So with this being the week of “If you can’t have the Bible you love, maybe you should try Loving the Bible you have,” as noted over at Unsettled Christianity, I thought that an apropos theme song for Bible lovers this winter might be the following from Stephen Stills:
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Knowing God?
The question of whether, and how, we can know God has been very much alive for the past couple hundred years. It’s been a problem philosophically, as the gulf between a supposedly transcendent God and the world in which we find ourselves has proven too much, say the philosophers, for the God on the other side to do us much good.
God got sent to the in-law suite in the attic whilst we went about our daily business of cooking and cleaning and loving and warring.
With Freud and Feuerbach, the problem came closer to home. Maybe the problem isn’t that God is too much “out there” to do us any good. Perhaps the problem is that God is far too much “inside.” Perhaps God is a projection of our needs, of our desires.
We are living, now, in a somewhat peculiar moment. The information age has made the musings of the phiolosphers more readily available; the education age has made advanced study of theology and philosophy more extensively enjoyed (or, at least, performed!); and people with philosophical and theological training are bringing their message to the masses both in books and in freely available popular media (return here to point 1: information age).
Where this is all going is here: over the past two weeks I have read Peter Rollins’ Insurrection, heard him with Barry Taylor on the Homebrewed Christianity Podcast, engaged with Rollins’ “love is God” philosophy with friends on Twitter–only to turn to the first 30 pages of Karl Barth, Year 2, and find his insistence that there is a God who is objectively known and knowable, because this God is, in fact, known in the church.
Barth Experiences God by Listening to Homebrewed Christianity on His iPod
Here, Barth does not argue against the position that God as such is truly known, if mediated, God makes Himself known and people hear with faithful obedience. Instead, he begins with the assumption that because there is a God made known through Jesus Christ in the church, that God is, in fact, knowable.
Barth’s argument is circular: God is knowable because we know God. He does not attempt to enter the circle by way of argumentation, but begins within the Christian story where God is made known in Christ and in scripture, and uses this story to tell us what it is to know God.
But I agree with Barth in the necessity of this circularity: you do not arrive at the God of the Christian story by starting with an idea of God in general and working your way in. You either believe in this God or you don’t; you either believe in this particular God, or you believe in another. The unmoved mover is not the God of Israel.
I found Barth more satisfying than those who suggest that God is of ourselves rather than made known according to God’s own decision.
In short, the notion that God is of ourselves, or found in our actions, or project of our desires, is not the God of the Christian story. If God was not in Christ reconciling the world to Godself, then the story is simply false. To confess resurrection is to look to a moment in time when God broke into history and vindicated the crucified Christ–truly overcoming death and taking Jesus out of the world.
The God found in my acts of love does not have this power, the power of the gospel, which is real power for salvation.
Barth manages to hold onto both the uniqueness/otherness and true knowability of God. God chooses to reveal Godself as an object that we can know. This knowledge is always mediated: ultimately through the Word of God in the flesh.
Knowledge is true because God chooses to make Godself object. It is unique because we are dependent on this self-disclosure and cannot know the true God without such disclosure. It is true knowledge when we not only believe that this God has spoken, but obey the summons that the voice brings.
The self-involving God is an object of our knowing through a self-involvement of us as knowers. Thus, while the truth of the notion that God is known when we love in obedience to God is maintained, so is the otherness of God who is not identical with that love of neighbor itself.
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Jerry has his Barth Together thoughts here.
And Brain Maiers is back in the game!
Anyone else?
On the Importance of Bombs
Warning: this post is rated PG-13 for language. If you find strong language deeply offensive, please come back tomorrow.
But really, the offense of strong language is the point. Sometimes life needs to be rated PG-13 for language. Because the reality of life rarely lives up to its Rated-G billing (better: the Rated G fascade we Christians sometimes want to erect over it).
I’ve been poring over A Serious Man in anticipation of my world-changing SBL paper, “New Country for Old Men: Biblical Wisdom Traditions in Coen Brothers Filmography.” This movie echoes Job at many points. It wrestles with the reality of a world where life 
comes apart at the seams–and yet where God is believed to be active to give and to take away.
Often, the experience of the world’s privations is worse when we believe that the hand of God is sovereign and active. It wraps up God within the causality of our disappointments and pains.
The agony of this assumption of divine intervention is captured in all its rawness in the scene of Larry and his brother Arthur by the pool (warning: strong language begins here):
LARRY
(HISSING)
Arthur!
You’ve got to pull yourself together!ARTHUR
It’s all shit, LARRY! It’s all shit!LARRY
Arthur. Don’t use that word.ARTHUR
It’s all fucking shit!LARRY
Arthur! Come on!ARTHUR
Look at everything Hashem has given you! And what do I
get! I get fucking shit!LARRY
Arthur. What do I have. I live at the Jolly Roger.ARTHUR
You’ve got a family. You’ve got a job. Hashem hasn’t
given me bupkes.LARRY
It’s not fair to blame Hashem, Arthur. Please. Sometimes
-please calm down-sometimes you have to help your-
self.ARTHUR
Don’t blame me! You fucker!LARRY
Arthur. Please.ARTHUR
Hashem hasn’t given me shit. Now I can’t even play cards.LARRY
Arthur. This isn’t the right forum. Please. Not by the
pool.
Arthur weeps.
Arthur… It’s okay… It’s okay…
“Don’t use that word.”
Despite his circumstances, Larry is trying to cling to a world where people get what they deserve–even as he sees that it’s not true in his own case. And despite his circumstances, Larry (somewhat Job-like) will not curse in his wrestling with God.
But Arthur will.
Why is this scene so important? For the movie, for reality, there is a place to cry out in vitriolic protest against the injustice of the world. There is a place for raising our voices to God and telling God that the world where “God’s favor shines upon the righteous” and “the traps of the wicked spring upon themselves” is not the world in which we find ourselves from day to day.
So at the risk of justifying what is often frivolous behavior, I want to say that dropping s-bombs and f-bombs is sometimes an important response of Christian faithfulness to the God who has power over all things, and yet has not made all things just and good in the world as we experience it.
This is the biblical practice of lament: to look at what is wrong with the world, stand by it, and call out to God for a transformation of the cosmos such that it reflects the goodness of God. We will not let go of the reality of a sovereign Lord enthroned at God’s right hand. We cannot deny the failure of the world to embody the grace and righteousness by which this Lord and his God would be known.
And so, we lament.
And sometimes, this means crying out with all the boldness we can muster.
And even an f-bomb or two.
Bill Mallonee & the Skeltons
For all you Bay Area folks, here’s something you don’t want to miss:
On Oct 22, Eucharist SF is hosting a concert featuring Bill Mallonee. 
If you don’t know Mallonee, check out his interview on the Homebrewed Christianity Podcast from a couple years back; or, if you’re more the reading type, check out this piece in Christianity Today.
But wait! There’s more!
The opening act will be, correct me if I’ve gotten this wrong, “Flying Childers,” the amazing Hannah Skelton and Kyle Skelton duo. Laura got a chance to hear them on Sunday and I absolutely cannot wait to hear them play.
All this for a mere $10.
8:00-11:00 p.m. Oct 22. Eucharist Commons. A bit more info is available on the Eucharist website (see the calendar under Oct 22).
See you there!
California Song
In case you’re wondering (I know you were), this is the Mountain Goats song that is currently occupying a large part of my days’ mental soundtrack.
It’s from a 2007 Zoop show, which is available in its entirety here.
Can you see that young star overhead? It’s the one that designed my undoing….
Theological Interpretation Article in Christianity Today
I’ve had a thing or two to say about theological interpretation on ye’ old blog over the past couple of years. I am a theological interpreter of scripture, and strive to be a Christian reader of scripture, at that. So in general I resonate with, and am happy for, a movement that strives to carve out respectable space for so engaging the Bible in both the academy and the church.
This month’s Christianity Today has a cover story on theological interpretation by J. Todd Billings. It is not yet available online, but read it when you can if you would like a nice overview of what theological interpretation is up to.
The article echoes commonly stated needs of the church: to have a Bible that speaks to it as a word for people who are devoted to loving and following the Lord and God about whom the text speaks.
It also indicates that one of the more important ways forward is to read using the rule of faith.
As usual, I find the former element more important and compelling than the latter, as I continue to find myself scratching my head about what someone committed to the Rule of Faith is supposed to “do,” what kind of identity it forms, and why Christological readings should be transformed into Trinitarian readings. But then again, you’ve heard all that from me before!
This article really is a judicious piece, a welcome and accessible introduction to what is happening in the world of theological interpretation of scripture and provides some sense of why it is important.
Cow Patty
Some songs leave their mark because of their beauty, some simply haunt us. For no good reason. Like, it’s not even a good song.
When my family lived in Spain, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (affectionately called “A-FaRTS” in the Kirk house) was one of the syndicates for the Dr. Demento radio show. It was a weekly show where you could hear great stuff like Weird Al Yankovic songs, “Dead Puppies,” “Fish Heads,” and the like.
The very first time we discovered the program, my mom had turned on the radio just in time to catch the last half of a song whose only line I remembered was, “Forty shots rang out, and forty people fell; yeah they had missed each other but they shot that town to Hell.” I also recalled that the protagonist was named Cow Patty.
I’d thought about that song off and on over the past 25 years. But I never heard it again. I searched for it online a few times, but to no avail.
Until today.
That song that, by introducing me to Dr. Demento, helped cement in my mind the eternal value of changing the lyrics of songs, and of song as a means of loving mockery, I heard today for just the second time ever, and for the first time in its entirety. And here, I share it with you.
You’re welcome.
Now tell me, wasn’t that one worth waiting a quarter of a century for? In fact, I might wait another quarter century before I listen to it again…
Adam Debate on NPR
NPR ran a story this morning on the Adam and Eve debate in Evangelicalism. It included this quote:
“Evangelicalism has a tendency to devour its young,” says Daniel Harlow, a religion professor at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school that subscribes to the fall of Adam and Eve as a central part of its faith.
“You get evangelicals who push the envelope, maybe; they get the courage to work in sensitive, difficult areas,” Harlow says. “And they get slapped down. They get fired or dismissed or pressured out.”
Yes. That. Got take a listen. Or a read.
Tim Gombis on Paul
In this month’s Christianity Today, Tim Gombis has a fantastic article orienting us afresh to the apostle Paul. He calls our attention to several ways in which contemporary evangelicals need to keep having our reading of scripture recalibrated.
First, he challenges the common perception that at his conversion Paul left behind a legalistic Judaism in favor of a salvation-by-grace Christianity. This is a nice, short summary introduction to the New Perspective: Paul’s problem with Judaism wasn’t legalism, but ethnocentrism. But Paul himself remained a Jew and never called other Jews to leave their Judaism behind. 
He then makes a point of showing that Paul’s message was as communal as Jesus’ own proclamation of the Kingdom of God. I agree with the point generally, though I might want to work it out a bit differently. Is Acts’ summary of Paul’s preaching as “kingdom of God” historically accurate? Perhaps, but I’m not entirely sure. I am sure, however, that the call to see our Christian identity as inherently communal is spot on, and timely.
The third point is one I would like to see him camp out more on (and maybe you can do it in the comments, Tim, if you’re reading!). He says that Paul shatters our expectations of a powerful, attractive leader. I agree.
So, what does this last point have to do with how we do (and should or shouldn’t) conceptualize leadership in the church today? Is there something normative in Paul’s self deprecation?
It’s a great, short article with lots of potential for stirring up further questions.
One thing that I didn’t see so much there was whether there might be something that holds all of these things together. If evangelicals have tended to misconstrue these various parts of Paul’s life and teaching, is it because these are small indicators of a larger problem of reading Paul aright?
My own perspective on that question is that several of these issues come into sharper focus when we recognize that the Christ event, as Jesus’ death and resurrection, is what we are joined to when we are joined to the body of Christ, by the Spirit, and thereby enter the people of God.
The question of law versus union with Christ provides a better in to Paul than legalism versus grace [full stop]. The reality of union with Christ means being part of the body, which is inherently communal–salvation is in Christ, where all the other saints are. Life in Christ is an enactment of the story of the crucified Christ–so leadership is not about slick talk, beautiful appearance, and obtaining power, but about embodying the folly of the cross.
If you can’t get enough Gombis on Paul, I commend to you Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed and The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God.
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