EngineeredTheology

A little over a year ago I made a database to contain some of my bible notes and began transferring a lot of what was in my bible into that database. This had three problems. The first was that a lot of the notes I had in my bible were pretty old, and my viewpoint has changed quite a bit since then. Secondly, I have a lot of notes, and transferring them all over was taking forever. Thirdly, the page I wrote made it difficult because it separated the adding of a note from the verses and there was no real way to edit them.

I decided to add all the notes I had because there still might be something in those old notes that is interesting. Unfortunately I didn’t even get through the Pentateuch because of problem #2, which is making the determination that the database will just have new notes. For the last problem, I spent some time improving things. Wanted something a little more dynamic, so I taught myself AJAX (which really just meant improving my JavaScript). Now, the interface to the database is much better and significantly easier to use – so adding a note to a verse just involves clicking on the verse and selecting the right menu, editing the note is done with a double click.

I was expecting this book to be funnier than it was. It does have its funny parts, but it is much more of a proper novel than a joke book. If we take the obvious jokes out (Jesus probably did not meet a Yeti and invent Judo), is the story that unrealistic? It certainly is possible that Jesus stayed in Galilee for until his ministry, but things may make more sense if he spent much of those years somewhere else.
I was seriously impressed with the book that pokes a little bit of fun at the biblical stories, but doesn’t seem to make a joke of Jesus himself. In fact, the story brings some humanity to Jesus and begins to answer the question of what it must have been like to be so alike, but again so different from everyone else and how lonely and isolating that could be. I was also impressed in the way the author pulls out where eastern religions match up with Jesus’ teachings, and how (from a Christian perspective) he pulls out what would be true, and separate it from what misses the mark.
Certainly this book is not for everyone (unfortunately most Christians wouldn’t get much past Jesus bringing lizards back to life as a child) – but looking through some of the humor it is well researched and thought out and pushes what we might think of Jesus.

What’s All This About Rethinking Paul is much like teaching someone that the earth revolves around the sun. It is going against tradition, and also against what we have learned to see at first glance with our eyes. It also is against the idea that we are at the center of it all. Christianity is not about me and my salvation, but about the work that God is doing. As we are piecing the puzzle together of how to interpret the bible, we need to be aware of the pieces we are leaving out. Much of the current ideas of Paul are made with puzzle pieces poorly fit together that are mearly echos of what he is really trying to say. The Protestant tradition was built on a framework of reading the bible fresh, despite tradition. We dishonor the reformers if we take what they said as a static truth.

Rules of Engagement We must be reading the scripture in its first century context, to understand what the words ment at the time. We also must read Paul as a whole, and interpret the passages as a piece of a whole continuous argument and train of thought. We are in trouble if our finished exegesis only relates tangentially to what Paul actually wrote.

First-Century Judiasm When Paul was writing Romans, Jews in general were not discussing how they might get into heaven. They saw themselves still in exile because God was righteous, and they had broken their covenant. They were awaiting the day (reading Danial 9 to try to figure out when it would be) when God would finally return and restore them. Righteous is “conformity within a norm” (64), and for God these are the norms in which “he himself has set up, in other words, the covenant” (64). The lawcourt implication of righteousness is important. If someone was deemed righteous in court, he would be in the right (innocent if the defendant, or in favor of the plantiff). The judgement is justification, and the result is now the person is righteous. Neither of these terms has anything to do with virtue specifically. For God an Israel, “the point of the covenant always was that God would bless the whole world through Abraham’s family” (67). God will be faithfull to that covenant (righteous) and save his people from their exile (which was again a righteous move as spelled out in the conditions of the covenant). What was discussed in first century Judiasm is how to keep the law in order to keep Israel’s end of the covenant (how Israel can be righteous).

Justification The meanings of words can grow beyond their original intent, but for words like justification, this can cause problems. It has grown into a word that encompasses the entirety of Christianity. The problem is that when people read back through the bible, it mixes up what the author was actually trying to say. Justice and righteousness are the same Greek and Hebrew word. They “denote the status that someone has when the court has found in their favor” (90). It is the status of a person that changes when the decree is made (in the right). “Justification makes someone righteous, just as the officiant at a wedding service might be said to make the couple husband and wife – a change of status” (91). It says nothing of their character; one could be righteous and immoral, or even guilty.
All of this, for Paul is wrapped up in “covenant”. The covenant is a shorthand for why God called Abraham, or really His plan to bring all of humanity back together and repair what was done in Eden. Paul’s soteriology is looking at God’s plan, which we can call the “covenant”. The problem with the “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” (covenant) is the Israel part – who had not been faithful to the covenant and needed a faithful Israelite through whom the single plan can proceed (the Messiah who is faithful). Because he represents the people, he can take upon himself the death they deserved. “The messiah is able to be the substitute because he is the representative” (106).

The rest of the book is working out these ideas in specific through the exegesis of the Pauline epistles – and are far too dense to summarize.

I couldn’t resist a book that begins the first chapter with Jesus sitting in a vegan restaurant, listening to his iPod, being approached by the Apostle Paul who promptly punches him in the face.

I can’t remember another book I’ve read that takes a satirical approach on discussing how we follow Jesus. After reading it really makes me wish this form of writing wasn’t so rare in current literature. The humor and absurdity brings us to question who it is we really think Jesus is. We are confronted with the Magic 8 Ball Jesus, Political Jesus, Peacenik Jesus, Televangelist Jesus, King James Jesus, etc. We have all these ideas of who Jesus is, but they all come down to ways we have reduced the real live Jesus into something we can contain and deal comfortably with. The fictional tale is about how we must give up these imaginary Jesuses if we want to ever come in contact with the true living Jesus, and how easy it is to deceive ourselves all over again.

The book, while not exactly short is an extremely quick read and pretty entertaining. In the realm of the Screwtape Letters, talks a lot about what Jesus is not, but has a difficult time when it gets to what Jesus is. Amusingly, this is exactly how we end up with imaginary Jesuses instead of apophatic statements. It points to how we need to reckon the Jesus in our minds, to the Jesus found in the Gospels. The true Jesus is found in the Gospels making the people around Him uncomfortable, challenging social norms, and encouraging others to freely give of themselves; can we expect the true Jesus who lives with us now to be any different with us?

God as a Mystery
We experience the Divine as two opposites, both farther from us, and closer to us than anything else. It is the very center of who we are, and also more foreign than what we could imagine. “Well known to the smallest child, incomprehensible to the most brilliant theologian “(12). Following God is like Abraham’s journey from a familiar country to an unknown, from light to darkness. We move from the “light of partial knowledge into a greater knowledge which is so much more profound that it can only be described as the ‘darkness of unknowing’”(14).
The faith we have is a faith in God not a faith that God is. “God is not the conclusion to a process of reasoning, the solution to a mathematical problem” (16). We believe in God like we believe in a person – it is personal not logical. Therefore, faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive (Mark 9:24). While there are no logical demonstrations of God, there are pointers towards a belief in a personal God (order and beauty, our personal conscience and a sense of the infinite, and relationships with other people).

God as Trinity
If we can affirm that God is personal and that God is love – we imply sharing and reciprocity. A person is not the same as an individual because relationships are how we become real people. This relationship is not static, but dynamic like all relationships. An analogy for this trinity is that of three torches burning with a single flame. It is three persons with one essence. This is unlike how we can say that three different people are still classified as “man” because each of these three people have an individual will. In the Trinity there is distinction, but not separation – one cannot act separately from the other two. The trinity is paradoxical and not something demonstrated by our reason, but revealed to us by God. It is from this personal relation within God that we find our own being and purpose in living that trinitarian unity on earth with communion between each other.
The Father is the source and the origin of the Godhead. The other two are defined in their relationship to the Father. The Son is the order and purpose that is in all things, making the universe into an integrated whole. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God that is within us where the Son is with us and the Father above or beyond us. With these neat categories we must remember “It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God’s ineffable greatness with the human mind” (34).

God as Creator
All was created not our of obligation, but by the free will of God – out of his love, which is to share and have others outside of himself to participate in this love. We have always existed in the mind of God, and our creation is the point where we began to exist for ourselves. Creation was not a one time event, but continues by the continual will of God (He did not make the world, but is making the world). Our creation is dependent on God, and without him we would cease to exist. “As Christians we affirm not pantheism but ‘panentheism’. God is in all things, but yet also beyond and above all things” (46). All things are created good, so sin and evil is not a “thing”, it is not a substance. Evil is the absence of good, it is the result of a free will twisting and perverting what is good.
Man is created as three distinct, but inseparable parts: body, soul, and spirit. Our body is our physical aspect (a rock has a body). The soul is what animates us and gives us life (trees and birds have bodies and soul). The spirit is what separates us from the animals. It is our ability to know good and evil, to act independently from our instincts. God has created two levels, the first inhabits the angels who have no physical body. The second level He formed the universe with various types of mineral, vegetable, and animal life. Man is the only thing that exists on both levels. We are more complex than the angles, and therefore created higher than they. Man is to be the mediator to unite the world to offer it back to God. The body is a piece of our true self, and without it we could not perform our mediating role. Separation of the body and soul at death is unnatural, contrary to God’s original plan, to be resolved at the resurrection.
Man is created in the image of God. This is the thing that distinguishes him from the animals, which includes his free will. In this freedom, each human realizes his divine image uniquely, which makes each human unrepeatable, irreplaceable, and therefore infinitely valuable. Though created in God’s image, each one of us can grow by the correct use of our free will to become perfect in God (in his “likeness”) – so our image is a dynamic thing. We were made for communion with God, and in a rejection of this communion we cease to properly be a man.
Man is the priest of creation, able to praise God for the world, seeing the world as a gift. He is able to reshape the world to create new meaning into it – so it is both a gift and a task, making man a logical, eucharistic, and creative animal.
The reason for evil and suffering in the creation has no easy answer. We have signposts that there was a fall in the heavenly realm, where angels chose self-will over God, and the second fall where man has chosen the same. Through our fall, we chose not to see the world as a gift to be offered back to God, but as his own possession to be exploited for his own pleasure. This begins to cut man off from God, creating a vicious circle. Therefore, evil and suffering comes from a deliberate choice from the created world to reject God’s love, and to turn from God to self. Love requires the ability to reciprocate. Without this free choice, there could be no love – and so evil has been a direct result of our reaction to the love of God.
The Augustinian view of the guilt of Adam’s sin being passed on to future generations is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The result of Adam’s sin is the formation world where it “is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust” (62). We are born into this world, that is further compounded by the wrong actions of those before us, and our own deliberate acts of sin. The actions we do effect not just ourselves, but everyone around us. We are not islands, but interdependent on everyone else, including the actions and mistakes of those who came before us.

God as Man
With man now separating himself from God through rebellion, we are unable to heal himself. This is where God comes to man to restore the opposing points between divine glory and human sinfulness. “The incarnation, then, is God’s supreme act of deliverance, restoring us to communion with himself” (70). The incarnation brings man to a new level, and shows the true possibilities of our nature. He was perfect in that he completely reflected the likeness of God.
Jesus is both fully God and completely man. He has two natures, both divine and human – but is not divided. He has two wills, but they are not opposed as the human will is at all times freely obedient to the divine. He solves the problem that must be solved by mankind, but is only God is capable to accomplish. For the Christ to bring total salvation, he must assume the entirety of humanness.
The virgin birth points to three things. First, that Jesus was a true man, but he was not just a man. Second, that it the birth was the result of a divine initiative. Finally, that a new person was not coming into existence (child born of two parents is a new person in creation, but the incarnate Christ is pre-existent).
As the incarnation is the act of God identifying Himself with us, and sharing the human experience, the cross shows the utmost limits of that sharing. His suffering was not just that of the Passion, but in His sense of failure, isolation, and loneliness (even to the extent of losing awareness of the divine presence). He is under no compulsion to die, but freely chooses to, identifying with all the human pain and despair. The result is His victory; the victory of love over hate.

God as Spirit
The spirit is elusive. We are conscience of His presence, feel His power, but he cannot be described verbally yet experienced directly. It is through the spirit that the divine becomes personal to us. At Pentecost, the Spirit was a gift to fill all those baptized in Christ and brings unity to the church, but also a gift of diversity based on the distinctions of our personalities.

God as Prayer
Stages of Christianity can be thought of as the practice of virtues and repentance, then the contemplation of God’s existence in all things, then the direct vision of God. These stages are not necessarily consecutive, and it is expected that repentance is practiced all through life. This spiritual way is ecclesial, done in a community through the Church (active life). It is also sacramental; though God is not bound by the sacraments, we are. Finally it is scriptural; reading the bible is communion and prayer with God, and as our Christian journey is not solely individual, our interpretation should be made using the entire whole of Church thought. These last two are known as the contemplative life.
The active life requires struggle and continuous effort of our will. “We are to hold in balance two complementary truths: without God’s grace we can do nothing; but without our voluntary co-operation God will do nothing” (112). Each day we renew our relationship with God through prayer and with others through practical compassion and cutting off our own self will. This active life requires “repentance, watchfulness, discrimination, and the guarding of the heart” (113).
The second stage is natural contemplation; contemplating the things that God has made. This is not possible without nepis or watchfulness and learning to be present where I am. Without the virtue of the active life, the natural contemplation becomes romantic and fails to reach the level of spiritual. All things are sacred, but have been distorted by sin (both original and personal). Searching for God in creation leads to the third step, realizing that God is also above and beyond nature. This leads to an acknowledgement that words cannot express God, and prayer turns to an inward stillness and silence.

God as Eternity
We await a second coming of Christ to bring a kingdom without end. Humanity does not increasingly advance and improve (evolutionary optimism), but is increasingly destructive. At this time the root of all our actions become clear and we will enter either eternal life or death. “The lost in hell are self-condemned, self-enslaved; it has been rightly said that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (135). We will not be saved from our bodies and from the world, but in them and with the world. The resurrection kingdom is eternal and therefore has an inexhaustible variety. It is not a return to Eden, but a continual progression forward, greater than the first.