Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century Dominican speculative mystic, is one of my favorite writers. I have two favorite quotes from Eckhart:

“Therefore let us pray to God that we may be free of God that we may gain the truth and enjoy it eternally…” (German sermon 52)

and

“The truth is such a noble thing that if God were able to turn away from truth, I would cling to the truth and let God go; for God is truth, and all that is in time, and that God created, is not truth.” (German sermon 26)

What I like about Eckhart is that he is so shocking. What does he mean when he says we should pray to God to rid ourselves of God? How could anyone choose to cling to the truth if that means letting God go? What’s going on?

Eckhart is trying verbally to slap us in the face, to get us to recognize that there is a difference between what we think about when we say the word “God” and the ultimate reality, God. There is a difference between talking about God as understood by finite, temporal, contingent beings, and what Eckhart calls the Godhead or the Ground of Being who is beyond Being and Nonbeing. (Paul Tillich borrows this phrase, “Ground of Being,” to speak of God.)

As shocking as these quotes from Eckhart sound, they’re really not so different from what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:14: “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Whether or not one accepts the existence of Satan as an ontological entity (and I do not), this verse does suggest that not everything that looks like it comes from God is actually from God. God is different from what often passes for God. Moreover, Paul repeatedly points to the limits of human knowledge in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12: “For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away…. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been understood.”

If I understand Eckhart and Paul correctly, then Christian apologetics is utterly misguided. As you probably know, apologetics is the attempt to defend the faith against (secular) attacks. But what exactly is being defended? Isn’t it really a defense of “God,” the “God” who was created when human beings were created, the “God” comprehended by finite, contingent, historically conditioned human beings? We should welcome attacks on this God, especially if this God cannot stand up to rational scrutiny. We should pray to God to rid us of God in order to be rightly related to the Ground of Being. And if we have to choose between what “God says” and the truth, always take the truth. God is not always found where God is, but God is always found where the truth is.

I’m currently re-reading God in Creation, Jürgen Moltmann’s ecological doctrine of creation.  It’s my third time through the book — maybe fourth. It’s a beautifully written systematic theology text.  In the preface, Moltmann admits that he didn’t mean to write a thorough monograph on the doctrine of creation, but the more he got into the subject, the more topics he felt he had to cover.

He addresses some pretty cool topics, which will be out-there for some readers. For instance, the Kabbalistic idea of God’s tzimtzum is central to Moltmann’s understanding of how an all-consuming God made room for a creation that is other-than-god. Moltmann also turns to Jewish theology for the understanding of God’s Spirit as Shekhinah — that is, presence.

I’ll be exploring these ideas in posts as I read through the book, especially in light of the interest in Process Theology that’s being generated here and elsewhere.

But what’s likely to generate the most interest here is Moltmann’s wholehearted defense of panentheism. How Moltmann’s panentheism intersects with and differs from Process Theology is something that I definitely want to explore.

If anyone wants to read along with me, jump in!

Current kingmaker in the Christian blogosphere, Rachel Held Evans, posted a piece by Tripp and Bo of Homebrewed Christianity called, “Omnipotence:  A Compliment Jesus Wants You to Take Back.”  (Don’t think Rachel’s a kingmaker?  Well, the post currently has 295 comments.) Now Tripp and Bo have a follow-up post on HBC.

Process Theology provides some answers to many of the same questions that I’m asking in my current book project, Why Pray? As the guys make clear in the comments, Process Theology is different than Open Theism (Greg Boyd, et al).

Open Theism is fundamentally evangelical — it’s a way to solve a problem that evangelicalism has as a result of its biblical hermeneutic. It’s a solution to a problem that I don’t really have. A God to whom the future is foreclosed is not the God of the Bible, nor is that a God that anyone should want to worship or pray to.

Thanks in particular to HBC and the reinvigoration of Claremont School of Theology, Process Theology is enjoying a little resurgence right now. But, the question that lingers for me is this: Why didn’t Process Theology really take off when it was first introduced several decades ago?

If it’s because of political forces within academic Christianity, then I look forward to Process Theology Take Two.  However, if it’s because Process Theology as a system is fatally flawed, unbiblical, or in some other way wanting, then this resurgence will be short-lived. I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but David Opderbeck’s extensive comments on last week’s post should give us all pause.

I’m going to be thinking a lot about these very issues of God’s potency and God’s agency as I considering why we humans should pray.

(PS: I am very disappointed to be missing the Emergent Village Theological Conversation later this month, in which these issues will be discussed. It was scheduled over a Tuesday night. That’s the weeknight that I have my kids, and it’s sacrosanct — I only miss Tuesday nights very rarely. I asked the organizers of the conference if they would take this fact into account, but they could not. I’m not writing this to air dirty laundry, but instead to note two things: 1) Divorce has consequences, of which I am well aware; 2) I have no antipathy toward the people who are currently running Emergent Village, and I am not boycotting their events. I am simply unable to attend because of when they scheduled it.)

Maybe Alfred North Whitehead was right...

I haven’t.  I’m not (yet) a full embracer of process theology. But, I’m writing a book on prayer, which has me thinking a lot about the interaction of God with creation. That interaction, from any rational perspective, is highly problematic.

On the one hand, I want a God who is Other, with whom I can have a differentiated relationship. There seems to me little reason to pray unless this is the case.

However, a God who is differentiated Other seems, by all empirical evidence, to act in arbitrary ways. One might even say unjust ways. How does our prayer effect that kind of God? That’s the sticky wicket I’m trying to get through.

Process theology has solved that, but in a way that is difficult to jibe with the biblical narrative, and with classical orthodox theologies.

Anyway, I’m just working this through and thought I’d float it out there. Surely this post will give Tripp a little thrill.  If you’re interested, you can learn more about process theology at this year’s Emergent Village Theological Conversation (unfortunately, I can’t attend).

Leave your thoughts here, or follow the hashtag #WhyPray on Twitter.

Jeremy Fackenthal details three ways in which process theology is compatible with feminism.  Here’s one:

Process theology views God’s power as collaborative, not coercive.

Discarding the dominant view of power as power over some other subject, process thought adopts instead an understanding of power as power with another subject.  God does not coerce the world, but rather attempts at persuading the world through God’s patient and loving call.  Humans then have the freedom in each moment of their lives to respond to God’s call or not.  The reason process thinking is able to present this altered understanding of divine power is because it see’s God’s power as necessarily limited (not self-limited, but inherently limited).  While lots of people don’t like this and see it is a weakened form of God, process theology holds the idea of God’s collaborative power as far more worthy of worship than a God who acts unilaterally in the world through coercive force.  I see this reconceptualization of God’s power as compatible with feminist thought because it breaks down deleterious power relations that promote the power of the one over the many, offering instead the opportunity to be collaborators in the on-going creation of the world.  God’s collaborative power promotes justice, equality, and the value of human life.

Read the other two HERE.

David Opderbeck is the smartest kid in the room on any blog he frequents, including this one.  He’s got a post up dealing with what I think is the single biggest flaw in Love Wins — and, David says, in Francis Chan’s polemic against Love Wins — which I haven’t read, and don’t plan to.

David writes:

“God can do ANYTHING he wants.”  So say Preston Sprinkle and Francis Chan in their book “Erasing Hell.”  It’s fair to say that this proposition is the cornerstone of Sprinkle and Chan’s theodicy of Hell.  “Won’t God get what he wants?”  So asks Rob Bell in his book “Love Wins.”  It’s also fair to say that this question, along with the belief that God wants everyone to be saved, is the cornerstone of Bell’s theodicy of Hell.’

David goes on to write about the philosophical ideas of nominalism and voluntarism.  It’s a long, sophisticated post, and I commend it to you.

However, I’ll write the same thing in a bit different terms:

In Love Wins — particularly in chapter four — Rob makes two claims that I think are mutually exclusive:

1. God get whatever God wants.
2. God is bound by love.

I don’t think that Rob can have it both ways.

If God gets whatever God wants, then God is completely sovereign and is not bound by anything — not the laws of physics, and not the law of love.

If, on the other hand, God is bound by love, then God has abdicated some of God’s sovereignty, in which case God does not necessarily get what God wants.

In either scenario, a case can be made that there is no hell (or that hell is empty, as it seems Rob (and C.S. Lewis and John Stott) would have it).  In scenario one, God wants everyone to go to heaven, so there is no one in hell.  In scenario two, love binds God to embrace everyone after death, meaning that hell is empty.

So I’m not saying that Rob Bell is wrong in his conclusion.  I just think that he sets up a fallacious argument to get to his conclusion.

What say you?

See my other posts on Love Wins here.

Today symbolically marks the day that our global population reaches seven billion.  Just how big is that number?  CNN has some details:

– Seven billion seconds ago, the year was 1789. That was the year George Washington was inaugurated as the first U.S. president and Congress met for the very first time.

– If you took 7 billion steps along the Earth’s equator — at 2 feet per step — you could walk around the world at least 106 times.

– Suppose an average thimble holds 2 milliliters of water. Seven billion of those thimbles would fill at least five Olympic-sized swimming pools.

– Let’s say the average human is about 5 feet tall, accounting for children. If you stack those 7 billion people end to end, they would reach about 1/14th of the way to the sun — or 27 times the distance to the moon, Volpert said.

– Seven billion ants, at an average size of 3 milligrams each, would weigh at least 23 tons (46,297 pounds).

This is, of course, symbolic.  But it does raise some complicated theological issues — and I don’t mean about the barcodes that all new babies will have tattooed on their foreheads.  More significantly, I think, is this question: If human beings are indeed created in the image of God (imago Dei), how does our unmitigated numeric increase reflect the nature of God?

In other words, is God increasing at the same rate that we are?

Daniel Kirk

Fuller professor Daniel Kirk is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. This week, he had a post about eschatology that caught my eye:

What is the eschatology that Jesus brings about? It is the regathering of the people as promised, the restoration of the people to full standing in God’s family. It is a defeat of the hostile powers that warred against God’s people to keep those people from experiencing the fulness of the blessing of God.

It is even the provision of an abundant land, where the baskets of grain overflow.

All of this means that the reign of God has drawn near. In the person of Jesus, the king of God’s kingdom, God is restoring the earth to rights.

But here is where we have to be careful. In fact, we are right up to the point where the history of Christianity has shown us that we are always most often prone to go astray.

via Storied Theology | Telling the story of the story-bound God.

Since I’ll be writing about hospitality this week, here are some books I recommend on the subject:

Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures by Kester Brewin

Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality by Richard Beck

Hospitality-The Sacred Art: Discovering the Hidden Spiritual Power of Invitation and Welcome (Art of Spiritual Living) by Nanette Sawyer

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl

Any books I’m missing?

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of talking with some students at Rochester College about hospitality.  They are masters-level students, investigating missional leadership, and the virtue of hospitality is core to that investigation.  We had some great conversations, which I want to muse on this week on the blog.

The biggest question that we raised, I think, was this: How hospitable is God? In the Hebrew scriptures, in the Christian scriptures?

It’s easy to criticize the church and the people of God for being inhospitable.  It’s more difficult for us to look honestly at the behavior of God, to scrutinize it, and to decide whether God is indeed hospitable.