FireDragon76

Whether or not its "traditional theism", it's still very much focused upon the same concerns of the Greco-Roman consensus. Note what David has to say about the characteristics of that Greco-Roman consensus. Note particularly what I have bolded: "1. Christian belief is essentially about gaining true knowledge about God (and Jesus tends to become first and foremost a communicator or mediator of this knowledge) 2. Scripture is understood as itself the fundamental revelation of God – a kind of sacred text – and Christianity is consequently understood as a huge exercise in exegesis of this divine text 3. salvation is conceived as a gradual transformation and training of the human soul/person, and usually as a kind of cooperative effort between humans and God 4. the world is the natural and necessary object of Christians’ transformative work– i.e. the world/state/family is to be transformed into a foretaste of the kingdom to come, and the kingdom is, as much as possible, to be realized now 5. as a result of the last two points, Christianity is overwhelmingly conceived as an exercise in moral/ethical improvement: it provides the commandments, techniques and imperatives for a holy “way of life”, for the individual, the family, society, the state, the world 6. the church, as the instrument and vessel of this divine transformation, legitimately exercises a significant, even coercive, authority, power, and control in the social and cultural realms, and (therefore) maintains a concrete, unified, institutional presence" You've just substituted Whitehead for Aristotle, but you haven't really challenged the assumptions underlying the imperial consensus (or as Dave calls it, the imperial synthesis) in the first place. You're merely arguing that Whitehead makes more sense of God than Aristotle. But you're just sexing up the old consensus, a bit of window dressing in the end. David goes on to actually challenge the basis for the imperial consensus in the first place: http://www.underthesunblog.com/main/three-pillars-of-the-old-order/ You should probably focus on part 2 and 3, however, since I doubt you have a high view of the Scriptures: http://www.underthesunblog.com/david-corner/the-problem-with-deification-essay/ http://www.underthesunblog.com/david-corner/kicking-the-gnostic-habit-the-problem-of-faith-as-knowledge-essay/

The lion has no ability to imagine a world other than the way it is, whereas human beings do have that ability. That is one basis for our sense of sin (the other is based on creating symbolic categories of purity and impurity, something that is part of Judaism, but not necessarily Christianity). We have the feeling that some things about the world aren't the way things should be. An "is" doesn't make for an "ought". However, just because we can imagine a world doesn't mean we can actually live in that world. History is littered with totalitarian, utopian movements based on nothing more than human idealism. Leaving this world of idealism to religion, narrowly constructed, makes a great deal of sense, since this state of affairs can seemingly only be completely realized in the world to come by divinity, and not by human beings.

Evangelical fundamentalist churches are more prone to this than the Protestant mainline in the US. Mainline Protestants have a variety of political orientations, though genuinely far right politics is extremely rare. My own denomination's laity are made of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.

David Wagschal's blog is well worth reading. The sort of religious ideology you are describing fits into the "Imperial Consensus" he critiques. I came from an Eastern Orthodox religious tradition that was steeped in language of theosis, just as David did. I don't like its results; it's a subtle confusion of Law and Gospel and lends itself easily to spiritual abuse.

I am not critiquing creationism vs. evolution. I believe God is the Creator, I couldn't be a Lutheran otherwise. I'm critiquing the idolization of a magisterial reason, nature, and natural law, what is implicit in the "orders of creation". I don't think that's a good approach to a Jesus-shaped faith, even if that's the approach many churches tend to take towards the issue. Two resources for you, for understanding our Lutheran approach: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Bible-Martin-Luther-Introductory/dp/0801049172 http://www.underthesunblog.com/david-corner/so-wrong-for-so-long/ And if you need more help understanding Dave's perspective, this book by Gerhard Forde is excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Justification-Faith-Matter-Death-Life/dp/1620322102

No need to be so subtle. Jesus condemned the pharisees because they used religion, what was holy, to hurt and exclude people. Every one of us is capable of using what is holy to hurt "the other", and our natural inclinations as a human being are to do just that.

Hart is an Orthodox Christian that is conciliatory towards Anselm and Aquinas. I see Hart as not presenting knowledge of God so much through reason, as much as the concept of God being reasonable. There is a difference. Orthodox Christians are not necessarily anti-rationalistic or against reason, but they are an eastern religion that prioritizes intuition and experiential knowledge above all else.

You have potentially packed alot of ideas into such a small space. Our emphasis on God as Savior is implicit in our tradition, but is even further reinforced because of our experiences in the 20th century. Doctrines of orders of creation were used to justify the rise of a regime that committed the worst atrocities that Europe has ever encountered. Therefore, we find appeals to the original ordering of creation suspect. But we go further and criticize it on theological, and not just ethical, grounds as well. We don't view "being better people" as how we would describe salvation, because that implies that God can only truly love us when we are something more than what we are. We believe in actual, radical grace. Paul says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Moralism has no place in our theology. We don't view human beings as being without sin in this life. We believe human beings are born sinners. We are Augustinian in that sense. The Christian is a forgiven sinner. We also believe God loves everyone, but everyone that is saved is chosen by God. God doesn't save a hypothetical humanity, but actual human persons.

I don't think that's what Christians are thinking of when they are talking about spiritual experiences. A spiritual experience is more than simply an experience of the sublime. This is more like the spiritual experience Christians often have: Mike McHargue, a popular progressive Christian blogger, talks about experiencing something similar. A sizeable percentage of Americans who are otherwise psychologically healthy have had some kind of spiritual experience similar to what Mike or Tracy Lind have experienced.

I see him arguing there is a moral or spiritual dimension to human being, that we are not merely animals. Otherwise, why not do as animals do and simply accept that things like racism and tribalism are merely manifestations of our genes to favor in-group members?

I don't think stories in the Bible must necessarily be understood literally or as scientifically verifiable facts to be sacred and meaningful. That is a common approach to the Scriptures in my church denomination; neo-orthodoxy rather than liberalism or fundamentalism. I see too much needless suffering in the world, based on nothing more than empty fear and hatred, to be unconvinced that salvation no longer matters. As a Lutheran, I believe salvation entails more than going to heaven when one dies, it also implies being open to living a life as a disciple of Jesus Christ because the evil of the world is contained by the hope in God's promises. Through trust in God's promises as a gathered community around the Word, life is transfigured into a sacred calling or vocation where we become God's hands in the world doing God's work.

Based on what psychologists know about religious participation, it's mostly positive. Some religious beliefs can be problematic, of course, but it's hard to generalize.

We are alot like other evangelicals in the basics. But I think the most striking difference is that we believe in real grace for real sinners, and not what Luther called "a pretend grace". We believe in living the Christian life boldly rather than scrupulously. And we do not view salvation as an offer or a process of growth but something that is completed and applied to the individual through hearing the Word and receiving the Sacraments. Here's a video from our presiding bishop talking about being a Lutheran. It's a bit more liberal in tone than my own congregation, and a bit vague on the actual details, but it's a good overview for knowing what Lutherans are about: This is one of my favorite Lutheran hymns, we sign it at baptisms. We are a church very much oriented around communal sacred rites, especially baptism. That is where we believe we primarily encounter God as human beings. As the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber jokes, we are "religious, but not spiritual".

Lutherans consider God as Savior as a more central theological locus, a more important idea, than having God as Creator. We are less "creation oriented" in our thinking and more "salvation oriented". Grace, rather than human ability, is also a core theological locus of Lutherans. Salvation is not about becoming a better person, but was accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and is applied to us today through hearing the Gospel and receiving the sacraments. We have an incarnational theology, it is one of our defining characteristics that often sets us apart from some other Protestant traditions. However, we do not speculate about what the world would have been like without sin. God loves this world and its people as it is, not as we think it should be. I know Jack Spong or Matthew Fox may have different theological emphases, but we, as Lutherans, work within a theological tradition that is distinct from Episcopalians. We are specifically a confessional church body, and interpret the Bible within a confessional tradition that is Christocentric and Pauline. We see ourselves in theological continuity with the early church, indeed, our confessions have the same status for us as do the early councils of the Church. BTW, here's some articles discussing research into infant cognition and morality: https://nypost.com/2017/04/13/your-baby-is-a-little-bit-racist-science-says/ https://www.centertao.org/media/Why-of-it-all.pdf Here's a video of that 60 Minutes piece of on the Yale Infant Cognition Center. It also has an interview with Paul Bloom, who is a leading researcher on the biological basis of morality.

A baby's sense of morality, which is really just an sense of impartial fairness, is biological and it is in fact shared with other primates. It is not learned. Babies do show preferences for people that look like them or have similar preferences in food or toys. That is biological. Even the most liberal minded parents are going to have babies that have preferences for people that are similar to them. This doesn't mean people are cursed to be members of the KKK of course but it does mean that our cultural values are not working with a blank slate. We come into the world primed for survival through group loyalty and tribalism above moral considerations. It's why far right rhetoric is so appealing, because it taps into something primal in human nature about feelings of security. It is dangerous for people to think that they are above the things they abhor. What we repress, we express. In another thread you asked what makes Lutherans, Lutherans, and if I had to point to something I'd say this is a salient point. Admitting human beings are perverse and fundamentally misguided but also recognizing we are loved despite our inherent perversity. That is a dialectic that cannot be neatly resolved discursively, and we believe that is realistic and true to the Scriptures. It's not a choice between emphasizing human sinfulness or God's love, both are true for us as proclamation.

I don't think there's one answer to this. All I do know is that sin explains alot in what I observe in the world. My pastor sometimes uses stories of little kids fighting over toys to talk about original sin. But I think I've found a better example. Research an Yale's psychology department has shown that a baby's innate sense of morality is easily overriden by things like loyalty to people that are similar to them, and also they can be easily bribed contrary to those same moral intuitions. Things like racism and nationalism are easily understood in terms of human nature that's hard wired into us. So we're born with some dark tendencies from the get go that aren't merely the result of culture. So really I see sin as part of a useful story that explains some aspects of our experience in the world, especially how people are fundamentally perverse. As Paul says in Romans, he knows to do good, but there's another law at work within his flesh. The spiritual battleground is within the human heart, and none of us are pure in that regard.

I come from an Orthodox background (the same as Hart) that has a less rationalistic approach to God and differs from Aquinas and Aristotle, but I still don't think its true to say they would agree that God is potentiality. Orthodox focus on the divine nature being unknowable and knowledge of God is mediated through grace rather than reason.

Our congregation actually has gay people who serve in ministry, and Lutherans tend to be nonjudgmental anyways. So we are more than merely tolerant. But at the same time we have alot of older people who are not yet ready to have things like same-sex marriages. This varies from congregation to congregation, since our polity is congregationalist. And our own congregation, I think, isn't ready or willing to dive into the more politically charged pro-LGBT movements within our church, such as ReconcilingWorks, and the entanglements that might entail. I think that's fairly typical of moderately conservative ELCA churches in the US. I came to accept gay people years ago when I was an Orthodox Christian, a convert from apatheism. Gay people were, at one time, the last people I wanted to meet. I wanted to stay away from that controversy and the baggage associated with it. However, I think God has a sense of irony and stuck alot of gay people in my life. And it is one of the reasons I had to leave that church in the end, because my understanding was at odds with my church, which considered homosexuality sinful and deviant, like a disease, which is something I saw as very damaging to people I had come to know and who had lived with that message. I was also drifting towards a more Lutheran understanding of salvation, anyways. Luther was a brilliant theologian and I think he really cuts to the heart of the issue, esp. for anybody that has come from a Christian background steeped in tradition. Eventually, that whole "sin-management" thing can become horribly oppressive, whereas I think the Christian life should be far more bold.

It could be because as the article says, that meditation and yoga is presented differently in a western context, typically, as a way to be a more effective agent in the capitalist system. This has been criticized by some Buddhists themselves, particularly from the Tibetan tradition (Chogyam Trungpa) but also some from the Zen tradition (Rev. Kevin Malone, a NY prison chaplain), and Marxists such as Slavoj Zizek. There are whole schools of Buddhism that do not even practice meditation as commonly understood, and for those that do, it is not necessarily considered a basic practice. Also, the western psychology and phenomenology of the self tends towards autonomy as implicit, whereas the eastern understanding is that the self is relational. Concepts like "ego" have different nuances, depending on the context.

I'm a bit confused by what exactly being a "progressive Christian" really means. I consider myself a progressive Lutheran (I'm a member of the ELCA), but as a Lutheran my faith is both confessional and Christocentric. While I respect that there is wisdom in many religions, that's not what I see as the core of my faith, which is about God's reconciliation with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. So I'm not sure I can agree on all 8 of the points. Lutherans also emphasize human sin and human depravity, even if we do not have quite the same tone as other evangelicals, it is still an important part of our proclamation and spirituality. On the other hand, I'm outspoken in my support for inclusion of LGBT persons in the Church, and my religious denomination (ELCA) also expresses a basic level of support for LGBT rights, including non-discrimination in public services. By many evangelicals standards in the US, that is highly problematic and that would tend to lump me in the "progressive" camp as defined by an organization such as Patheos or Sojourners. My social ethics generally follows in the tradition that came out of Bonhoeffer's writings on "religionless Christianity", for instance Jurgen Moltmann, John A.T. Robinson and Harvey Cox. We are less interested in spirituality as something separated from secular activities. In this way it is really a classical Lutheran emphasis understood in a modern context. Most Evangelical Lutherans in the ELCA understand God as transfiguring the secular. So, we tend to view things as individual spirituality and mysticism as less important, even perhaps misguided at times, despite modern trends to the contrary in our culture. We are "religious, but not spiritual", as the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber likes to joke. What little exclusively "religious" spirituality we have is communal fellowship centered in our sacraments and rites.

While textual criticism can be helpful, it's good not to get stuck on its conclusions as the final word. It's possible the "older" manuscripts we have, simply have missing endings, and the original manuscript was similar to the one we now have. In Acts there is the story of Paul and his companion picking up a snake, being bitten, and not being harmed. Then the natives worship him as a god.

The quote "To escape sin may be the ultimate guilt" is attributed to Bonhoeffer. Peace churches are those churches that believe Christians are not free to participate in war or justified violence. Historically, most Christians have not held this ethical position. Augustine was probably the first to clearly articulate the argument that Christians could be soldiers in good conscience. Before then, many local bishops prohibited anyone who had killed, for any reason, from receiving the sacraments without penances. Christian realism is an outgrowth of neo-orthodox Reformed and Lutheran anthropology and social ethics. It's not cultural conservativism and quietism of the fundamentalists, but it's also critical of the utopianism and flawed anthropology of the Social Gospel movement. Even though Bonhoeffer did not identify himself as such, theologically he had more in common with Niebuhr than many of his liberal contemporaries.

Bonhoeffer and Niebhur are arguably among the greatest Christian thinkers of the 20th century. Bonhoeffer in particular was brilliant.

I'm more into Niebhur-style Christian realism or Bonhoeffer. I'm not really comfortable with peace-church pacifism where we stand back and merely let our lights shine. I'm more Augustinian: "to escape sin may be the ultimate guilt", something attributed to Bonhoeffer.

My church has a nuanced position, despite the fact our conservative peers tend to say we are "pro-abortion". We don't really approve of it in general, for starters, but we aren't known for being overly judgmental. It's left up to the individual a great deal to decide what he or she should do in controversial matters, with the pastor and the religious community there to accompany them in that task. Our ethics is like that in alot of ways. We give guidelines more than rules. Some of us are pro-choice, others are pro-life. My pastor leans towards a more Catholic pro-life position but even he recognizes it is an area of ethical complexity and we should avoid trying to minimize that. That's more or less what I believe about the matter, too.