will

...On the one hand, he (Neo) didn't seem to give the Bible the same place of absolute reverence and authority I had been trained to give it. On the other hand, he wasn't simply giving up on the Bible, nor was he shopping it, picking and choosing what he would buy and what he wouldn't. He really seemed to care about what God's will was, and I wondered, isn't that all that really matters?
McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, p. 51

Is that all that really matters?

For example, if you had asked a Scribe or Pharisee in Jesus' day, wouldn't he have told you that he cared deeply about God's will? If you were to at this time ask a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness, or even a Muslim, wouldn't they tell you that they care deeply about the will of God or Allah?

To return to something said a few entries back, didn't Paul say in Roman 9 that his people Israel had a zeal for God? But how much good did that zeal do them, because they did not have a zeal that was founded in true knowledge of God?

The subtle way McLaren in his writings denigrates the Scriptures can only lead to bad theology and bad decisions in life (like opening supporting and trying to elect a presidential candidate that is not only pro-abortion, but pro-infacticide). He undercuts the source of our faith by continually referring to bad theology from the past as reasons to question sound doctrine.

So, no, caring about what God's will is isn't all that really matters. Many people can make that claim who have no idea what God's will really is. It is through the Scriptures that we can know God's will, and denigrating them does not make one apparent care for His will any more real.

what's wrong with being right?

Jesus at one point claimed to be "the way, the truth, and the life". Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all the other religions. That completely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality.
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 21

John 14
14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if [it were] not [so], I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also.
14:4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
14:5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

So, let's see...

Jesus is talking about going away to prepare a place for the disciples, but returning for them and us so they can be where He is. Thomas basically says he doesn't understand, but Jesus explains that He is the way, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.

In saying He's going away, Jesus is talking either about His death or more likely about His ascension. His words about coming again are much the same as the angels' at His ascension, "this same Jesus...shall come in the same manner as He has gone into Heaven".

In other words, Jesus tells this to His disciples, giving them hope concerning the things they were to soon experience.

Bell clouds the issue somewhat, by making it about religions. It's may not be about any religion that calls itself Christianity (as Mormons may try to sell themselves), but it is about people being true Christians.

Perhaps a better question than who's right, is who's living rightly.

No, it's about believing in Christ, which does have to do with who's right. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, all would have said they were living rightly. In a sense, it wasn't their attempts at moral living that were wrong, it was that they didn't know Him when He came.

As Paul says, in Romans 9

10:1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

Strange, that Bell says it's not about being right, but Paul says that his people's problem wasn't their zeal for God, but that they didn't have or didn't exercise the knowledge they needed for the zeal to be good. Paul as Saul was zealous, but he was wrong, so it's likely he knew a bit of what he was talking about.

The question is still "Who's right", because it's only when that question is answered that one can determine who's living rightly. It make the question "Who's living rightly" presupposes that one has already determined what are the standards for 'living rightly', that one's standards are in fact the right ones, or to put most plains, that one is right.

undermining the Bible

He (Neo) continued, "What if the real issue is not the authority of the text on this line, but rather the authority of God, moving mysteriously up here on a higher level, a foot above the ground? What if the issue isn't a book that we can misinterpret with amazing creativity but rather the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God--maybe we could say the kingdom of God."
McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, p. 51

The error here is subtle, but it is there.

On the one hand, McL wants to leave open the idea that we can know "the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God...", but on the other, he wants to call into question the authority of Bible, which would be the means by which we would come to know those things.

As such, then, McLaren seems to undermine his own argument. He wants to make it about those things, but in calling in to question the Bible as authoritative, he calls into question whether we can rely on it to be the source for us to know and understand those things.

But then, maybe that's the point, or at least has become the point. The book is, after all, several years old, and McLaren has moved on and into other things, one of them being the current comtemplative and mystical movement.

Whether such statements of his as are above were made intentionally by him to leave the door open to mysticism, or if such ideas left him open to them, at the least that does seem to be where they go--when the authority of the Bible is undermined, then man will look elsewhere for authority. Even into the mystical, which has to be one of the most subjective and dangerous things people can get involved in.

making the old new, but not in a good way

In Moses' day, the way you honored and respected whatever gods you followed was by making carvings or sculptures of them and then bowing down to what you had made. These were gods you could get your mind around. Moses is confronting people with an entirely new concept of what the true God is like. He is claiming that no statue or carving could ever capture this God, because this God has no shape or form.
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 23

Perhaps Bell can tell us, please, when Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob made carvings and sculptures of God. Maybe he can tell us when the people who were in slavery in Egypt had taken up build such sculptures and statues.

Funny how we don't see that among them. Funny how we see the fathers building alters, but never statues. Maybe it's like they didn't see the need. God spoke to them, God called them, God made promises to them, God even consults them at times, but they don't make images of Him.

Maybe the people did kind of want a god they could see, kind of like in Egypt. Maybe that's one reason they made the golden calf. But that was the new idea, not the old one.

As such, then, Moses isn't confronting them with "an entirely new concept", but rather with an old one, one that goes back to the founders of their nation. If anything, such things as the golden calf represented new ways, things they likely picked up in Egypt, things they had to unlearn and set aside in order to return to the truth about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

don't bother about if it's really real...

Quotes from McLaren's "The Secret Message of Jesu", p. 62

The language of demons and devils seems to many people outdated and primitive, mythical and superstitious.

So???

Does one have to believe in a literal devil and demons in order to understand Jesus and his message?

Yes.

Or is it possible to read the exorcism stories with a kind of intentional naivete,...

Does that mean "like fairy tales"?

...suspending judgment long enough to see what insight may come if we don't dismiss them or explain them away too quickly?

Oh, it may be possible. I've no doubt McL and others have tried and will try to do some such thing.

Now, whether something is 'possible' and whether it is 'good' are two different things.

So, why not stress that these things really happened? Does it really matter that some people are dense enough to think their is no devil?

No, what matters to McL is that he needs room to reinterpret those accounts to fit what he wants them to say.

Remember his spin on the temptations of Christ? How the Bible in the accounts of the temptations say nothing about the things McLaren says they are about? Watch out for that same trick in regards to the accounts of Jesus' encounters with the demonic.

relevance in prophecy

If Revelation were a blueprint of the distant future, it would have been unintelligible for its original readers, as well as the readers of all succeeding generations, and would only become truly and fully relevant for one generation--the one who happened to live in the one period of time it is prognosticating about.
McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, p. 177

I think one can look at biblical prophecy, and see very quickly that quite often the fulfillment of it takes place quite some time, generations even, after the prophecy is initially given.

For example, God promises to make Abraham a great nation and the father of many nations. It's roughly twenty years after that promise is made that Isaac is born to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham has other children, but none of those are of that promise. Isaac has twins, Esau and Jacob, but only Jacob is a part of that promise.

Two generations, Abraham is dead, and the promise of him being a great nations comes down to--a generational line that is essentially a stick.

How relevant, then, was the prophecy and promise to Abraham? After all, he doesn't live long enough to see his offspring become a great nation.

Or God's prophecy and promise that Israel would process the whole of an area of land, which to date they still haven't had the entirety of?

Or the prophecy to the King Ahaz, not a shining example btw, that the virgin would conceive and give birth to Emmanuel? A prophecy that wasn't fulfilled for a few hundred years, until Christ was born.

Or all of the times God promises Israel that a time of peace and prosperity would come to them, which promises and prophecies have still not come to pass?

I think you can see now, that a prophecies relevance has to do not just with the generation that sees it fulfilled, but also with the ones that anticipate the fulfillment.

In regards to His return and the events of it, Jesus tells us that He does not know the day or hour, but that we are to watch and be ready. The relevance, then, of the prophecies of the end to those who were not around when they are fulfilled is that they are to be ready for them to be fulfilled, because the fulfilling may begin at any time.

So, McLaren's statement above does not hold water. The Revelation is relevant to all those generations who came between its being given and its fulfillment; rather, his attempts to water down it's prophetic meaning makes it either irrelevant to us because it's already been fulfilled, or simply another vessel for him to pour his liberal agenda into.

jumping ahead

...First, those committed to nonviolence based on the teaching of Jesus--if they are wrong now--wil someday be right. If God's dream is to come true for planet Earth, someday we will not "learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4 ESV). If we disagree with people presently committed to nonviolence, we should at least appreciate them for their foresight...
McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, p. 155

To really make this work, I have to go into slacker-Cali-surfer-dude mode.

Duuuude!!!

I was, like, you know, just look through this, you know, book, and saw this, you know, thing he said here. And I'm, like, so into that, you know, cause if I had, you know, like, go be a soldier, I couldn't, you know, stay here on the, like, beach, and surf my life away.

Duuude, that would be, like, so ungnarly, you know.

But then I thought, whoooooa, duuuude, take a look at this.

And I thought, hey, dude, doesn't, like, the Bible say that, like, in heaven there is no marriage? That people will be, like, you know, not married?

So I thought, whooooa, duuuude, if that's so true, then maybe I should, like, be like those people this, like, guy is talking about, you know? I mean, it's not, you know, like he's making a bit deal out of if they're, like, you know, right or not, only that they're, you know, ahead of their time or whatever.

So, dude, I think I'm ahead of my time, too, so, you know, maybe I can, you know, be like them.

I mean, if someday we're not going to have, you know, marriage, then, you know, maybe I should worry about it.

Duuuude, I so like that way of thinking, you know!! I can, you know, sleep around as much as I want, and, you know, all I'm being is, you know, like, ahead of the times, see.

Ok, enough of the slacker dude act, thankfully.

Hopefully that little bit of an attempt at humor will show how dangerous McLaren's thinking is here. Mention has already been made of his attempts to read his extreme pacifism into Scripture, and for him to try to make such people "ahead of the times" seems rather a stretch.

redefining prophecy

...So what we find in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus are not determining prognostications or schematic diagrams of the future but instead something far more valuable: warnings and promises
McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, p. 173

I think this is far too simplistic a view of prophecy. Yes, prophecy may contain elements of warning and of promise, but one does not need prophecy to warn or promise.

Rather, when Jesus says that all these things will be fulfilled, we're getting beyond simply giving warnings into "determining prognostication". We must accept the fact that Jesus is telling us that those things will occur, and not skate around the issue by watering it down. When Revelation begins by tells us that those things "must shortly come to pass", then any hint that they may be averted is lost.

Warnings tell us that if we make foolish or unjust choices, bad consequences will follow. Prophets from Moses to Jesus frequently give these kinds of warnings. Their purpose is nto to tell the future but to change the future. In warning the people about future negative consequences of bad behavior, the prophet's greatest hope is that his predictions of calamity will not come true.
McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, p. 173

I must give him roughly half a point here, maybe not quite that much but not far below it, either. There is at times an element of warning to prophecy, as he points out later in regards to Jonah. I think it is in Ezekial where God says that if, for example, a man receives a prophecy of ill and he repents and turns from evil, then it may be that what is prophecied will not come on him.

But saying that all prophecy is like that is going too far. Jesus' prophecy about the destruction of the Temple was not one that left open the possibility that such wouldn't happen. His statements to the disciples about His coming death were equally certain.

Promises also differ from prognostications. If I tell my children, "I'll always be there for you," I'm not making a prediction, because I will eventually die, and my statement won't be true. But taken as a promise, the statement is true.
p. 174

I remember the first time I read that, a bit ago, and being rather stunned. Taken as a promise, a false statement is true??? What kind of...?????

Consider Jesus' statement, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age." If I took McLaren's criterium, and applied it to Jesus' statement, I'm left with Jesus' promise being "true" even if He isn't really with us now.

But then, I've seen full preterist say that Jesus isn't with us now, that that statement is no longer applicable. And since McLaren has gone over into some form of preterism, perhaps even full, maybe that is what he means. It's something to look in to, maybe.

At any rate, the truth is, his promise to always be with his children is in the end a bad promise, because it's one he can't keep. Even now when he is alive, he is not always with them. And to make God's prophetic promises like that is insepid.

going too far

In other words, he (John the Baptist) says, "Being a soldier gives you extraordinary power. Don't abuse that power by extorting money or falsely accusing people." Through Christian history, most Christians have chosen to take a similar approach regarding war. It's not that Christians should be pacifists, they say, but we shouldn't abuse power--including the power of weaponry. We may still have to go to war, but we should be just and restrained in the way we conduct ourselves.

Others, though, have not been satisfied with this approach. they have looked at Jesus' kingdom manifesto, and they have felt it is impossible for a person to simultaneously put Jesus' teachings into action and participate in war.
McLaren, 'The Secret Message of Jesus', pp. 150-151

That, in a nutshell, summarizes the whole problem with emergents (though to be fair, they are not the only ones who are not 'satisfied' with the Bible's words and try to add to them).

You will not find any place in the New Testament were a radical (I hate that word) pacifism is either commanded or encouraged; in fact, in the three instances where John the Baptist, Jesus, and Peter had dealings with military personnel (John giving advice to soldiers, Jesus healing the centurion's servant, and Peter at Cornelius' house to open the door to the Gentiles for the Gospel), we see no condemnation at all of the military. John does not call them 'brood of vipers', Jesus commends the centurion as having more faith then any He had seen in Israel, and Peter is send by God to Cornelius.

Factor in, then, the Old Testament, and we can say that the pacifists must add to what the Bible says in order to support their position.

random thoughts from caputo

Taken from "After the Death of God"

One important thing we mean by the death of God is the death of the absolute center, of inhabiting an absolute point of view.
p. 117

A statement for radical relativism, something not even he can live up to. If there were no 'absolute center', he would have no basis on which to say the things he says.

I want to reference this quote first...

I reached a point where I could not stand this "essential thinking" anymore. When it comes to politics, essential thinking is essentially stupidity.
p. 121

Before pointing out this one...

As for myself, I would be perfectly happy if the far left politicians in the United States were able to reform the system by providing universal health care, effectively redistributing wealth more equitably with a revised IRS code, effectively restricting campaign financing, enfranchising voters, treating migrant workers humanely, and effecting a multicultural foreign policy that would integrate American power within the international community, etc., i.e. intervene upon capitalism by means of serious and far-reaching reforms
p. 125

Because I want to do something that, frankly, he cannot stand, and say that what he is advocating here is essentially socialism. Universal (read: badly done) health care, redistribution of wealth through taxation (socialism to the core), and trying to weaken US sovereign.

Thus ends my political screed.

What I want everyone to believe is that there is no one thing for everyone to believe.
p. 128

Outside of being self-contradictory (like saying that the only absolute is that there are no absolues), it's another thing that he cannot live up to nor accept in himself.

In the end, for me, I speak of the death of God in a restricted sense, in the sense of a critique of ontotheology, of the God of metaphysics, and, in particular, the God of sovereignty and power and omnipotence
p. 147

Plainly put, if nothing else.

But when reading (of the Bible) becomes literalism and when literalism ecomes a politics, it becomes dangerous.
p. 155

Like a non-literal reading would be less dangerous. If anything, a non-literal reading opens the door to all manner of mischief, because then anything goes.

What is so much more compelling about Jesus than about institutional, ecclesiastical Christianity, Catholic or Protesant, is the figure of someone who was crucified not as part of a grand divine design but unjustly and against his will, and if he returns we would crucify him again for meddling in the affairs of the Church.
p. 160

Plainly overlooking the biblical passages where Jesus says not one takes His life from Him, but that He lays it down. Probably some of those passages we shouldn't take literally, Caputo may say.

Caputo is probably right about one thing, though. He would likely be one to crucify Him. Jesus would probably not be happy with someone de-Godifying His Father, saying He's weak and powerless and isn't someone we should pray to. Such a radical fundamentalist as Jesus would eventually have to be silenced by those who think they know better.

example of pomo 'love'

Yes, I am a Dilbert fan. That's why I've linked to a few before this one.

Seriously, though, read this comic, and tell me that it doesn't sum up the whole pomo virus idea of 'love' and 'compassion' to a tee.

the Y2K of theology

From Caputo's essay in the book "After the Death of God".

An event is not precisely what happens, which is what the word suggests in English, but something going on in what is happening, something that is being expressed or realized or given shape in what happens; it is not something present, but something seeking to make itself felt in what is present.
p. 47

The event is always already ahead of us, always provoking and soliciting us, eternally luring us on with its promise. The truth of the event is its promise to come true. Events make promises that are never kept by any actual occasion.
p. 55

How we would use the word 'event' is not how Caputo uses it. We would use it to refer to something has happens, while he uses it to refer to something that does not happen, probably cannot happen, promises in some way to happen but never happens. For him, then, an event is actually a non-event.

What does this mean, then, to how he refers to God?

We might even say, to put all this a bold and simple stroke, that in postmodern theology what happens to us is God, which is why we call it postmodern theology. Or, to couch it in slightly more cautious terms, in postmodern theology what happens to us is the event that is harbored in the name of God...
p. 50

In the Scriptures the covenant is a promise or a covenant cut by God--that is why I speak unabashedly of theology--where the name of God is the name of an event, of something that stirs within the name, something I know not what, some sacred spark or fire.
p. 53

Having already established that Caputo does not believe in God (there is no one out there to whom we pray), we see him making God, or rather name of God, one of his non-event events.

So, to do a Chestertonian "in other words", his god is not all of the things the Bible says God is. When we pray to his god, we pray to a nothing. We long for a Messiah who will not come, even though the Bible promised He would come and He has come and will come again. His god does nothing in the world, does not work miracles, did not create and does not keep, and does not love us or care for us.

His ideas remind me of a Bible verse, which gives a list of things indicative of how things will be "in the last days". Among them will be people who will "have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof".

And the next words are an injunction to believers in regards to such people, "From such turn away".

willing to throw God off the lifeboat

...Indeed, by distinguishing between the name and the event, between the name of God and the event that transpires there, I have laid myself open to the possibility that this event, or stream of events, can twist free from this name and that we might then find ourselves out in the desert, in a khoral place of namelessness and the desire for new names...The event of solicitation that is issued in the name of God stands on its own, calls and solicits us on its own, whether or not someone named God is th author of that solicitation, in which case the death of the author, which would be here the death of God, is the condition of hearing this solicitation. In the desire for God, it is not God but the event that stirs within that name that is undeconstructible, and it would always be possible for that desire to take other forms, to find other formulations, now or in times to come...For, however precious and prestigious it may be, the name of God remains a historical name and, as such, a contingent formation or unity of meaning...
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp. 69-70

In reading this, it seems that he really is saying that, if the name of God should someday become of no use (which such as he will intentionally or not bring out, if given time, I would add), then it is to be chucked aside.

Strange ideas, rather blasphemous, one may say. But is it not a logical followup to his notions that there is no sovereign God, no God Who is out there, no God who is in control, no God period? He has stripped the name "God" of all real meaning, has filled it with a meaning of his own (I shall probably have to give a bit about his use of 'event' sometime soon), and then says that if the name God does live up to what he calls the event, then we are free to discard it, and find a new name.

And yet, when God gave His name to Moses, He called Himself "I am". And He is still "I am".

God is not an empty shell, to be filled with what we will. Nor is He dead or weak.

the postmodern's greatest fear

To propose a postmodern theology of the Cross, to meditate the event that transpires in the death of Jesus, is to try to think a certain death of God, the death of the ens supremum et deus omnipotens, the death of the God of power, in order to release the event of the unconditional claim lacking worldly sovereignty that issues from the cross...I would press further to a more pressing and important death, the death of the deus omnipotens of classical theology, and this in order to nourish the life of the event that stirs within the name of God, which is the stuff of our rebirth...insofar as there is any philosophical life left in this increasingly dated expression, the death of God, it refers to an ongoing and never finished project of deconstructing the God of ontotheologic, which is for me above all the God of sovereign power...The work of burning off the old metaphysics of omnipotence, which can never cease, must always be a way to fan the flame or build the fire of the event that transpires in the name of God.
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp 66-67

From my perspective, limited as it may be, perhaps these statements sum up the whole postmodern virus mindset as well as anything else--the thing the postmoderns are running from, that they fear, that they try to hide from by calling on the mountains of relativism and meaninglessness to hide them from, is the God of sovereignty, the all-powerful and all-knowing God.

Read Pagitt's "A Christianity Worth Believing", and see how he desperately tries to say that our concepts of God power and sovereignty have somehow come from Greek or Roman thought, not from anything in the Bible.

Read almost any emergent work, and see how they denigrate the concepts of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-sovereign God. It's a common theme.

What is there instead? Something of human construction. With Caputo, it's some kind of 'weak theology', which is essentially meaningless. With Pagitt, it's some kind of 'holism', which does not recognize any barriers.

Little gods made in man's image.

One can only hope and pray that these will have their eyes opened, while they have time to be opened.

making the simple sickeningly impenetrable

This comic works for the current postmodern virus on so many levels...



In reading pomos recently, I'm struck by how far they will go to take what is simple and make it into impenetrable blather. See Caputo's take on the Cross below here for an example, and Raschke's death of God thoughts, though those are rather clear compared to other things they and those like them have written.

One does after a while get that sour taste.

And, finally, as so well put in McLaren's "A New Kind of Christian", since we don't know what postmodernism is or where it's going, we'll probably need to live quite long before they finally decide whatever it is they are (all the while having to deal with them in the here and now). Though I doubt anyone, even they themselves, buy into such a patient view of things.

reversing the Cross

I am proposing a postmodern theology of the Cross in which I ask, what is happening on the Cross? What is happening to us? What events pulsate through that unforgettable scene? Of what are we to make ourselves worthy? It is a mystification to think that there is some celestial transaction going on here, some settling of accounts between divinity and humanity, as if this death is a amortization of a debt of long standing and staggering dimensions. If anything, no debt is lifted from us in tis scene, but a responsibility imposed upon us...The crucified body of Jesus is a site--one among many--of divine eventiveness, through which there courses a stream of events that traverse our bodies and shock the world under the name of the weakness of God, and we are to make ourselves worthy of this event.

John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", p. 66

The reversal here is staggering, and as much against the Bible as anything I've seen. Is it not written that righteous works cannot save us? Is it not written that all our righteousness is merely as putrid rags?

For a good look at what the Bible says about this, please check out this page.

http://www.carm.org/doctrine/Jesusdieforsins.htm

Some excerpts from it.

The sinner needs to escape the righteous judgment of God or he will face damnation.
Rom. 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."
Matt. 25:46, "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

But, no sinner can undo an infinite offense since to please God and make things right, he must obey the Law, which is the standard of God's righteous. character.
Gal. 2:16, "...by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."
Gal. 2:21, "I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly."

Jesus became sin for us and bore our sins in His body on the cross, thus fulfilling the Law.
2 Cor. 5:21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
1 Peter 2:24, "and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
Rom. 8:3-4, "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. 4in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

Caputo's 'we must make ourselves worthy' is simply another variation on works salvation. Not only that, his redefining (it's not about making us right us God) and denigrating (it's merely one such event among many) is unbiblical to the core.

praying to no one

Prayer is not a transaction or interaction with some hyperbeing in the sky, a communication with some ultrareality behind the scenes, the invocation or appeasement of a magical power of supernatural intervention from on high. Prayer has to do with hearing, heeding, and hearkening to a provocation that draws us out of ourselves.
John Capute, in the essay 'Spectral Hermeneutics', in the book 'After the Death of God', p. 57

It always raises the eyebrows, how much people will twist and contort themselves and their thinking in order to come up with some way to discard and disregard God. It goes beyond simply looking a bit like the old party game "Twister", and becomes more like some wild-haired mad scientist wildly and maniacally splicing various genetic materials to create the monster that turn on him in the end and devour him.

Read Caputo's words, and see that he is in essence proclaiming a form of 'athiestic spirituality'. When we pray, we do not pray to God, because there is no God out there to pray to, a statement athiestic to its core. But there is a spirituality or something like it that he does say that we hear from, perhaps it is only ourselves and something inside us that we hear from (a bit later then the above he seems to say that it is 'our desire').

One may wonder what he hopes to gain from this dismissal of God, and why emergents seem to look to him, because they do.

what lies behind deconstruction 4

Deconstruction is the flailing of the spades of God's gravediggers. To refuse the ceremony of burial, however, is a more culpable form of hubris than to take the shovel in hand. For the stench of "divine decomposition," as Neitzsche phrased it, is everywhere.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 30

Here is something I remember from way back when. I may not have it worded exactly at it was, but I think I have the basic point of it. It has to do in regards to people like the above, who want us to take Neitzsche's "God is dead" statements seriously.

"God is dead."
Neitzsche

"Neitzsche is dead."
God

The point is, somewhere in this world, there are the remains of the man Neitzsche. If there is a "stench of '...decomposition'", it is coming from that spot. One may also wish that it were coming from the 'philosophy' Neitzsche put forth, because that would the most merciful thing to happen to it; instead, there are people who seem to latch on to it like he were some kind of prophecy, like they were the words of a genius instead of the words of a madman.

There is no "stink of 'divine compositions'", because despite the many of people like Raschke, God is very much alive. Despite the words of such as Marcus Borg, Christ is indeed risen from the dead. Despite McLaren's attempts to caricature the second coming as some kind of "Jihad Jesus", Christ will return to set up His kingdom on the earth. Despite Caputo's desire for a 'weak God', God is still sovereign.

These people's attempts to elevate man can only end in disaster, because they are lies and cannot end any other way. May they, I pray, put aside their pride in their man-made philosophies, and finally bow before the living and true God, and truly come to the Christ who died for them and rose from the dead.

what lies behind deconstruction 3

Deconstruction is the dance of death upon the tomb of God; it is the
tarantella whose footfalls evoke the archaism of the Great Mother, who takes
back with the solemnity of the Pieta her wounded, divine son.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 28

Whatever the last part of that statement means (what Great Mother?), it's pretty clear again that this is about an athiesm wearing a faux-christian mask.

beware...

Beware of Brian Mclaren

This is a very nice summation of some things whacky coming from McLaren. It's a long entry, and I think is actually from another source linked to at the beginning, but well worth reading.

My sole real complaint with it are statements about C.S. Lewis, whom I guess the writer doesn't like, and seems to want to tie in with emergent and McLaren. Frankly, being somewhat familiar with Lewis, I think that on the whole he is very much the antithesis of things emergent.

We must be careful of allowing emergents to make people like Lewis and Chesterton 'posthumous friends of emergent'. Were all of their ideas good ones? No. We must approach them as we would any other teacher, as the Bereans did even towards the apostles, searching in the scriptures to make sure what they taught is really what is. But simply because an emergent references one of them does not make them a part of that movement.

what lies behind deconstruction 2

Again, we must underscore our leading thesis: deconstruction is the death of God put into writing
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 27

Would that all postmoderns were so honest.

what lies behind deconstruction 1

Deconstruction, which must be considered the interior drive of twentieth-century theology rather than an alien agenda, is in the final anaylysis the death of God put into writing, the subsumption of the "Word" by the "flesh," the deluge of immanance
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 3

subsume (root for 'subsumption)

1. to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
2. to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
3. to take up into a more inclusive classification.

'Immanance' is more difficult, at least as he Raschke seems to want to use it here, but considering that he basically says tha that the "Word" is taken up into the "flesh", or that the "Word" is put under the rule of the "flesh", then I suppose it's like to mean something like this.

immanance (it's a long encyclopedia entry, so not all of it will be here, please read all of it)

The term "immanence" is usually understood to mean that the divine force, or the divine being, pervades through all things that exist, and is able to influence them. Such a meaning is common in pantheism and panpsychism, and it implies that divinity is inseparably present in all things. In this meaning immanence is distinct from transcendence, the latter being understood as the divinity being set apart from or transcending the World (an exception being Giovanni Gentile's "Actual Idealism" wherein immanence of subject is considered identified with transcendence over the material world)...

...the term has been utilized by the Kennesaw School to elucidate the emergent nature of communalized relationality and the potential for becoming within an Age of Globalization.

Trying to get one's head around this is not easy, and I'm not so sure I have done very well at it. But some parts are pretty clear. It's not the first time I've come on the "death of God" thought that tries to disguise itself as Christian. I think Caputo puts it as the "death of the God of sovereignty", substituting instead a "God of weakness".

dispersing

A bit of something different. A Dilbert comic which comments on those who try to not make decisions and commitments. I doubt it was aimed to postmoderns, religious or not, but it seemed apropo.



It looks like it's not going to complete fit on here, sorry about that. But if you click on it, it should take you to where the complete strip is located.

spinning Christ's tempations III

...and refuses to indulge in spectacle to prove himself (which would subvert Gods natural system of being proven through trials and experience).
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, p. 139

And the verses...

Luke 4
4:9 And he led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
4:10 for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to guard thee:
4:11 and, On their hands they shall bear thee up, Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone.
4:12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.

As in the other two, there is no hint from the context of the verses of what McLaren is trying to make the verses say. From the nature of the temptation and Jesus' response, one may well see it as something similar to the first--a temptation to presumption, to act without the Father's approval.

Further, just as Jesus several times provided provisions in a manner "which would subvert God's natural system of gaining honor through humble service", at least to McLaren's mind, so too were many of His miracles very public and witnessed by many. He even saw them as being proofs of who He is, as for example here.

John 11
41.So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
42.I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."
43.When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
44.The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

And there are these words from Peter at Pentacost.

Acts 2
22."Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.

If the temptation was that if people were to see Jesus doing something miraculous then they would believe, His life showed otherwise. In fact, it was the very public raising of Lazarus from the dead that sparked this on the part of those who were against Him.

John 11
45.Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.
46.But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47.Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs.
48.If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."
49.Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all!
50.You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."
51.He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation,
52.and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
53.So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Whether that was the nature of the temptation, though, is unclear. Nothing is said by either the devil or Jesus about people's reactions; rather, Jesus responds only to the temptation to act presumptuously, to simply do whatever or anything in the expectation that the Father will bail Him out.

spinning Christ's temptations II

...refuses to take a religious shortcut to authority and kingship (which would subvert God's natural system of gaining honor through humble service)...
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, p. 139

And the passage referred to...

Luke 4
4:5 And he led him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
4:6 And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be thine.
4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

It's simply...incredible, the fact that Mclaren here makes no mention at all of the nature of the temptation, that the devil's demand was the Jesus should worship the devil instead of the Father.

But to look at it in a more (post)modern-day way, please look at what McLaren himself says here.

Emerging church leader Brian Mclaren on Lambeth, mission and reconciliation

And fourth, I think our future will also require us to join humbly and charitably with people of other faiths - Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, secularists, and others - in pursuit of peace, environmental stewardship, and justice for all people, things that matter greatly to the heart of God.

Jesus refused to worship anyone or anything other then His Heavenly Father, even if it meant that the devil keeps authority over the kingdoms of the world. McLaren, on the other hands, encourages compromise and even acceptance of those in false religions in order to accomplish what is in his mind an improving of the world.

The difference in these two views can hardly be more different.