatened. We lashed out and destroyed that which threatens. He knew this, and yet he still gave. He gave and gave, until it killed him.
And only then was the power of Love revealed. For we were made to see that in the end, all of our attempts to preserve I will only end in destruction, for we were not created to take. We were created to give, in imitation of the Self who gave himSelf for us.
Darkness settled in behind me, tapped me on the shoulder singing shivers to my spine from the corners of my mind,
“I’ve been wanting to remind you of everything you’ve left behind and wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.”
She’s there when I’m alone and she always seems to know the stories that’ll take me back to where my comforts sleep.
A caress with velvet paws that hide her sharpened claws along the walls that time has built high searching for the blemishes.
And i know she’s breathing murder, that it is folly to endure her. But there is sweetness in her whisper,
“When you’ve had enough, I’ll be waiting. Wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.’”– Stavesacre, “The Two Heavens”
Hank August 3rd, 2007
Today I was reading some more of Jonathan Edwards’s “A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the Wold.” In it I read this statement in Chapter 1, Dictate 4, paragraph 38,
Hence it will follow, that the moral rectitude of the disposition, inclination, or affection of God CHIEFLY consists in a regard to HIMSELF, infinitely above his regard to all other beings; or, in other words, his holiness consists in this.
In essence, what the Puritan divine was saying is that God regards and respects himself more than anything else in heaven and on earth, and Edwards defines this regarding of himself more valuable than anything else and delighting in himself more than anything else as God’s holiness. My question is this, is Edwards right?
Or let me come at it another way. Is it right for God to delight in himself more than in any other creature? If we place our highest regard and deepest affections upon that which is most valuable; and God is infinitely worthy and is invaluable; then we should place our highest regards and deepest affections on and in God. But should God do that? Should he esteem himself as the most valuable treasure in all the universe? Or does he place his highest regard and deepest affections upon something else outside of him? Does that make that thing more valuable than God? To answer one way is to make theology theocentric to the extreme. To answer the another way is to take theology away from this radical theocentrism that view everything through the lens of God’s worth and value and honor and glory.
If he is to place his highest regard upon himself, what does that imply for how we understand life and Scripture and theology? If not, the same question, how does that impact our understanding of all things spiritual and how we live our lives and minister the gospel? Or even yet, does this question even need to be asked and answered?
If this post doesn’t keep you up tonight, like it will me as I wrestle with what Edwards said, then I don’t know what will. These are some of the weightiest matters to ask oneself if he or she is to call himself a Christian and/or a believer in God.
Hank July 23rd, 2007
If you ever wanted to understand how John 1:1 is to be translated “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” when the Greek reads kai theos en (e = ate) o logos, then here is an article that gets into the technical reasonings behind this translation as opposed the NWT and Jehovah’s Witnesses translating this as “and the Word was a god.” I hope this equips you in sharing your faith.
Honzo March 31st, 2007
I am not well versed on the history of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but I think this could make sense: Envisioning a God with a body
Contrary to popular opinion, God in the earliest books of the Bible didn’t know all things.
Nor did He exist everywhere, all at once, James Kugel says.
Instead, the God of Israel was a walking, talking deity who needed to seek clarification from time to time, the world-renowned Jewish scholar observed during a recent public lecture at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo.
God is described as having eyes, fingers hands and ears, Kugel added.
So despite the longstanding and widespread view that God is omniscient and omnipresent, “God does indeed have a body in these ancient texts,” he said.
Kugel doesn’t believe authors of the Hebrew Bible employed references to God in human forms simply as metaphors.
Do you think the authors of some of the texts saw God that way?
Honzo March 3rd, 2007
Today’s links of the day comes from one of my favorite periodicals, Scientific American. They are not religious in nature or bias (not that bias is a bad thing, everything has a color), but touch on Christian issues.
Hank February 2nd, 2007
The other day I was reading a “commentary” on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was a very interesting read, from what I have read. It is by an Episcopalian priest, Fleming Rutlege, who is focusing on the theology found in the narrative itself, and not in the types and themes found in the books. He spends a lot of time supporting what he says about the book from letters that Tolkien had written himself about his precious Middle-earth. Here is one quote that I found puzzling to say the least.
Tolkien understands God in the biblical sense, not as the object of human quest or journey, not as the goal of human moral striving or human religious activity, but as the active subject, calling and sending, independent of the creation but always engaged in redemptive history. — Fleming Rutledge, The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings, pg. 5.
What I find puzzling is that this is both true and false. God is the subject as he describes in this quote. God is the one calling and sending and acting independent of the creation but on its behalf. That is quite true if one were to read the Scriptures, they would see that it is the story of God working redemption for his people.
However, I think Tolkien–and I think Rutlege shares Tolkien’s view–misses on the whole point of eternal life and the work of Christ. John 17:3 says, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Peter says in 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” God is the object of our life in Christ. Christ died so that we might have a relationship with the Father. This statement above seems to show that there is no end result, no point to the redemption. It seems like God saves for the sake of saving, and God saves the people he saves for the sake of the people not going to hell. Where as in the Bible, God saves not just so people don’t go to hell, but to bring them to himself and have an intimate relationship with us, the ideal and perfect Father-son/daughter relationship.
What do you guys think of this and Tolkien’s work?
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