Quoting Theology: Caputo on Hope

"If at the end of our lives we find that all our hopes have been sensible and moderate and measured by the horizon of the future present, if we have never been astir with the impossible, then we shall also find that on the whole life has passed us by. If safe is what you want, forget religion and find yourself a conservative investment counselor. The religious sense of life has to do with exposing oneself to the radical uncertainty and the open-endedness of life...which is meaning-giving, salt-giving, risk-taking...Religion on my telling is a pact or 'covenant' with the impossible. To have a religious sense of life is to long with a restless heart for a reality beyond reality, to tremble with the possibility of the impossible."

--John D. Caputo, On Religion (Thinking in Action)

N.T. Wright Hopes Matthew Paul Turner does the Hokey Pokey (maybe I should have put a comma in there somewhere)

Sorry I've been terrible at blogging lately. I'll get back to regular posting soon. In the meantime, I wanted to recommend 2 books that I've read recently:



Hokey Pokey: Curious People Finding What Life Is All about by Matthew Paul Turner

In the interest of full disclosure and so I don't seem like a shill, I should tell you that Matthew is a friend. That being said, I actually liked this book. The really refreshing thing about this book is Mathew's unflinching honesty. His subject is "calling" or vocation, and his main premise is that you must have 2 things to be able to hear and follow the calling of God. You must be curious about life and you must be truly free. Those 2 notions bear unpacking, and Matthew does this brilliantly in Hokey Pokey. Those who want a straightforward, linear argument will be sadly disappointed though. Matthew makes no claims of being a theologian (though he underestimates himself in this regard). Matthew is a storyteller, and a gifted one at that. He writes his text, not so much as an authority on the subject, but rather as a traveler on a journey who invites us to walk with him. He interweaves insights (though he might object to this word) with stories and interviews, and offers the mixture as less of an answer and more of a shared path to answers. Don't let the title fool you, this is not a children's book. It is at times hillarious, poignant and profound. Turner's uncompromising honesty is sure to offend some, but it is just as sure to bless and inspire those of us who are gripped with an insatiable curiosity for more than our current experience and traditions have to offer.


Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright
In the interest of full discloser, though I have never met N.T. Wright, I am unashamedly an admirer of his work. I would have picked up his latest book if it had been titled "A Short History of Earthworms, by N.T. Wright". With that being said, this book far exceeded my expectations. Sincerely, I think this may be the single most important Christian book that has been written in the last decade (at least). Interweaving theology and history, Wright argues that somewhere along the way Christians substituted a warped and anemic version of "heaven" for the Biblical concept and have almost completely neutered or lost the Biblical concept of the Resurrection. He further argues that this has fundamentally warped the identity and mission of the church. Wright then paints a picture of Resurrection, Heaven, and Christian Mission that is both Biblical and inspiring. Without any hesitation, I recommend this book to every Christian, and especially every Christian leader. May you be filled with the hope that Wright unveils in these pages.

-AE

9 Years Later

Nine years ago today, Dana and I stood in the front of a small chapel on the campus of Troy State University surrounded by our family and friends and promised to love each other for the rest of our lives. In the years that have passed since then, she has consistently outdone me on that promise. I cannot even imagine anyone that I would rather walk through life together with. She has supported me beyond anything I would have ever dared to ask for. We have two beautiful little girls and I literally thank God every single day that she is their mother and my wife. Dana is a gift from God. I am still amazed that she would choose to be my wife.

I love you, Dana.

Adam

Family: Quick Update

I've got a grad school paper that I've got to finish by midnight, but I wanted to give a quick update of what's going on with us.

• Our house in WV is under contract and we have a contract on a house in SC. We should actually be able to move house-to-house (which is a real blessing). Thanks to all of you who have been praying about this.
• Chloe is crawling "faster than a speeding bullet" and she's also started "giving fives". I don't care who you are, that kid's smile can melt your heart.
• Emma got her cast off. She was a little upset when her knee and ankle were still sore (even though we told her they would be). She is walking much better (more normal) every day. She says the funniest things. The other night we put her to bed and she'd been in there maybe 1 1/2 minutes when she yelled out "I had a bad dream!" We said something like "Honey, you haven't even had time to go to sleep yet." Without missing a beat, she replied, "It was a daydream...you know...when you dream while you are still awake."
• Dana's parent's flew up this weekend for a quick visit. Its always great to spend time with them, though this grad school paper kept me from being as good a host as I should have been. Dana and the girls have really enjoyed their visit, and are chatting and dreaming about how easy it will be to "get together" or even for Emma to spend the weekend with them in the near future. Dana has also enjoyed having her personal "stylist" (her mom) at the house.
• My parents are coming up at the end of may to help us pack up and move. It is not particularly easy for either one of them to get away, and we appreciate this more than we can even express to them.

Hope that sort of catches you up. Back to the paper!
AE

Busy Week

I have a really busy week this week, so my blogging will suffer.  Should be back on schedule next week, with a few extra posts thrown in for book reviews.
AE

Quoting Theology: N.T. Wright on the Church's Mission

"There has been a lot of talk where I work about a 'mission-shaped church,' following a report with that title, urging today's church to regard mission not as an extra, something to fit in if there's any time left over from other concerns, but as the central and shaping dynamics of its life. But if this is to mean what it ought to mean, we must also reshape our ideas of mission itself. It's no good falling back into the tired old split-level world where some people believe in evangelism in terms of saving souls for timeless eternity and other people believe in mission in terms of working for justice, peace, and hope in the present world. That great divide has nothing to do with Jesus and the New Testament and everything to do with the silent enslavement of many Christians (both conservative and radical) to the Platonic ideology of the Enlightenment. Once we get the resurrection straight, we can and must get mission straight. If we want a mission-shaped church, what we need is a hope-shaped mission."

--N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Moltmann's Hope (Part 6: Conclusion)

New

Rev 21:5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” TNIV

If Jurgen Moltmann has a favorite verse in the Bible, Revelation 21:5 may well be it. As the title of one of his more recent books proclaim, Moltmann believes that our story “ends” with a “beginning”. However, it would be a mistake to assume that he believes that history is heading towards a return of all creation to its original state. On the contrary, Moltmann believes that this “new creation”, this “new heaven(s) and new earth”, this “future of God” is qualitatively new. He argues that:

“The future is God’s new creation. It is not a return of primordial day, nor is it a prolongation of the past. Past history and the new future which is prophetically promised no longer belong within the same temporal continuum. They are contrasted as ‘old’ and ‘new’. They become two separate times which are different in quality. Their unity is to be found solely in the faithfulness of God, who lets the old become obsolete and creates what is new.”

Afterlife

So, what will the experience of the afterlife in this “future of God” be like? How will we experience it? In Moltmann’s view, all things, even human beings are made “new”. Christ’s resurrection serves as a “firstfruits” of this truth, and it is a truth that Moltmann cherishes. He writes:

“If Christ is to bring everything again, then nothing can be lost to him, not even that which we cannot hold on to here. What we have loved, what we miss, will return again in his future, for the resurrection is stronger than death. Everything which is divided by death will be found again in the resurrection. I find this hope to be very comforting, for it makes us ready to let go what we cannot hold on to, and gives us the strength to live with the pain of separation and forsakenness. The separation from the people we love and the forsakenness which love experiences are not the end, for they are not the last of all.”

For Moltmann, this is not just true in the personal sense or even solely in the sense of being true for human beings. In his view, this is true “cosmically”.

Not only does Moltmann believe that all things are “made new”, he further contends that these temporal things become eternal. This is achieved by God becoming “all in all”, which Moltmann conceives of as a sort of future panenthiesm. In essence, he believes that God will infuse all of creation with his presence. This is to be conceived as a future, universal indwelling, and is not to be confused with the pantheistic notion of God being absorbed into all creation. Thus permeated by God, the temporal becomes eternal.

Conclusion

In the end, I’ve really only scratched the surface of Moltmann’s eschatology. Being that his entire theological construct is rooted in his eschatology, there is no subject for him that is not eschatological. In all honesty, I have really only whetted even my own appetite to dig deeper into this rich and fertile soil. There are certainly areas of his thought here that make me uncomfortable, and that really challenge my thinking; i.e. his universalism (nuanced, though it may be), and his ambiguity about the physical manifestation of Christ in his return, just to name a few. However, given the choice between hope and despair, I choose hope. If you ask me which I see revealed in Scripture, my answer is “hope”. When I look at Jesus, I see hope overflowing from his every word and action. When I see the darkness in the world, I hope with Jurgen Moltmann for the God who “makes all things new”.

References

1. Grenz, Stanley J., and Roger E. Olson. 20th-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age. InterVarsity Press, 1993.

2. Jenkins, Jerry B., and Tim F. LaHaye. Left Behind Boxed Set 1. Tyndale House Publishers, 2003.

3. Moltmann, Jurgen. Experiences of God. Fortress Press, 2007.

4. ———. Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993.

5. ———. The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993.

6. ———. God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999.

7. ———. In the End--The Beginning: The Life of Hope. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2004.

8. ———. Experiences in Theology. SCM Press, 2000.

9. ———. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993.

10. Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Fortress Press, 1993.

11. “Trinity Institute: Jurgen Moltmann (1st Presentation), http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/index.php?event_id=40242

Adam Ellis...Preacher?

I've honestly tried to write this post 4 different times this week. It's difficult because there are people here, particularly the teens we've worked with, whom we will miss terribly. At the same time, there is another group of people whom we are really excited about working with in the near future. How do I communicate this without a) making the teens think that we are excited about leaving them...or...b) making our new church family think that we are not excited about our future with them. Everything I've typed in my previous 4 attempts at writing this post has seemed awkward and I've wound up deleting each one. I guess, I just state the facts. Here is the letter I wrote to explain the situation to the Grand Central Church.

---

To the Grand Central Church:


Over the last few years, Dana and I have seen incredible Spiritual growth in the students we have been blessed to work with. We are immensely proud of them. If these students represent the future of the Grand Central Church, then the future is bright indeed. It has truly been both an honor and a privilege to work with them the past few years.

I am writing this letter to inform you of our decision to accept the invitation of the North Augusta Church of Christ, in North Augusta, South Carolina, to work with them as their pulpit minister. It is our plan to remain on staff at Grand Central until the end of May.

We ask for your prayers as we relocate and as we transition to a new ministry role after 10 years in youth ministry. Our prayers are for the success of the Grand Central Church and particularly for the students who have been associated with our ministry as they partner with God in his dream for the world.

May you be blessed by God, and may He bless the world through you,


Adam Ellis

Theology: Moltmann's Hope (part 5)

Parousia

Moltmann defies easy categorization. Many would want to classify him as theologically “liberal” because of his concept of “revelation as promise.” This classification gets derailed, however, when one considers his view of the parousia, or eschatological coming of Christ (some would call this the “second coming,” but Moltmann avoids this, as he feels that it is somewhat misleading in that it presupposes a temporary absence). In actuality, Moltmann believes in it quite strongly, although his interpretation is somewhat more nuanced than most popular level interpretations. He explains:

“The expectation of the coming Christ must not become the dream of revenge for people who ‘have had a poor deal’ here. Nor must it be turned into a dream of almighty power for people who are at present powerless. Finally, it has nothing to do with religious compensation for people who have been disappointed on earth. It is only the hope that was born of Christ’s resurrection and is alive in the power of his Spirit which find its completion in the expectation of Christ and the prayer for his coming. The parousia of Christ is first and foremost the completion of the way of Jesus: ‘the Christ on the way’ arrives at his goal. His saving work is completed. In his eschatological person he is perfected and is universally manifested in the glory of God.”

So, for Moltmann, Christ’s parousia is theologically indispensable. Moreover, he chides theologians who would simply do away with it as irrelevant mythology or render it as merely figurative, by asserting that to do so would be (and has been) a sign of Christianity’s conversion to a “civil religion.”

Judgment

Moltmann does not conceive of the coming judgment primarily in judicial or moral terms. Rather, he sees them in terms of justice or, in other words, when things are set right. Moltmann believes that there was a shift from this original concept of God’s judgment to the moral/judicial view that is prevalent today. As he puts it,

“There is another approach to the idea of the great Last Judgment. Injustice cries out to high heaven. The victims who have suffered from it do not hold their peace. The perpetrators who have caused the suffering find no rest. The hunger for justice and righteousness remains a torment on both sides. The victims must not be forgotten, the murderers must not finally triumph overt them. The expectation of a final universal judgment in which justice will finally triumph was originally a hope cherished by the victims of violence and injustice. It was their counter-history to the world of the triumphal evil-doers.”

Thus, Moltmann contends that to conceive of the Last Judgment in any other way, especially in the ways that have become popular in contemporary culture, is to do violence to the promise of God. In his view, a moral/judicial concept of the Judgment is fundamentally incompatible with hope.

Moltmann believes that he finds further support for his view of the Last Judgment in the Biblical identity of the Judge: Jesus Christ. He explains:

“According to the Christian ideas of the New Testament, Judgment Day is ‘the Day of the Son of man’ who came ‘to seek that which was lost’. It is in fact ‘the day of Jesus Christ’ (Phil 1.6). It is to be the day when the crucified Christ will be manifested before him. ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ’ (2 Cor. 5.10). On that day both will emerge from their concealment into the light of truth, the Christ who is now hidden, and the human being who is hidden from himself. The eternal light will reveal Christ and human beings to each other. What is now still hidden in nature will also become clear and lucid, for as bodily and natural beings men and women cannot be isolated from nature, not even before the face of God and at the Judgment.”

Because the Judge is Jesus Christ, and because of Christ’s fundamental nature, Moltmann finds the Last Judgment to me a source of unimaginable hope; not only for some people, but for “all things.” There is more than a hint of universalism, and even panentheism in his thought here. But as with most things it is nuanced by Moltmann’s particular view of hope for God’s future.

Theology: Moltmann's Hope (part 4)

Promise

However, it would be incorrect to assume that Moltmann believes in the myth of progress; that the world is getting better and better. To the contrary, Moltmann believes that there is an inherent discontinuity between the world that is and the world that is coming. We would do well to remember the one of Moltmann’s early theologically formative experiences took place when he was a prisoner of war. In the midst of despair, he found hope. Further, it was precisely in the midst of despair that hope mattered. For this reason, Moltmann prefers to speak in terms of “promise” rather than “revelation.” Moltmann thus explains:

“… ‘promise’ does not in the first instance have the function of illuminating the existing reality of the world or of human nature, interpreting it, bringing out its truth and using a proper understanding of it to secure man’s agreement with it. Rather, it contradicts existing reality and discloses its own process concerning the future of Christ for man and the world. Revelation, recognized as promise and embraced in hope, thus sets an open stage for history, and fills it with missionary enterprise and responsible exercise of hope, accepting the suffering that is involved in the contradiction of reality, and setting out towards the promised future.”

In other words, “revelation” itself is eschatological in nature, and functions not to give individuals clarity regarding their existence, but rather as the promise of God to the community of believers. It serves to highlight the discontinuity between the world that is and the approaching future of God, and thereby to empower and mobilize the community of believers to partner with God in bringing his promised future into the present.

Left Behind-style eschatologies of despair tend to engender in their adherents a disengagement from the world, particularly in terms of social justice and ecological concerns. The sentiment seem to be, “Since this world is going to be destroyed anyway, what does it matter?” On the other hand, one might be tempted at this point to make a similar criticism of Moltmann’s eschatology; i.e. “If God’s future is inevitable, then why should we pour our lives and energies into something that will happen anyway?” Though such a question smacks of a repulsively selfish ego-centrism, Moltmann seems to anticipate it. He explains:

“…a promise reaches out beyond what is existently real into the sphere of what is not yet real, the sphere of the possible, and in the world anticipates what is promised. In so doing it opens up what is existently real for the futurely possible, and frees it from what fetters it to the past: if things are fixed and finished…reality can be reduced to a concept, and defined; if they are in process…they can be influenced only through anticipations of a possible future.”

So, for Moltmann, the promise of God opens up the possibility of the divine future in the present. It thus stands to reason that the community of believers would lay hold of these possibilities and potentialities for the in-breaking of the future reality of God. In Moltmann’s thought, it is not so much that the future is a fixed point that God is somehow pulling history inescapable toward. Rather, he seems to picture God as being located in the future beckoning us, with our conflicting history/reality towards Him.