EC05: Seminar: New Theology for a New World (Pagitt)
May 20, 2005
Doug Pagitt:
Reasons for New Ways of Understanding/Explaining Theology
*our story doesn’t fit
*the ‘rules’ have changed - we know differently than we didn’t before
*this is the work of theological reflection
Theology is inherently temporary…
The story of God is also changing…it could be that the nature of realities is that things are changing.
The very essence of how we know ‘that we know’ - it’s changing - the postmodern shift of epistemology.
“To rely solely on the past for our ideas about God is simply not consistent with the call of the Kingdom of God.”
Our job is to do what those who came before us did, not simply repeat what they said. The call of our communities is to be theological cauldrons.
This sort of conversation, the tension between the traditional an the avant garde - it comes up all over the place (religion, science, education, etc).
1890-1920 - the world changed, the industrial revolution, the advent of the telephone changed the way humans lived.
Henry Churchill King: a president of Oberlin College, hired by Wilson to go into the Middle East after WWI; wrote the book “Reconstruction in Theology.”
The Quantum “Reality”
Much has changed since the age of Newtonian physics. It begins to answer a different question about the nature of reality - Newtonian physics explained the big things - but it doesn’t explain the peculiarities.
Nanotechnology: “Nanotechnology is the willful manipulation of matter at the atomic level to create better and entirely new materials, devices and systems.”
Characteristics of an Expanding Theology:
Rhythm with God
Integrated Holism: where everything counts, the multiple intelligences that people bring to things are important
Discontinuity: the world doesn’t make sense - and what is our theology in this world?
Progressive: developing, it’s growing, dynamic
Co-creative Humanity: that we co-create with God, it’s an invitation into co-creation with God, that’s the invitation from the garden on; illness of sin, discontinuity with God is sin - we are called to something better
Theological Communities
Developed and Living in a Context: Orthodoxy (the understanding that one dominant group’s beliefs won and became ‘the voice’ of ‘orthodoxy’), a contextual orthodoxy
Temporary and Evolving - “Our Current Best Guess”
Pagitt vs. Process Theology
Oswald Chambers (October 17th): “The sole purpose of Jesus in the world is not to do good things in the world, but for the inward development of a person…”
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
May 20th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
I’m sure it’s hard to do justice to his thoughts from only reading these notes, but on first glance, Pagitt seems to be letting the tail wag the dog. I get the sense that he views theology as something that works up from ground level to reach/describe God rather than viewing it as something that comes down from God to us. Would that be a fair description of his point of view? If it is, that seems to make our theology more human-shaped than it probably should be. That’s the impression I get from his “characteristics of an expanding theology,” at least.
But again, it’s hard to tell.
May 26th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
but at the end of the day surely our theology is from the bottom up
for what ever knowledge of himself God may reveal to us through scripture, the holy spirit, nature brother’s and sisters’ so on and so forth. everything that we everunderstand will when we understand it then be comeing from us and extending up to God (and therefore somewhat failing)
Theology will allway’s be human shaped because humans do it think it.
I’m sure God doesn’t do theology anyway.
but if God was to try and deliver to us his theology in complete em. he would have to deliver it to one of us or all of us or some of us some how some way. Thus it would never survive completely God like it would allway’s have a human tint to it. Like trying to push star shaped play dough through a triangle tube or vessel, the dough that comes out will be in the shape of the vessel through which it came. Surly the same for God.