(Ir)religiosity

If I had to pick one point where Jürgen Moltmann has made the most significant impact on my own theology it would be his social doctrine of the Trinity.¹  In fact, it wasn’t until I read The Trinity and the Kingdom of God that I was actually excited about being Trinitarian!  Moltmann is not interested in the old heresies and old debates surrounding substance, or essence, or autonomous personhood.  Instead he is interested debunking monarchical monotheism, which inscribes domination and hierarchy into the very nature of God (not to mention humanity!) where God the Father — and here nobody would have a problem with the masculine, phallocentric language — sits at the top of the order, below him sits the Son, and last (and more often than not least!) sits the Spirit — because by this logic it only makes sense that the more feminine of the persons be at the bottom of the hierarchy!  Moltmann claims that all Trinitarian formulations at least since Augustine and surely since the insertion of the filioque into the Nicene Creed by the West are captive to this type of monarchical monotheism.

Obviously this creates all sorts of problems, especially if you believe that the human order should, more or less, mirror the divine order.  Then you have domination and subjugation writ large.  Enter Moltmann who, as we can already see, is more interested in the social and political implications — in other words, what all this means for the Imago dei — of the Trinity than modalism, Arianism, or any other ancient -ism that really has no bearing on contemporary theology.

Over against the hierarchical models, Moltmann imagines² a more egalitarian approach (I don’t know that he uses that word himself and I don’t know if he would take issue with it; I certainly don’t) which emphasizes the “community of God” that is comprised of the three persons and the perichoresis, the mutual indwelling, that binds them together as one.  For Moltmann, kenosis is not limited to the second person and the incarnation alone, indeed it is such kenotic love that holds the Trinity together, each person giving and emptying itself for the sake of the other.  In this relationship the identity of each person is inextricably linked to each of the other persons and through that bond each person sees the other as part of the Other and in the process sees itself as (an)other.³

In Moltmann’s larger theology this has deep political and social implications.  If the divine hierarchy is deconstructed then the human hierarchy must be too, and a radically new community — an order steeped with kenotic love and perichoretic unity that jettisons any form of domination — replaces it.  To be created in the image of God is to be a relational being, a mirror image of members of the the divine community.

You probably already see where this is going.  My question is what might happen if we not only took Moltmann’s social doctrine of the Trinity seriously but let it infiltrate our eccelsiology as well. What would happen if our ecclesial structures and our relationships with one another in the community we call the church were guided not by hierarchy and power but self-emptying, kenotic love and perchoretic egalitarianism?  What if we reversed the polarities of the order of power in the church and not only upheld our responsibility to the other but saw ourselves as (an)other too and deeply dependent upon the embodied connection between our subjectivity and the other’s subjectivity?  Is that not what Moltmann was getting at in his book title — “The Trinity and the Kingdom” — where the church doesn’t mirror the power structures and regimes of domination that rule this world but the very community of God in which persons are persons only in self-emptying relationship with other persons?  Is it just me or is it hard, if not impossible, to do that when the church is beholden to uneven power dynamics?

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• The relational Image of God: embracing the other (blakehuggins.com)

1. His argument in The Crucified God apropos to God’s suffering is a very close second, but I’m not sure Moltmann goes far enough.  The suffering, abandoned God in Christ on the Cross would be much more salient and radical if Moltmann let go of omnipotence, but he wants to hold on to it.  I think we have to let go of that idea.  Not to mention the residual theodicy issues that are still very much at work under the surface.  I may take this up later at some point. [↩]
2. This is really is nothing new.  Eastern Orthodoxy has always held this view and it dates back to at least the Cappadocian Fathers.  I think it is fair to say, though, that Moltmann certainly popularized it, especially in the Western tradition, and extrapolated its political and social effects a bit further. [↩]
3. Ok, Moltmann doesn’t exactly use this sort of postmodern accent, but I can’t help it.  I hear when I read him — especially on the Trinity. [↩]

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Chicago for the much anticipated Moltmann Conversation.  I’m pretty stoked.  Not only will I get to see one of the world’s foremost living theologians, I’ll also get to finally meet some really cool people I’ve been following online for a while now (wow, that sounded really stalkerish).

I doubt that I will liveblog much, unless I change my mind.  Tweeting should be much easier and I’d rather contribute to the larger conversation that will be going on the Twub, rather than make up my own.  That being said, if you follow me on Facebook it will be easier to keep up with everything if you follow me on Twitter.  I’m not going to feed all my tweets into Facebook because I don’t want to spam a bunch of people.  I’ll double up on some things but not all.  If you follow me on Twitter and aren’t interested in any of this, well, I apologize.

To make things super easy, I’ve embedded the Twub below so you can keep up with everything that is going on from here if you like.

Hopefully sometime over the weekend, or maybe early one next week, I’ll post my final thoughts on the whole experience.

I feel somewhat obligated to comment on the the latest “death of emergent” meme looping its way around the blogosphere. If you know what I’m talking about, you’re probably tried of hearing and talking about it — if you don’t, Tony has the most comprehensive link list I’ve seen. Just be sure you check out the post (and the comments) by Nick Fiedler that started it all, whether he wanted it too or not: “The Great Disappointment (A Post About Emergent). To be fair, Nick has further clarified his feeling in a later post, and perhaps best in a video chat with Zach Lind.

I’ve read/listened to all of these posts and commented on most of them, floating my thought on the whole thing. But after reading and commenting and re-reading and getting too upset and deleting comments I had typed up and ready to submit, I think I’m ready to publicly reflect.

I’ve expressed some of my own “disappointment” (as I originally called it) in some of my comments, but for different reasons. I said more than once and in a few different ways, that I’d like for the movement at large to move past a rejection of traditional Christianity and on to a different stage of the conversation. In other words, I’d like for us to get over the baggage that comes along with traditional evangelicalism and maybe even engage some fundamentalists from the other side of the spectrum who seem to think they have a monopoly on the prophetic voice.

Now I’m beginning to see that that’s not really disappointment at all. It’s my hope for the future of the conversation. That there is never any stasis in our dialogue and that we’re always pushing the envelope with a creative imagination.

And now you know where I stand. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote an article exploring a viable alternative to Sola Scriptura over at the Emergent Village blog.  Here’s a little taste.

“You emergent-y, postmodern-ish types just want to do away with Scripture! You don’t want to take the time to seriously wrestle with the Bible!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard those lines or something similar. You would think I developed a good answer a long, long time ago but I didn’t. For far too long I only spoke about the ways I didn’t want to view Scripture, which really only exacerbated the problem. Too many of us do that. I would like to suggest an alternative descriptive to our view of Scripture, something that is both positive and constructive.

Phyllis Tickle has suggested that it’s not if Sola Scriptura ends, but when. So what comes next? As much as I love to tag the “p word” before words, I’m not so sure it is sufficient for us to simply say we are post-Sola Scriptura. The Bible is too important for us to only strike-through the “sola.” And I think that many of us who resonate very deeply with Tickle’s sentiment take Scripture too seriously to only be reactionary. Frankly, we can’t afford to.

Read the rest at Emergent Village.

About six months ago, Emergent Village asked anyone and everyone who cared about the future of the organization to participate in a survey.  The purpose was to discern what direction the organization should take in the future.  There where four possible scenarios (you can read the descriptions in full as well as the entire letter of the board of directors here).

1. In 2011, having fulfilled its mission, Emergent Village has ceased operations.
2. In 2011, Emergent Village functions as a provocateur/prophet on the ecclesial landscape by linking and convening thought leaders and organizing a significant two-part event each year.
3. In 2011, Emergent Village has decentralized into many emergent neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods are local or regional cohorts which organize and present monthly meetings, events, websites, etc.
4. In 2011, Emergent Village has grown into a vibrant network. It supports and convenes cohort leaders and denominational network leaders, maintains publishing partnerships, and is a key partner in producing an annual national Christian faith, art, and social justice festival.

The clear winner among those surveyed where the last and second options, with the last being the winner.  Earlier today, EV posted a letter stating the direction of the organization over the next several years.

[W]e need to continue, but not institutionalize. We need to promote self-organizing neighborhoods yet maintain a kind of “village green” or commons for their to be cross-pollination and interaction among these different neighborhoods. We need to provide safe space for newcomers to the conversation and space for new ideas and provocative challenge to be shared as well. The question for us has been how to integrate these inherent tensions, insights, and agreements in a coherent plan.

The “coherent plan” consists of four main points that will be pursued (again, the expanded version can be read here).

1. To streamline, decentralize, and reduce expenses by discontinuing the role of National Coordinator.
2. To re-emphasize the importance of the website in creating space and supporting the network.
3. To decentralize by depending on friends of emergent—individuals, non-profits, and for-profits—to continue to seize new opportunities.
4. To reconfigure the board in 2009.

I am happy and impressed with this decision.  In the past I have been worried have institutionalization, centralization and homogenization, which, in my view undercuts the beauty of the network.  The statement from EV clearly asserts that his in not the intention.  Rather, the mission is to create intentional, organic space in which persons can interact and “cross-pollinate” (I love that image) while remaining faithful to the context space created in their particular locales.  It seems to me that this is the best and most effective way to participate in Missio dei not as another institutional monolith among many, but as an organic, grassroots, network allowing local freedom of expression and diversity.

I would encourage everyone to read the entire statement here.

What do you think?