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God, Rid me of God

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Sep 29 6

After a week of playing Foursquare, I thought the group of middle and high school students I currently work with was ready for some….Jack Caputo and postmodern theology and philosophy? Sure, why not? These are smart kids.

I began by showing them some icons and talking about the importance of icons throughout church history. We then shared what some of our images of God were, and I passed out Play-Doh and encouraged the youth to spend some time (with Bon Iver playing in the background) molding their image of God with the Play-Doh. After everyone was done, we went around and shared our images; you can see some in the photo below.

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“So, what do the postmoderns think?”

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Oct 6 16

Today in one of my precepts, we were having a conversation about creeds, atonement theories, salvation, cathechismal (we think it’s a word). At the end, one of my classmates looked at me and said, “So, what do the postmoderns think?”

It kind of caught me off-guard for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, I’m one of those people who finds talking in precepts a bit uncomfortable, so to be called out like that, that’s not generally how I operate (no worries Tim, I did appreciate you asking). The second part has to do with an email I received shortly after the precept in which another classmate was interested in whether or not I was comfortable being the “go-to person” for the “‘post-modern’ church.” And I guess it catches me off guard because there is an assumption that one person could speak for a community of people. I suppose it’s somewhat different it someone asks, “Tell me about the Assemblies of God perspective on that” or “Tell me what the Presbyterian Church in America thinks about that?” (Even then, though, I think there is still a large variety of opinions on issues within any denominational group). And even more so, with the ‘postmoderns’ – who is to speak for them? Who is able to encapsulate the variety of voices, experiences and perspectives amidst a group of people who seek to defy classification? And need there even be that reason…?

Am I the ‘spokesperson’ for the postmoderns? No, I don’t think so. Another assumption people have about me is that I am the spokesperson here at PTS for Emergent. And to some degree, yes; I can claim that. I am “a” voice of someone who feels connected to Emergent, but I am by no means THE voice of Emergent [I'm sure there are some who even have tighter connections with Emergent than I do, who would hope that I'm NOT the voice of Emergent]. When you read my blog and read my thoughts and feelings about women in ministry, homosexuality or other issues, you are reading MY thoughts and opinions, not those of Emergent, which is made pretty clear by the Disclaimer on my blog (and even though I think there are many good reasons why these SHOULD be opinions that Emergent would seek to hold – that is simply not the case).

So am I A resource for Emergent and postmoderns here at PTS? I don’t know. Perhaps… Am I THE spokesperson for the ‘post-modern’ church? Nope. Do I think you can even have THE spokesperson for postmoderns…? No.

With all of that said, for anyone who wants to have a quick glance at some things that “I” think are important to postmoderns and to many in Emergent, you can download a paper I wrote last semester, called “Emergent Postmoderns: Who are they and What is their Biblical Hermeneutic?” It may or may not be helpful, but I think it summarizes what I think that “some” postmoderns think as far as when it comes to their presuppositions about the Bible. Below you can read my conclusion from the paper:

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EC05: Learning Community :: Truth

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May 18 0

Tim Keel and Carla Barnhill share with us how things are going to work with these learning communities – we are encouraged to share even during the time that the speakers are presenting with us.

John Franke (Theologian) @ Biblical Theological Seminary (their whole faculty is here at the convention – apparently they are trying to become the “emergent” seminary).

Todd Hunter (Practitioner) @ President of Alpha USA: “I’m a frustrated evangelist.” Entered into this conversation because the issues that young church planters were dealing with were categorically different than what he had experienced.

Truth: Truth impinges upon all areas of our life. And there are problems with “truth.”

Transrational: something that is not un-rational, or anti-rational, but something that moves beyond the scientific understanding of truth.

John Franke
Why are we having a session on “Truth”? Because, there is an epistemological anxiety – people are worried about truth and how we think – and this appears to be a recent thing.

Medieval Europe: How do people know?? The Church told them.

Reformation/Christian Renaissance: How do we know Truth? The Bible. The Bible is being translated into the vernacular, all we need is the truth of the Bible – we peeled away one of the layers. BUT, the individual has to figure out what scripture says, instead of listening to the church tell us. So, the “right of private interpretation” came about and now we are at a place where everyone has competing ideas about what the truth about the Bible is – and there were wars. etc.

Enlightenment: It’s not about external authority anymore – we need to be able to do this ourselves. An autonomous self can, for themselves, sort out and determine what is true. If I can find these absolute starting points for myself, then we can gain knowledge. Galileo is looking through his telescope – hey now – it looks like the earth is going around the sun – but the church is saying the opposite. Galileo looks and says that he can’t trust the church, he has to believe what he sees. You know truth when you have certainty – when you have things which you can’t be certain about, then you have “faith” – which is very different than knowledge. Objectivity is crucial – you can’t be biased! You must be neutral.

Absolute/objective truth – these are terms that people (some) are really hoping that we will use when we talk about our faith.

Postmodernity: raises questions about the account of truth that is sketched out in modernity. Postmodernity says that truth is not universal (it’s more local, particular, contextual – every truth statement is relative to its context – we HAVE to think about context).

Postmodern hermeneutical philosophy:
hermeneutics of finitude: how can human beings make these absolutely certain claims about the human experience – we are finite beings, and it is just not possible to do that
hermeneutics of suspicion: even if it were possible to make such claims, postmoderns say that would be very dangerous because humanity tends to really suck. We are power-seeking

For moderns, it appears that postmoderns are denying the presence of any truth.

What does Christianity have to say about this?

The postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion and finitude can be appropriated and re-situated in Christian. Hermeneutics of finitude is an extension of the theology of creation – it’s been said always that humanity is finite – we don’t have even have to talk about sin – God is infinite, we are finite. That’s a Christian position – claims of making “absolute truth statements” about God are limited to us. Hermeneutics of suspicion is an extension of the theology of sin – illegitimate uses of power [again, this is a time that social sin and the systemic nature of sin is helpful here, as opposed to the way that conservative evangelicals hold a more individualistic understanding of sin].

Well, what about truth then? If truth is known fully in community and contextual – what do we want to say about truth?

Postmoderns haven’t given up on truth – but most postmodern theorists have tended to be atheists. Postmoderns would be inclined to say something like this: “The small t truth is that there is no capital T Truth.” They believe in some truth. We can appropriate some postmoderns ideas and re-situate them in the framework of the Christian tradition. Although, we didn’t need postmodernity to bring about these:

The small t truth is that there is capital T Truth, but not for us, only for God.

Only God knows absolute truth, if by absolute truth you mean the sum totality of truth that can be had on any subject.

What about the small t truth? Hasn’t God revealed something of God through revelation and scripture? Yes! God has done that – but as we appropriate revelation and think about what God has revealed – but we should remember something that Calvin says: “All the true and sound wisdom we possess comes from knowledge of God and knowledge of self.” You can’t separate these – there is no knowledge of God apart from knowledge of God. I think John Calvin did a very good job exegeting the doctrine of God; the knowledge of our selves could be beefed up a bit.

Calvin: “So when God decides to reveal revelation, to give us knowledge of God, God has to accommodate to our weakness, to our finitude, so God lisps to us.” God is bending down to us, in our finitude and our fallenness. But that communication is limited by our ability to perceive.

So, what we have is this: God has provided divinely revealed mis-information in order to provide us with come content for the beliefs and practices that we need to cultivate in order to please God.

So what is our challenge? It seems to me that to be faithful Christians who understand the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves, we need to be people who cultivate firm convictions about the truth of the Christian faith that fund our proclamation, and at the same time, we must cultivate an epistemic humility about those very same convictions that were claimed – and that takes wisdom.

[We need to pursue truth...but to understand that this means that we are not going to find the truth necessarily.

Doesn't capital T truth simply mean Jesus?]

Franke: An alternative to the foundational model, is the idea of the web. The web, it’s back and forth and every which way. Good Christian theology is Christologically coherent, and pneumatologically pragmatic.

Entering my post-Derridean/pre-______ Phase

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Nov 24 7

I’m not sure if you’d call it a pride issue, or what, but I really wanted to do Derrida for this paper. I wanted to be able to say that I used Derrida for my paper and I thought there was a connection between Dionysius and Derrida. There is actually a connection and Derrida did a lot of work with, and addressed, the idea of negative theology, specifically in a panel discussion with Jean-Luc Marion. I sat in the library for a couple hours one night and attempted to read through Derrida’s “How to Avoid Speaking: Negations” – and was completely lost, but wanted to prove to myself that I could learn Derrida and deconstruction and his view on negative theology in just a few short weeks and feel comfortable enough with Derrida to write a paper on him. It didn’t help that when I was hanging out with Dr. Hankey and asked him a question about whether I should try reading Derrida’s essay “Difference” as well, he responded with, “Have you even tried to read Derrida yet? Because he’s hard…I mean, hard. I mean, really, really hard.” [this was coming from one of the preeminent Thomas Aquinas scholars in the world]

So, I’m now in a post-Derridean phase and it feels pretty good. The part that doesn’t feel so good is the fact that I’m in a pre-______ phase, which means: I don’t know what I’m trying this 20pg paper on. Apophatic/negative theology of Dionysius & -______. So I feel a little lame about dropping Derrida, but at the same time, it feels so good.

I’m sitting on a train right now heading up to Providence, Rhode Island (I didn’t know it was the smallest state) to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt & uncle. It should be a nice few days, a good sabbatical break. I am learning Hebrew (whoever knew adjectives, prepositions, pronouns & demonstratives could be so hard!) on the train ride and working on some other papers.

A few other little updates:

  • My uncle just called me to check on my status and posed as an IRS agent. Damn him. I fell for it for like…a split nanosecond.
  • I know there have been some inquiries, some people wondering about my current “status” because I haven’t been as “transparent” lately on the blog. No worries. I am not single.
  • Our junior flag football team, the Sneaky Patahs, snuck into the playoffs with our defeat against Wicked Hardcore (a middler team). So, we’ll be in the playoffs next Saturday and hopefully we can pull out at least one win there. I ran the Pomo play a couple times, and got some yardage, got the extra points on a touchdown, and had a dramatic juggling act almost-catch on the last play of the game, but ended up dropping it in the endzone. Luckily, we were already ahead…or I know I’d be having nightmares about that missed catch for years to come (yah Rhoda, feel free to comment)