Category Archives: Theology

A Theological Alphabet

A is for Apologetic

I’m not exactly sure how we can expect to do the work that God is calling us to do, if we can’t explain to people why we think it’s needed.  “Why” is the key word here.  Remember – Martin Luther King, Jr didn’t give the “I have a Plan” speech.

B is for Born Again

This is an idea that speaks to the heart of our work, no?  Have you been made new?  Have you begun seeing the world with Christ’s eyes?  If you want to bring change to the world, then you might want to make sure you have been willing to go through some yourself.

C is for Constantine

Constantine lied to us.  Well, to be fair, he gave us his opinion and we bought it.  Christians are not equal to Empire.  We are not in charge, we have no real pull.  If you do not understand yourself to be on the fringes, then you don’t understand Christianity.

D is for Death

I once heard that some monks were asked “do you fear death?” to which they replied, “No, we practice it every day.”  New life does not occur without death.  No lie.

E is for Eternal Life

Eternal Life is not the life you live when you die.  It’s not a euphemism for “Going to Heaven.”  Eternal Life is the reality that opposes the Temporal Life.  Remember this: If you can see the beginning and end of something, that thing is not real. Only that which has no beginning and no end is real.

F is for Faith

Blind trust is not the call of the disciple.  Faith is, and we say that God has given us our faith.  We did not create it.Faith is the ability to see and accept (despite our capability) what God has done for us and in doing through us.

G is for God

There is only one that is worthy of our worship: the one who determines the state of our being.  We call that one “God.”

H is for Heaven & Hell

Heaven and Hell are not literal places.  They are merely the ways we describe our eternal relationship to God based on absolutely zero understanding of the totality of existence.

I is for Idols

God’s spirit and power cannot be contained.  When we pretend that it can, the thing it is contained in is an idol.

J is for Jesus Christ

The intention, purpose, goal, and direction made known to us in a way we could understand.

K is for Kingdom of God

A first century metaphor for contrasting what God is up to based on the dominant influential power structure of the day.

L is for Love

The intention of beneficent action towards others.

M is for Martyr

One who is willingly attacked for the sake for the Freedom promised in Christ.

N is for Neighbor

1) The one we love.  2) Everyone

O is for Original Sin

To affirm Original Sin, is not the same thing as saying people are primarily bad.  It is to say that the state of being human means that, for some reason we can’t explain, we do awful things to one another and all of creation.

P is for Peace

The state of things when freedom is a reality.

Q is for Queer

What began a slur for those “not in the norm” has become a label of empowerment for those graciously showing us aspects of God we never knew we were missing.

R is for Religious

“Oh, you’ll like her – she’s very religious.”  While many faithful people I know are religious, many are not.  But of the faithful people I know who are not, all of them began as those were were.

S is for Sacrament

I forget a lot of things.  I forget that God loves us all equally.  I forget that I was created to be an agent of Christ’s Grace and Peace to the world.  I forget that you were created to do that, too. Sacraments remind us of this and allow us to participate in it.  It’s kind of like the servers at a restaurants, slurping up the Chef’s latest masterpiece before dinner service: How can they sell it if they’ve never tried it?

T is for Total Depravity

The doctrine of Total Depravity is connect to Original Sin and acts as a modifier for that state of being.  TD helps remind us that we should never be surprised when people do bad things.

U is for Universalism

Within the Christian world, the understanding that the reconciling work of Christ applies to all.  Not sure why this gets people so riled up.  I’m not sure I’d want to serve a God who didn’t or couldn’t reconcile the whole world.

V is for Vicar

As in “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ,” or the one who stands in for Christ.  I don’t really have a problem with that, except that I think it’s too limited.  We are all the vicars of Christ.

W is for Worship

To give some measure of honor and devotion.

X is for Xenophobia

“Fear of strangers.”  How many Churches are xenophobic?

Y is for Youth

If one more person says that the youth are the church of tomorrow, I’ll scream.  They are part of the Church of today and it’s damn time we started treating them like it.

Z is for Zacchaeus

A wee little man.

Everyone is a Theologian, Pt. 2: Verifiability vs. Truth

My first post claiming that everyone is a theologian sparked a bit of conversation in various places as it always does when I first introduce the idea.  The basic thrust is that some deeply resonate with the idea of a non-exclusive understanding of theological discourse and some are very uncomfortable/distrustful/etc. of the idea.  Usually, the rejection centers on the question of who can or should be able to determine what is “true.”

“Truth,” as it turns out, is very important to some people, especially when it comes to their theology.  Honestly, I can’t blame them.  This is important stuff we’re dealing with here.  But a progressive, change-oriented worldview has a broader understanding of truth that I think would be helpful to explore.  This understanding is rooted in more than being able to mimic what someone else has said, but in an understanding that we must accomodate multiple claims to truth because there are too many moments when we cannot reasonable chose one over the other.

What follows in an except from my forthcoming book, Open Source Church, in which I explore the idea of truth in relation to theology.  You can find a draft of the entire chapter (and book) in an earlier post*, but the basic set up is this: I am exploring the foundational principles of Wikipedia and applying those principles to the Church.

* scroll to the earliest posts in the “Church” category

* * * * * * * * * * *

Wikipedia has a neutral point of view

The second fundamental principle of Wikipedia establishes that the site advocates for no singular point of view.

Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. We strive for articles that advocate no single point of view. Sometimes this requires representing multiple points of view, presenting each point of view accurately and in context, and not presenting any point of view as “the truth” or “the best view”.  All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy: unreferenced material may be removed, so please provide references. Editors’ personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. That means citing verifiable, authoritative sources, especially on controversial topics and when the subject is a living person. When conflict arises over neutrality, discuss details on the talk page, and follow dispute resolution.

This is the pillar which begins to highlight the reason that many people disparage Wikipedia: the project is not concerned with getting to “the truth.”

When I speak about this project I inevitably get asked a host of questions based on a person’s perception that Wikipedia is (or can/will be) full of false information. “What can you say about those times when Wikipedia is wrong?  What good is an encyclopedia if we can’t go there to find the truth about something?”

First, let’s acknowledge the very real fear present in these questions: people want to know that the information they use in their day to day lives is reliable. We want to know that other people are not just “making stuff up.” Most of us are not comfortable in an “anything goes” environment. The reason, of course (at least, at some level), is that our lives depend on accurate information. An extreme example of this need would be the formulas used to calculate how gravity acts in our world and what kind of propulsion is needed in order for a plane to overcome its effects long enough for us to be carried through the air. No one wants to live in a world where someone can make up that kind of information up, do we? No, we want to live in a world where the science behind gravity is well established and consistently reconfirmed and verified.

But here’s where the situation gets a little sticky: What if we’re not talking about something so “certain” as gravity?  What if we’re talking about the city of Kiev in Ukraine?  Were you aware that there was a dispute on Wikipedia about the spelling of that name?  That, although the common English spelling is Kiev, in 1995 the Ukrainian government adopted Kyiv as the preferred spelling?

This may seem like a silly argument to you, but I can assure that it is not to the Ukrainians.  The “truth” of this matter is tied to national identity and ethnic history.  How do you determine where the “truth” lies?  I’m certain that, as with most anything, one could find “experts” and “non-experts” alike who would testify to the validity of the argument they support.  How do we decide?  Wikipedia says we don’t.  Functioning as Wikipedians, we would do well to remember that it is not our job to make that decision, and here is where the second of the Five Pillars comes into play.

Wikipedia is not the vehicle through which to present cutting edge research, or wax on about your new theory on Ukrainian linguistics.  Wikipedia is the place where all available information is brought to bear on the topic and a group of people who care about it (presumably because of some connection to, and knowledge of, the subject) sift through it and make some sense out of it.  Because there is some discrepancy about the topic, editors have to make sure and cite verifiable sources for the edits they make.  I may not like the edit you make, but if you can establish that there is at least a credible basis by which you made it I cannot categorically revert the change. If I feel strongly enough about the change, I can begin a discussion on it in hopes of changing enough minds that I would be allowed to make the edit I want.

In the Wikipedia community, this approach is referred to as “verifiability, not truth.”  Remember, the stated goal of Wikipedia is to ensure access to the sum of all human knowledge, not merely the pieces that a small group of people think are important.  As long as I can validate that what I am contributing is established and credible, then I am free to contribute it.

This also means that seemingly competing pieces of information might appear side by side in Wikipedia. As we explored in chapter 1, the open source worldview that informs this kind of structure holds that we each inhabit different contextual realities. Yours and mine will most certainly be different, but because we both have a valid basis on which to make our claims, we will need to learn to how to live with the tension. As of this writing, the English version of Wikipedia notes that the city in Ukraine is “Kiev or Kjiv.” Both claims are present, because both can be verified.

To say that applying this line of thought to the Church gives some people fits is an understatement.  If you think that messing with someone’s understanding of gravity or the spelling of Kiev/Kyiv makes them feel a little nervous and crazy, wait until you suggest that their theology might be treated in the same way.

Again, let’s acknowledge the fear present in this thought: our faith is a very real thing that is literally a matter of life and death for many people.  At some level, if our faith were not important, we would not waste our time on this question.  Just as with Wikipedia, we aren’t interested in an “anything goes” kind of environment.  We want to know that the thing we are giving our life to is trustworthy and reliable.  We want to know that when we come to know “the truth that will set us free” that we can count on that being the case.  Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran pastor and author of Salvation on the Small Screen, likes to communicate that desire this way: we want to know that what we’re involved in “is more than five minutes old.”

Let’s give ourselves some credit and say that, at our best, we are not arrogant people who think we can do this thing called the Christian life any old way we want. Especially those of us in confessional forms of the faith, it would be the height of arrogance to assume that we can say anything without being in conversation with what has come before us or is currently around us.

The problem that we find ourselves in, however, is that there is much less agreement about certain aspects of our collective faith than there is about gravity.  Besides the statement that “Jesus Christ is Lord” I’m honestly not aware of a piece of Christian thought that doesn’t more resemble the Kiev/Kjiv discussion.

What an open source church asserts is that there is not really a legitimate chance that we are going to be able to truly know the “truth” and we shouldn’t try.  Given the revealed nature of most versions of the Christian faith, I think we might feel comfortable enough to say that “the truth” has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, but our previous discussion of context also makes plain to us that your experience (and subsequent explanation) of it might radically differ from mine.

So where does that leave us?  What kind of church do we have at that point?  If we view the church as similar to Wikipedia what does it mean to assert that the Church has a “neutral point of view”?  I think it means two things:

1) When it comes the church, what we’re doing is passing on something equivalent to the “verifiable” information the Wikipedia is interested in. The church is not a vehicle for “experimentation” when it comes to theology or practice. This suggestion might be off putting to some, but this is not to say that other practices cannot be explored nor that theological exploration is not done.

The Open Source Church will never say “We have the Truth,” but it will say, “Here is what we have found to be reliable in many times and in many places.” It’s not “Believe this or you go to Hell,” but “If you want the Abundant Life, here’s what we have found to be helpful.”  Of course, the fun occurs when you and I begin discussing what exactly has been reliable over the ages. More often than not, we will find that we do not list the same things, which leads to the second point…

2) There will be space in the Open Source Church for different understandings to exist side by side. A classic example is the various understandings of atonement – of how and why Jesus’s death and resurrection is the basis of our salvation. Some would say that God was paying the Devil a ransom, while others would say that Jesus was taking the punishment that we should have had to endure for violating God’s laws. Still others say that Jesus’s death set us free from being bound to ourselves.

Which one is the “Truth”? From an open source viewpoint, they all are, and they all will exist side by side in the church. We, of course, must demonstrate how these understandings and other practices are reliably conforming us to the image of Christ.  However, once that bar is past, it’s just like Wikipedia’s discussion about “Kiev/Kjiv.”