Re-imagining the Christian faith in the light of multiple informers is crucial for our engagement with the world, each other as community, and the cultures in which we live.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 29
One of the realities of grace means that we cannot assume that where we are in our spiritual journey of faith is going to be good for the other.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
From Evolution to Eden
Myth, History, Legend?
Adam & Eve? Magic trees in a Garden? Talking serpents? What kind of world might this be? If you’re looking for a plausible interpretation of Genesis 1-3, which takes both the ancient near-Eastern and the natural world informers seriously read
From Evolution to Eden: Making Sense of Early Genesis
In preparing the material for this book from a series of papers previously published in academic journals, we decided to make only minimal changes. We have arranged the contents in chronological order, so that the overall flow of the book accurately reflects how our thoughts moved from one question to the next. By placing the papers together in a single source, we hope to tell our own story of how our thinking about Genesis 1-3 unfolded, as we allowed the biblical world to meet and interact with our scientifically informed world. Hopefully, this will give readers some insight into what we think are the important questions that need to be raised as we come to terms with how to interpret and apply Genesis 1-3 today. In other words, our picture of this dynamic interdisciplinary relationship is a porous one, inviting our questions and daring us to venture down a new interpretive path with willingness to encounter what we find along the way.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Thursday Thoughts - July 23
The days are long gone when human evolution can be reduced to survival of the fittest. At least three other important informers have come into play: environment, culture, and imagination. Each of these informers has now contributed and is contributing to what is becoming a gradually better understanding of who primates like us are today.
Monday, July 20, 2020
Reflection for the Week - July 20
I’d wager there are three prevailing worldviews that tend to dominate the g-local context today. First, matter matters. This is the notion that all there is―is matter. Scientific hubris is attempting to capture what is, but in its reductionism and anti-theism is doomed to fail. Life is more important than matter. Second, money matters. Consumer strategies and corporate values teach us that all that’s real is―money. When money becomes a god in church, politics, economics, and society, everything is sacrificed on the altar of death and redemption is left in the ashes. People are more important than money. Third, power matters. Authoritarian governments cut down and shred responsibility or anything else that stands in their way. This shows that all that counts for them is―power. Explicit claims of dominance and acts of terror oppress and de-dignify humanity, and an ethical imperative is trampled by force, rhetoric, manipulation, and bullets. Love and justice are more important than power.
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Thursday Thoughts - July 16
Ironically, many biblical literalists and evolutionary materialists share the view that there’s a lot wrong with the world, including defects of function and purpose. As horrible as these instances may sometimes be, this position often mistakenly assumes a perfect standard by which to evaluate creational or evolutionary history. It appears, at least presently, that there is no such norm and that the natural world has been like this for an awfully long time. Why precisely that’s the case, even though the human mind desperately wants to ‘construct’ an answer, escapes us.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 15
Letting go of assumed truths about God that turn out not to be true is not betrayal, but wisdom. As enshrined as these assumptions sometimes can be, abandoning them for the evolving ‘truer’ is a worthwhile and challenging adventure that, in this life, knows no end.
Monday, July 13, 2020
Reflection for the Week - July 13
Biblical narrative and nature’s story are an astounding drama engaging God and humanity. This drama goes far beyond a dispassionate recounting or a merely experiential narrating. There’s just too much to tell and both objectivity and subjectivity fall short of giving the whole picture. Yet, in the unfolding theater of life and death, filled with a repertoire of mystery and complexity, there are particular viable resonances, notably resurrection and evolution, which connect to a realistic hope for transformation in the niche of a possible world.
Thursday, July 9, 2020
Thursday Thoughts - July 9
Hermeneutics plays a central role in our lives, and it is important to be aware of this for at least the following reasons. First, the general action of interpreting anything is part and parcel of what it means to be a human being. Second, we can think of the interpretive act as part of our hardwired neural functions that assist our quest for optimal understanding. Third, this quest can be viewed as a circuitous passage that takes us through an encounter with different kinds of worlds; spiritual, natural, cultural, textual, and otherwise. Fourth, along the journey, discordant thoughts are garnered and imaginatively woven together into a reflective concordant whole – a story. It might be said this way: an unfolding picture of reality, including our place in it, begins to surface out of the mist of an interpreted life.
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 8
In a logic of superabundance we find there is an excess of giveness. God, for example, loves and creates in a superabundant manner that cannot be entirely contained in the material world or captured by language. In this light, Genesis 1-3 could be viewed as a limit expression text. That is, the text goes to the limit that language and the natural world can bear, pushing the ancient Near Eastern boundaries as far as they could go, without being in any way a comprehensive recounting of beginnings. This type of text not merely prevents knowledge from becoming exhaustive, but it dissuades interpreters from attempting totalizing interpretations that would then defy the limit character of the narrative trajectory.
Monday, July 6, 2020
Reflection for the Week - July 6
In our book From
Evolution to Eden, we refer to the publicized image of “science as a candle
in the dark.” We contend that, in some sense, this picture has a ring of truth.
New research is uncovering interesting things about nature and humans as part
of it - de-crypting DNA and now making tremendous progress in doing the same
with the human brain are going to be monumental. Building off this, we get a
better vision of what’s happening now. The “light” of the natural sciences can
no longer be considered separately from that of the human sciences, including
theology. To a greater and greater degree – they have to be in dialogue with
each other. The days when the natural sciences were thought to be only about
material, measurement, and mechanism are over. It’s not that natural science is
not about those, but it is now about much more and because of this the human
sciences have to pay attention (notice I didn’t write and agree with it all). Thus,
let’s face it, some of our theology, for example, will have to be established
from outside the biblical text. Once DNA and the brain took center stage, we
entered new territory, which has serious implications for our understanding of
God, spirituality, and the whole of life.
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Thursday, July 2, 2020
Thursday Thoughts - July 2
The rise and subsequent pervasiveness of hermeneutics (the act and art of interpretation) has changed our political, social, economic, and textual understanding of the world, God, and ourselves.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 1
Provocatively cutting away at the darkness is a challenging task that gradually opens up glimmers of light. These slivers of illumination, subversive and revolutionary, glisten through the shroud of the masquerade, and offer a hope that translates into a new way of being, seeing, and living. Light leads to a destiny, whereas darkness takes us nowhere. Dismantling the darkness promotes light, embracing light exposes darkness.
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