In 2012 I have two words I feel need my personal exploration and deeper engagement; the words quantum and integral. The whole world of experience behind these two words sit at the forefront of a new frontier many of us are just starting to engage as readily as we have the world of cause and effect we have grown up with since we were kids.
I grew up in the Newtonian world and was trained to see the world it that way. Now saying something like that might make you think I was some ridiculous and outlandish thing like a physics nut (sorry physics teachers). Well you would be wrong. I was not, though my Dad made sure we all took advanced science and math because “though you may never use it, it helps you learn to think in new ways!” What I mean is the way the world was presented to me, and therefore the way I experienced it, was very predictable because the world was built on cause and effect. It is the old billiard ball illustration. The cue ball hits the 4 ball and at that angle of contact it will hit the 6 ball go into that bumper on the table and will go in the right corner pocket. There is no mystery to that, if you calculate the angle rightly the outcome is totally waxed. It is predictable, assumed, and certain.
I am not sure about you but that illustration typifies the world I grew up in and the view of the world I had. It wasn’t just the world though it was deeper than that. Newton’s cause and effect and “laws of gravity” even extended to the spirituality and Christianity that I experienced and the way the Bible was “used.” There were laws and principles in the Bible and when rightly applied the outcomes were certain. And since I was in a charismatic context the outcomes were VERY VERY certain. You still find much of this thinking in large segments of Christianity. Faith leads to… real faith will certify these outcomes, and even if you don’t see those outcomes right now, they will come.
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This is the third prong in the series of posts on Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. We have discussed various historic positions on hell, the eschatology often surrounding the positions, and now have moved to how we use the bible.
So clearly the bible isn’t simple (see the last post.) The word containers from different eras, cultures, languages, geographies and worldviews make understanding literature from any other era very challenging. But there is one other thing that makes the bible really really not simple in my opinion. And I think this complexity potentially may help us with the ideas of heaven and hell in very big ways.
The shortest correspondence in history took place in 1862. Victor Hugo, the famous author of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, took off for holiday after the publication of Les Miserables. You can imagine, like all authors, it was killing Hugo to know how the book was faring.
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We said that Love Win’s Rob Bell’s new book raises several issues we wanted to address here.
1. The who is “in” who is “out” question. In the last several posts we have looked at the broad
brush strokes of the three positions that have been discussed within Christianity for centuries.
2. We then said we would look at eschatology, which we just introduced last post.
3. We will then move to HOW we use the bible to build these doctrines. What we will discuss here
will be controversial and paradigm breaking for some.
So what is eschatology? I believe it was the late Fuller Professor George Eldon Ladd that said, “the church lives in the parenthesis between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’” Eschatology is the study of “last things.” Ladd was essentially saying there are certain parts of the “end” of “last things” that are “already” happening, but they are initial, they are foretastes, they are glimpses of kingdom but they are “not yet” fully the kingdom, which awaits full expression and experience in the future. Where does this come from.
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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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There are a couple things I think would be helpful in the next couple of posts to clarify when it comes to the issues that are raised by Rob’s new book Love Wins.
While the book and the conversation circles around hell, it’s nature and it’s inhabitants, obviously the flip side of that is, who is going to heaven, what is heaven and how is it decided who gets in?
Second, Rob has a fairly strong heaven/hell “now” orientation. In theological circles this is called realized eschatology. Obviously these two topics, who is in and who is out, coupled with a conversation on eschatology (the study of “last things”) is a volatile cocktail with polarizations coming quite naturally. We can and will discuss this.
Third, and the thing I think it actually most fruitful, has to do with the burden we place on the biblical text that was written during a totally different stage of cultural development from ours. This is an enormous and largely unexplored issue that really deserves some thought and conversation because it provides a possible way forward on all sorts of issues the church seems stuck on.
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What happens when we claim the text and the author have a very specific cultural location that 
makes some of what is in the text “no longer correct?” Ouch, I know. For some of us we have been taught and trained to hear those as fighting words and to remind the offender this is the inspired word of God they are talking about.
What if each culture being written to and each author writing is at a particular stage of development or stage of cultural progress and we HAVE to take THAT into consideration as we think about the bible? That was the suggestion at the end of our last post.
This is of course one of what might be several possible solutions. I think some in more traditional church contexts as well as seminaries and more technical hermeneutics texts have tried to make it sound that because the text is inspired there is a muting of the culture boundedness of the text. If we continue to maintain that position we have learned nothing from the most glaring example where we tried using that line of defense. (a “defense” we don’t need)
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Tomorrow is ship day. And most of you are eagerly waiting.
We know that the current religious church systems “works” for about 70% of the people. That is, for that number of people the current answers given to the questions asked, the level of engagement requested and the goods and services offered is satisfactory. Some people are cut out for that system. Some are content with the status quo, have no intention or even reason to rock the boat and have no idea what the big problem is for those experiencing discontent. Though a vast majority of them, by their own admission, have not one time experienced the presence of God in their personal lives or their church in the last 12 months, they remain committed. (see Barna’s Revolution for this stat and others like it)
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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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Biophila, a great point of departure on the Monday after Easter Sunday.
On his death bed the great author and psychologist Erich Fromm asked his friend Robert Fox, Bob why is it that the human race prefers necrophilia to biophilia?”
(Fromm → E.O. Wilson in his book of the same title, Biophilia: The Bond with Other Species, the mid 80’s popularized this term)
A fine memoir by one of America’s foremost evolutionary biologists. E. O. Wilson defines biophilia as ‘the innate tendency [in human beings] to focus on life and lifelike process. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hopes rise on its currents.’
He broadly defined biophilia as, “The passionate love of life, aliveness, and all that is full of life”
I came across this term a few years ago for the first time and it has since informed some of my reflections on what I think Jesus is trying to bring to us. Shalom wholeness and wellness is the essence of the Gospel according to Isaiah 52. Shalom wholeness and wellness is biophilia.
Ironically our culture seems entertained by necrophilia (love of death). This not only seems true in terms of many movies, TV shows and without a doubt news coverage but also many churches. American Christianity and the places we have exported it, are often more lovers of the legal…which according to our Christian writers only brings death, instead of lovers of life.
For whatever reason, while we say Jesus is all about relationship not rules apparently what the general public hears from the church is we are all about rules not relationship. Rules and regulations as a dominant expression of religion in general and Christianity in particular is necrophilia. Relationship with Jesus that is all about bringing abundant life… or biophila.
Any thoughts?
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Please click here for part 1.
Please click here for part 2
Please click here for part 3
Please click here for part 4
I think the best way for us to safeguard ourselves from the charge of this being too New Agey is to recognize that while we are called to be gods, our god-ness is always derivative and therefore diminutive. This is a critical distinction that prevents putting humanity on the same level as the Triune God but at the same time acknowledges and engages what appears to be the full intent of the biblical material. Whatever it means that we are made imago dei and have the breath of God within us, it is certainly does not mean we are in every way shape and form identical to the Triune God the Creator of the Universe. There is a distinction between Creator and the Created. There is a qualitative and unique difference between the Maker and the Made. As the Created and Made ones, whatever similarities, likenesses, and whatever imago dei fullness we have, is derived from the God who made us. As a result of being derived it means we are less than the Creator. This is the safeguard and clarification of how we can have the first person conversation while allowing the Triune God to remain God and yet at the same time we can be imago dei, little gods, as Jesus says.
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In 2012 I have two words I feel need my personal exploration and deeper engagement; the words quantum and integral. The whole world of experience behind these two words sit at the forefront of a new frontier many of us are just starting to engage as readily as we have the world of cause and effect we have grown up with since we were kids.
