Jesus decides to respond to the movement led by his cousin, is baptized, showing his solidarity with the movement, and is then gifted with a moment of “enlightenment.” This moment, whether audible voice or internal impression, would obviously be a watershed event for anyone. There is no reason to assume this is anything less for Jesus and the construction of the narrative by Matthew highlights the gravity of this baptismal moment.
Jesus is instantly thrust/driven/compelled to go to the eremos. I use the word eremos here not to give you a Greek 101 lesson but to highlight a clear and obvious usage in language of the metaphorical. Eremos here in Matthew 4 may very well refer to a literal desert, as in a sandy, arid, cactus dotted landscape. But interestingly the idea may be something much more subtle.
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Universalism, Christian Exclusivism (CE) and Christian Inclusivism (CI) are the labels usually used surrounding the issue of who is “in” and who is “out.” The last two posts are background to this one dealing with the issues raised by Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins.
If the CI can see all sorts of people making it into eternity with God based upon their response to the light they received even though that might be thousands of years prior to Christ, there is yet another move to make by analogy.
Abraham believed in a lot of things that we clearly wouldn’t hold to be “biblical Christianity.” Of course Abraham could believe in a biblical Christianity because neither the bible nor Christianity existed. Abraham believed in animal sacrifice and torch walking ceremonies, he believed in the value of child sacrifice show devotion to God, and he thought there was nothing wrong with concubines. These are all things part of his historical and cultural location that can’t be judged per se because they simply were part of the fabric of his existence.
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Universalism, Christian Exclusivism (CE) and Christian Inclusivism (CI) are the labels usually used surrounding the issue of who is “in” and who is “out.” The last post is background to this one dealing with the issues raised by Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins (as of this post #2 in Amazon)
In starting into a slightly deeper look at a couple of these positions mentioned in the last post, I want to be clear that like all positions, theologically, politically, or something else, positions are nuanced. Within the CE and CI positions there are nuances, variations, differences, brands, stripes, or voices. These clarifications of the broad contours are to help people who have not been a part of the theological conversation and are coming into debate with little background related to the terms, categories and what is potentially at stake.
Since the position of the CE (Christian Exclusivists) is relatively clear and straight forward — consciously make and name Jesus your personal Lord and Savior and that qualifies you for heaven — let’s look a little closer at the Christian Inclusivist position.
Christian Inclusivism argues from the biblical text to analogies parallel to the text. Here is the CI’s rationale.
Let’s look at Abraham for instance, the Old Testament guy used as a premier example of faith in books like Romans and Galatians in the New Testament.
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Authors are always enmeshed in a culture, it cannot be otherwise, and I think we have observed that the idea of an author penning an inspired text does not mute, overcome, or diminish there cultural-ness. Abraham and child sacrifice, Moses and ordered genocide, Paul and slavery…
Jean Gebser, writing early in the 20th century, noted that civilizations go through stages of development that represent actual ways of seeing and viewing the world. His observation was that humanity’s stage of consciousness and development was reflected in their meaning making as a culture. A magic/tribal culture will make sense of their world, with sun and rain god’s and the corresponding dances to invoke those god’s activity differently than a postmodern pluralistic culture makes sense of it’s multicultural, rationalistic way of explaining a drought. Gebser’s contribution is in noting that over the course of thousands of years cultures have undergone slow but marked evolutionary development.
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The two bucket theory has major problems we discovered last post. The first problem is stuff is jumping buckets. “Truths” formerly in the eternal and ever relevant bucket over time end up, due to societal evolution, in the cultural and no longer relevant bucket.
The second problem is this, who says we should read scripture this way? Why are we reading for eternal truth packaged in short, repeatable, memorizable propositions? Who convinced us this was the way to go?
The questions we ask always circumscribe the possible answers. Ask different questions, different answers become possible. Why do we read the bible looking for eternal truth that directly applies to my life? I have asked this question of over 1000 people (mostly pastors and staff), from publishing house executives (no houses will be named to protect the indicted) to bible school professors. The answer is almost verbatim the same. We read for eternal truth because the bible “is the inspired word of God!” (usually said with gusto and a fist pump of some sort.) And yes bible school profs have said this.
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David Bohm the great quantum physicist, said “the tree doesn’t come from the seed. The seed is an aperture that organizes the processes of growth through which the tree finally emerges.”
When people come together whether that is in real time and space or cyberspace, there is an invisible architecture and shape in those relationships. That invisible architecture is called the social field, and it is comprised of visible and external “what we say and do with each” as well as the invisible and internal origins of those actions. How we act and interact, learn and unlearn, see and reveal, grow and transform is determined by how that social field is sourced by our interior life and the content of the conversation. The social field is formed by some aperture that organizes how those interactions occur.
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When original goodness and blessing gets displaced by original sin you can’t 
help but have anything but the traditional way of spiritual formation. It has been characterized as a three phase movement…
• Purgative, –holiness, purity, cleaness
• Illuminative –enlightenment, clarity, awareness,
• Unitive Way. – oneness with each other and world, judgments drop, unity with all of creation ensues.
I am not sure what your experience has been but the more I travel and the more I work with a wide variety of churches the more convinced I am that my experience is not unique. I have been schooled in the purgative way…almost exclusively! Unfortunately here is where the necrophila and the church intersect. If it is all about death, dying and cross you never get to life, living and resurrection. Of course the traditional way only has the purgative as movement one, but why then so little discussion and formation related to the other two?
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Jesus decides to respond to the movement led by his cousin, is baptized, showing his solidarity with the movement, and is then gifted with a moment of “enlightenment.” This moment, whether audible voice or internal impression, would obviously be a watershed event for anyone. There is no reason to assume this is anything less for Jesus and the construction of the narrative by Matthew highlights the gravity of this baptismal moment. 
