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the quest for social justice:
envisioning a new kind of Christian faith

a new kind of
christianity:
ten questions that
are transforming the
faith

500 years ago: Luther’s 95 theses.
Theses are statements intended for
debate, to bring us to a new state.

Needed today: not statements, debate,
or a new state (static location)

Rather ...

Needed today:
New questions to create conversations
to lead us on a new quest.

Statements

! ?
Questions

Statements (or theses) create
debates that bring us to new a
state (or status).

! ?
Questions create conversations
that launch us on new quests.

What are the questions?

1. The narrative question: What is the shape of the
biblical narrative? Storyline, plotline?

2. The authority question: What is the Bible, and
what is it for? How does it have authority?

3. The God question: Is God violent? Why does
God seem so violent and genocidal in so many
bible passages?

4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and
why does he matter?

5. The Gospel Question: What is the gospel
- a message of evacuation or
transformation? Exclusion or inclusion?

6. The church question: What do we
do about the church?

7. The sex question: Can we deal
with issues of sexuality without
fighting and dividing?

8. The future question: Can we find a
more hopeful vision of the future?

9. The pluralism question: How
should we relate to people of other
faiths?

10. The next step question: How can
we pursue this quest in humility,
love, and peace?

How things should/could/might be

Tension

How things are

Tension

How things used to be

Question 1:
What is the shape of the
biblical narrative?

(A pre-critical question)

Eden Heaven

Fall Salvation

History/
The world
Hell

Platonic Ideal Platonic Ideal

Fall Atonement,
puriﬁcation
Into
Aristotelian Aristotelian
Real
Real
Hades

Pax Romana Pax Romana

Civilization,
Rebellion development,
into colonialism
barbarism Barbarian/ assimilation
pagan
world
Destruction,
defeat

Is there an
alternative
understanding?

sdrawkcab gnidaer
Rick Warren, Billy Graham, Charles Finney, John Wesley (or Calvin), Luther,
Aquinas, Augustine, Paul, Jesus

reading forwards
Adam, Eve, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Mary, Jesus

Exodus: Liberation & Formation


Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and
Mercy


Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

G
e
n
Mercy
e
s
i
s


HUMAN DESTRUCTION
G
e
n
Mercy
e
HUMAN VIOLENCE
s
i
s HUMAN EXPLOITATION


Question 2
The authority question:
How does the Bible have authority?

Constitution?

Library?

LEGAL CONSTITUTION COMMUNITY LIBRARY

Uniformity Diversity

Preserve order Preserve diversity

agreement argument

enforcement encouragement

LEGAL CONSTITUTION COMMUNITY LIBRARY

Rules to live by Stories to live by

Conformity Creativity

Analyze, interpret, argue Enter, inhabit, practice

amendments? new acquisitions

Derek Flood graphically displays Paul’s edited quotation of Psalm 18:41-49 and
Deuteronomy 32:43 in Romans 15:8-10. Notice what Paul picks to retain and
what he chooses to reject:
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant
of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm
the promises made to the patriarchs so that the
Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is
written: “I destroyed my foes. They cried for
help, but there was no one to save them—to the
LORD, but he did not answer…. He is the God
who avenges me, who puts the Gentiles under
me…. Therefore I will praise you among the
Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.” (Ps.
18:41–49).

Again, it says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles,
with his people, for he will avenge the
blood of his servants; he will take
vengeance on his enemies and make
atonement for his land and
people.” (Deut. 32:43)

Flood concludes: “Paul is making a very
different point from the original intent of these
Psalms. In fact, he is making the opposite point
—we should not cry out for God’s wrath and
judgment [on the other], because we are all
sinners in need of mercy.” He concludes, “This
is not a case of careless out-of-context proof-
texting; it is an artful and deliberate reshaping of
these verses … from their original cry for divine
violence into a confession of universal
culpability that highlights our need for mercy.”

Question 3
God and violence

FLAT
DESCENDING
ASCENDING

TENT

QUESTION 4: JESUS

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
(LOGOS), AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD
AND THE WORD WAS GOD ... THE WORD
BECAME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US.

(JOHN 1)

rene girard
insights and contributions
- nonviolent theme in the Bible
- a narrative of evolution, emergence
- deconstruction of atonement theory
- uniqueness and universality of Christ
- proper apocalypticism
- a sense of what has gone wrong and why
- a sense of what is real and good, and why

If love and violence are incompatible, the deﬁnition of the
Logos must take this into account. The difference between
the Greek Logos and the Johannine Logos must be an
obvious one, which gets concealed only in the tortuous
complications of a type of thought that never succeeds in
ridding itself of its own violence. (270)

Heidegger is absolutely right to state that there has never
been any thought in the West but Greek thought, even
when the labels were Christian. Christianity has no special
existence in the domain of thought. Continuity with the
Greek Logos has never been interrupted... everything is
Greek and nothing is Christian. (273)

By cultural Platonism we mean the unexamined conviction
that human institutions have been and are what they are
for all eternity, that they have little need to evolve and
none whatsoever to be engendered.

... It is quite evident how a universal Platonism manages to
obscure any phenomena that contradict it. (TH 59)

Behaving in a truly divine manner, on an earth still in the
clutches of violence, means not dominating humans, not
overwhelming them with supernatural power; it means not
terrifying and astonishing them in turn, through the sufferings
and blessings on can confer; it means not creating difference
between doubles and not taking part in their disputes. ‘God
is no respecter of persons.’ He makes no distinction
between ‘Greeks and Jews, men and women, etc.’ This can
look like complete indifference and can lead to the
conclusion that the all-powerful does not exist, so long as his
transcendence keeps him inﬁnitely far from us and our
violent undertakings. But the same characteristics are
revealed as a heroic and perfect love once this
transcendence becomes incarnate in a human being and
walks among men, to teach them about the true God and to
draw them closer to Him. (234)

There is no privileged stance from which absolute truth
can be discovered... That is why the Word that states itself
to be absolutely true never speaks except from the
position of a victim in the process of being expelled....
[F]or two thousand years this Word has been
misunderstood, despite the enormous amount of publicity
it has received. (435)

Jesus as the non-violent
word of God.
God with and for the
poor.
God who cares for
creation.

4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and
why does he matter?

5. The Gospel Question: What is the gospel
- a message of evacuation or
transformation? Exclusion or inclusion?
- Reign, kingdom, economy, ecosystem,
dance, friendship, network of God.

6. The church question: What do we
do about the church?
- The church as school of love,
training and deploying of love-peace-
justice activists.

7. The sex question: Can we deal
with issues of sexuality without
fighting and dividing?
- Deeper issue: sexuality to
embodiment to humanity to creation

8. The future question: Can we find a
more hopeful vision of the future?
- Evacuation plan to incarnation plan,
a Participatory Eschatology

9. The pluralism question: How
should we relate to people of other
faiths?
- Seeking a strong and benevolent
Christian identity

10. The next step question: How can
we pursue this quest in humility,
love, and peace?
- Winning a hearing, not winning an
argument.

we need a theology of

institutions & movements

Institutions:

Organizations which
conserve the gains made
by past social movements
to support convivial
communities.

Social Movements

Organizations which call
current institutions to make
progress towards new gains
to support convivial
communities.

Ivan Illich (Austrian
former priest,
philosopher, social
critic, 1926-2002)

Neither revolution nor reformation
can ultimately change a society,
rather you must tell a new powerful
tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps
away the old myths and becomes the
preferred story …

… one so inclusive that it gathers all the
bits of our past and our present into a
coherent whole, one that even shines
some light into the future so that we can
take the next step…. If you want to
change a society, then you have to tell an
alternative story.
- attributed to Ivan Illich (Austrian former priest,
philosopher, social critic, 1926-2002)

Something is on the way out and something
else is painfully being born.
It is as if something were crumbling,
decaying, and exhausting itself,
while something else, still indistinct, were
arising from the rubble....
We are in a phase when one age is
succeeding another, when everything is
possible.
Vaclav Havel, “The New Measure of Man”

Fr. Vincent Donovan:
Do not leave others where
they are.
Do not bring them to where
you are, as beautiful as that
place might be.
Instead, go with them to a
new place neither you nor they
have ever been before.

Go into all the world and proclaim the
gospel (the good, joyful, healing story)
to all creation.
- Jesus

The Lord’s Prayer

1. Our Father above us
and all around us …

2. May Your unspeakable
Name be revered.

3. Now, here on earth
may Your
commonwealth come.

4. On earth as in
heaven may Your will
be done.

5. Give us today our
bread for today.

4. Forgive us our
wrongs as we forgive.

3. Lead us away from
the perilous trial.

2. Liberate us from the
evil.

1.For the kingdom is
yours and yours alone.
2. The power is yours and
yours alone.
3.The glory is yours and
yours alone.
4.Now and forever, amen.

5. Now, here on earth may your
commonwealth come.
4. Here on earth may your
dreams come true.
3. Hallelujah
2. Hallelujah
1. Amen.

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something is trying to be born:
envisioning a new kind of Christian faith

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