The Mazeways they are a'chang'n ("none's" on the rise).

 

They are not flying, not singing, not even nuns. They are "nones" meaning no religious affiliation. They signify significant social change but atheist are doing a victory dance all over the net.[1] This has been the case since Oct 9.2012 when Pew Research study ("nones on the rise") was released showing that the "none" group had risen significantly from 15% to almost 20%, including 1/3 of those under 30 in America. The atheist celebration is premature since the chart relased with the study shows the atheist segment is hardly growing at all. It's still below 5%.[2]


The rise of the none's is significant in spite of this. It signals a move away form organized religion. These people are not merely looking for a new religion, they are not looking for a church where they feel at home, the study itself shows these are people who have had it with chruch. That's bad news for Christianity. Christianity depends upon churches becuase it does it what it does in churches. Without churches there's no base for the faith. These guys don't want churches. They want something new. Maybe not social at all. It's good news because it does not mean they are through with God. I have argued on Atheistwatch by triangulating this study and some other Gallup polls with a Harris poll that shows religon in America is way down, that it's really more a matte of the questions asked. It shows that this new segement of young people want to think of God and religion in radically different ways. They are not giving up God but they may not express belief in God in the same way at all.

That's bad news for Christianity becuase not only does it means less strength in chruch groups but screwed up doctrine. It means missing understanding of the Gospel. It means less youth to renew the chruch it doesn't necessarily mean a loss for the Gospel. There is cause for concern it could mean a very serious loss. There is not reason at this point to come unglued because it could simply be that it just represents a different way of looking at things. Christianity has changed profoundly in the past. We shiould have known it would again. It may prove to be a bigger and more profound change that I thought I would live to see, but I always knew it would change.

Belief in miracles, heaven and other religious teachings also declined in the latest poll, as follows:

–72 percent believe in miracles, down from 79 percent in 2005;

–68 percent believe in heaven, down from 75 percent;
–68 percent believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God, down from 72 percent;

–65 percent believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, down from 70 percent;

–64 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death, down from 69 percent;

–58 percent believe in the devil and hell, down from 62 percent;

–57 percent believe in the Virgin birth, down from 60 percent[3]

The extent to which this means a serious loss for Christianity just depends upon the theory of social change to which one subscribes, among other things.The theory I use to analyze it is Wallace's notion of the Mazeways. Anthony Wallace (b. 1923, he's 90) was one of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century. His theory of the Mazeways deals with cultural icons and pathways they mark that enable us to navigate our way through society and life."Mental maps that join personalities with cultures, and thereby illustrate how individuals embrace their cultures and conduct everyday life and cope with stress."[4] It can seem very scary when the Mazeways change. It's confusing and we can be left feeling lost and not knowing what to do. Changing Mazeways have no doubt spawned many an end times movement. It doesn't mean or it doesn't have to mean disaster.

The changes we are looking at are fundamental changes in the way the fabric of society embraces religious beilef. That's a monumental change but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, we take note that this is a pure case of the chickens coming home to roost. The chruch has acted irresponsibility for a long time now, refusing to respond prgressively to the changes already wrought in the 60s. Long before that they basically separated the laity from the clergy and essentually said "don't worry your pertty little heads about all that doctrine just get entertained and let us seminary guys do the heavy thinking. They bred a simplistic chruch that reacts in a reactionary fashion to the most basic forms of social problems, a chruch doesn't understand it's own intellectual traditions, that has no concept of how to apply abstruse doctrines to daily life. People alienated from society often find themselves aliented form the chruch as well.

We've seen changes on a magnitude like this before, within my life time. The difference in society of 1960 vs. 1970 was profound. We went from a nation of crew cut college students who were considered children, who listened to Frankie Avalon and Elvis and Bobby Vinton and in early '71 radical Sheik had college kids planing careers in the Weather men and listening to John Lennon sing "Imagine." The average college student of 1960 was concerned with joining a frat, what busienss to major in, getting a good suit that looked business-like and fitting in. In 1971 he or she was concerned with going to jail in a protest, being tear gassed on campus, the guys with going to Vietnam and dying like their friends and brothers had done, the girls with how help their boy friends get to Canada. Sociologists had been predicting the death of religion for decades. The new morality, the drug culture, they seemed the most unlikely origin for a Jesus movement of all things; yet we had that too. They patterned Jesus in the role of a hippie and drew parallels between him and social protesters. The sharper chruch youth leaders jumped on it and began opening coffee houses for the young. I bought an underground news paper after a Moody Blues concert, in between thinly disguised adds for "head shops" (places to buy drug perifenalia) was one of the most heavily researched articles I've ever seen on what the Bible says about hell. I'm sure it was all wrong but it was bursting with scripture and scholarly commentary.

A lot of that came out of that era was silly a lot of it didn't last. I new a bunch of former stoner Jesus freaks in Toas New Mexico who had been genuine commune members during the Taos hippie wars. This was the 80s they were still there. They still sat up all night arguing about hte Bible and slept all day. In their own burnt out half conscoius way there very sincere. The point is we can't know or predict the forms that faith will take. Faith is like water flowing through a stream and the culture is like the bed of the stream. The faith fits the shape of the bed but it flows over it and keeps moving. It's not held up by rocks even though if we could freeze it and lift it out we would see the imprints of the rocks. But since the faith is fluid it just flows over them and moves on. Because of our mazeways we have preconceived notions about how faith should be, we don't see change coming. Then new forms fit the needs of those who have the faith.

The new version of faith may seem very different and valuable things may pass away. New forms will come into being that speak to the hearts of the new generation. I doubt seriously that they will remain unchruched. They may not be looking for a chruch. The sad part is one article in Sojourners suggested that they were burned out by the culture wars.[5] This may be the unchurched generation, because they sick of the culture wars. The messages boards have done their part in burning people out. In that sense all they had to do is just show up and they ruin people on the faith, words and arguments and ideas aside they just show up and people are ruined. Now those people just stay away from organized faith.

On the other hand, people are social animals. Whatever we do we like to do it in groups. I doubt that they will remain unorganized. They may find other forms of the social and share their faith in ways we don't imagine. perhaps they are forever ruined on the confrontational form of the faith, that may not be such a bad thing. It may not be chruch as such. It may have a different relationship to doctrine and may have a different attitude toward what it can enforce or tell people to believe,but there will be some form of social encouragement.

Several of these articles imply that they are not looking for Atheism. These guys are not going for new this. I think atheism is a different phenomenon than the "nones" and they should not be lumped in with them. [6] They are ruined by the culture wars they see atheism as the same problem as organized religion. They are looking for spirituality, some without God, some with thinking of God in other ways. The vast majority of them are still believers in God, but they not necessarily as fixed about what they believe concerning God.

The chruch needs to start listening to these guys and reaction to their concerns. We need to start teaching the doctrines so everyone who we all understand it. That probably means Sunday school will have to be more like real school, reaching real history classes and conducting dangerous discussions. In my experience it was avoiding the stuff that created the problem. The youth ministers would try to deal with it but when the students didn't accept easy answers they quite talking and ostracized them. Usually because they had to deal with Elders who didn't' want them talking about anything big. These are he kinds of things we have to get past and learn to deal with people in terms of their real problems. That's what the chruch has to do to be effective, because people are not going to stop reaching out.

Sources


[1] Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, "Rise of the None." The American Prospect.September 19, 2013
 http://prospect.org/article/rise-%E2%80%9Cnones%E2%80%9D 
accessed 1/7/14.

[2] staff, "Rise of the Nones," Religion in Public Life Project, Pew Research. 10/9/20. http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/  accessed 1/7/14.

[3] Staff, "Americans Belief in God, Miracles, and Heaven, Declines--belief in Darwin's theory of evolution rises." Harris Interactive. Harris Polls (Dec. 16, 2013). On line resource.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1353/Default.aspx  accessed 1/5/14.

[4] Ilias Sabbir, "Theory of Revitalization Movement by Anthony Wallace." Academia.edu. platform for academics to share research papers. on line blog http://www.academia.edu/839547/Theory_of_Revitalization_Movement_by_Anthony_F._C._Wallace   accessed 1/7/14.

[5] Sandi Villarreal, "meet the nones: Introducing Meet the nones we don't need your labels" Sojourners: Faith in Action. 10/09/12. http://sojo.net/blogs/series/meet-the-nones  accessed 1/7/14.
Sojourners has launced a whole blog on the different segements of the Nones.

[6] both the so sojourners article and the Thomson-DeVeaux article say that the nones are moving beyond atheism.

...

Atheist Propagadna and Religious Experience

 

 

 

 

Perhaps nothing scares atheists like feelings. They scared to death of religious experience arguments. Nothing raises their hatred like talking about religious experiences. Daren Brown is some sort of British stage magician who has a new stage act supposedly inducing religious experiences. Atheists waste no time in arguing that this is proof that such experiences are just accidents that mean nothing. He states "I examined the Placebo effect and proved just how powerful fear and faith can be." Of course he assumes that because there is a psychological process that produces faith that then there's no object of faith beyond that process that has any real bearing on life. This is really no different than the one's who claim to stimulate parts of the brain to induce religoius experiences.

In calling it "placebo" he's trying to set up the suggestion that it's unreal, it's unnecessary, God is the great cosmic sugar pill. Then he totally ignores the nature of real placebo. It's only for medicine, there's no evidence that such suggestive keys can manipulate us apart from expectation. All the things that he does in relation to evoking the psychological process are manipulative means of setting up the association. Yet most religious experience of the sort called "mystical" is not expected. In about half the time it's experienced in childhood, and much of the time mystical experiences contradict the doctrine of the experincer. If it was a real placebo it should confirm expectations. Placebo work by expectation. They don't work by challenging expectations. Calling it a placebo is wrong and improper and it's probably only done to evoke the concept and prepare the atheist to inoculated against emotion by making her suspicious of religious feelings.

He sets up several incidents before the main show (the phony atheist conversion) that are intended to get across the idea that suggestion works powerfully and most such feelings as one associates with the supernatural are also just manipulation. He makes people feel afraid by putting them in a room alone after reading to them some satanic right supposedly form the eleventh century. People are turned on by a sense of dark mysterious and ancient.  He gave people a fake drug which is no more than a sugar pill and by getting them to believe in it I got them to make dramatic changes in their lives. Of course he doesn't follow them in their lives or do a longitudinal study to determine if the changes are really transformational (dramatic, positive, and long term). He has no real control and no real way of determining if he's given anyone a real experience. Empirical study has demonstrated that religious experience is real, that's transformational, and that there is a way to determine real experiences from phony ones. No there is no proof direly that it's caused by God but this can be argued successfully by paying attention to what can be proved and using it with logic. It is the M scale that provides us with that means of verification for religious experience and it's been validated by a half dozen studies around the world.

His psychological explanation for the process is typically convoluted and not well throughout. He does an experiment that shows people in private when not watched lie about their mistakes. The idea is tp show that there's a presence in the room no one cheats. If people are given a idea of supernatural presence they act more moral. It is asserted that there are evolutionary reasons why we developed the idea of a supernatural presence. Don't want to be outcast form the tribe so we can reproduce. divine presence would ensure the sense of being cought out. God is made up to make us be moral. In other words like Foucault's take on the Panopticon the prisoners are learning to watch themselves. The problem here is he's convoluted several different reasons in to one.

First of all, if we feel a sense of presence that in itself is reason to assume we feel it. It doesn't have to be the result of needing a moral campus and inviting an invisible God. the illustration itself shows cave men ostracize a guy because he lied. So the fact of how people treated each other would be the reason for moral behavior and the fear of being rejected by the tribe and not being allowed to make would be enforcement enough, why make up an internal watch dog to do the job as well? If one has not felt experiences one doesn't know what they are. why invent a psychological process to evoke them then try to explain them. The fact that one has had such experience itself the reason to believe in the reality of such experiences, then the need to explain it comes out of having the need. The idea of ancient cave men trying to produce a sophisticated psychological technique for evoking some experience they haven't had is ridiculous and if they had it, it has its own reality.If they had it prior to producing the process of evoking it then it is real.

 Brown is certain that the experience explained by psychology. He asserts that these kinds of experiences come from big religious rallies with hyper suggestibility but there's no basis for that assumption. He's not using M scale studies to determine what percentage of religious experience is privately induced and percentage comes out of the big hyper rallies. Here's a clue, with half coming in childhood they are not coming form big rallies.

Then he goes through an elaborate production to produce a fake conversion in an atheist woman. He dose this indirectly without mentioning God. He uses several techniques such as tapping his fingers while they talk about her father to make her associate emotions the sound of the tapping with feelings of fatherly love. In several ways he evokes feelings of powerful father figure to bring atheist to believe. Establishes rapport. learns about her father. The woman is unconsciously processing, core religious belief evoked that God has plan for us and pulls strings to help us. No direct mention of God was made the woman made the connection to God herself through feelings of the father figure (tap tap tap). Brown says things that imply a grand plan, talk about things going wrong for a reason. sense of awe and wonder. Talks about the stars and space, evokes being cherished with awe. The woman describes her experience as "all the love in the world had been thrown at me. I pushed it away by not letting it into my life." Now she sees it's so stupid and she sees through it.

He says "I feel douty bound to make sure you understand that the postive stuff you got through this is not religious belief." This is what he tells her latter after they brought back befoer the audiecne. She's already been debriefed. He says explicitly "it certainly didn't come form God." The result of this elaborate dog and pony show is that we are supposed to come away with the grand feeling religion has been totally exposed and deconstructed and unraveled we see close up who fake it is there's no need for it. Of course the Brit media is opporating from the assumption that atheism is the standard, the grounding for society, the status quoe. The Audience is pre slected to reflect this idea. So one's going to challenge it.

It is a dog and pony show, he has no longitudinal study, no double blind, no control, he has no scale to measure the nature, depth, or effect of experience. He has no theory of religious experience to play it off of. That is all very crucial without that he's proved nothing. He can't guarantee that what she experienced is even a religious experience. One clue to that question is she says nothing about undifferentiated unity. she didn't say that she felt an all pervasive presence. She felt there's a plan and a purpose and she's cared for but that doesn't prove that it's the same religious experience that W.T. Stace talked about (see my link above on M scale).

The real problem is without a control there's no way to know if he isn't just evoking the we are given by God to be able to find him. The fact that he's evoking some of them doesn't prove that they are merely a matter of manipulation. There was no guy tapping when I got saved. Any associations that were evoked alone in my living room had to be coincidental or accidental rather than arranged. To say that there's a psychological process that enables to internalize the value of belief in God is hardly a denunciation of the reality of validity of that process. So there is a psychological process and we can manipulate it. I also had a need for a father figure, and guess what, I had a father. Saying that having a psychosocial need disproves the reality of the solution is just foolish.

That's like saying you have proved that love is just a psychological trick becuase when you when you do  things to make them think they are loved they respond emotionally. He's giving all the ques that God would give us to guide into a relationship with him, thus they respond becuase it's put in them to respond. The only real test of the validity of such feelings is the long term change and production of positive experiences and behaviors resulting from it. Plenty of studies establish that this is the case with mystical experience. It's not been proved that it is the case with phony evoked experiences.

 Essentially there is a psychological process to conversion. it make sense that there would be becuase if God wants us to have  a personal relationship with him then there must be affects which would draw us into a psychological state that is conducive to that relationship. Those affects are not hard to find because we all know  about them, the they things that motivate us and turn us on. So he merely found them and induced them in cleaver ways.

Further answer for Anonymous Bill

 

The guy says his name is Bill. To demarcate which Bill (I know a couple) I just call him anonymous Bill, nothing insulting intended. He made some comments in response to my post on Wednesday. I did make tentative responses but after thinking about it more I want to say a couple of other things. I hope the readers understand becasue there are a couple of things here that I feel are important to my whole blogging career ("career," "mission," "hobby"--whatever).

Forgive me if I oversimplify, but as best I can determine, your premise is basically that the world is what it is (or perhaps is to be considered the best of all possible worlds) and God is handling things as mercifully and lovingly as is possible given the situation. Is that correct? I don't want to straw man you here.

I wouldn't say the best of all possible worlds because we have the fall. While I don't accept that as a given point in history, such as literal garden of Eden, I think it is a valid category and that's what the garden story was about, understanding and dealing with the tendency of us all to fall from the grace of innocence and learning to rebel.

My problem with that premise is accepting that the nature of things is beyond god's control. If you accept the mythology of heaven and heavenly hosts and whatnot, god obviously is capable of creating a climate (heavenly realms) in which beings are brought into a perfect reality with direct proof of god's existence and sovereignty while still maintaining free will (those rebellious angels). Furthermore, a situation has supposedly existed since near the beginning of time in which god tolerates sin without allowing it to offend him to the point of resolution, so I don't see any reason why it couldn't continue in such a state.

It's not that it's not beyond God's control. Of course God is in control but there are other factors that have to be considered. God could make thing be anyway he wanted, but if he wants mutually constradictory things he has to alter the situation in a way that mediates between the contradictions. He was us to have free will and be free from sin. Tha'ts practically impossible because with free will we will chose at some point to go our own way. If we don't have free will we can't make moral decisions and love wont be real. If you program a robot to love you it doesn't really love you. Where's the real love value in a relationship where the one saying "I love you" is only saying because it's a wind up doll that has to say it? We have to free will to mak free decisions and love for real. Then with free will we will go our own way at some point. So God makes a way for us to come back from rebellion and choose the right path again. Our pride wont always let us admit we are mistaken.

What you call entitlement, I call common decency. If I have the capability to lay my newborn down to sleep in a clean, safe crib and instead lay him down on a bed of nails, what does that say about me? If I place that child in a wagon and roll it down an incline toward a ravine, will the DHS applaud me for giving him a fun ride?

We are not new born. Analogies don't prove things, we have to move beyond the unreal of an analogy and face what the analogy is really about. We want to be independent and want to make decisions for ourselves but then we don't want the consequences of making the wrong deicsion. God allows us to become like new born again spiritually, but he can't just stop the world and say "Ok everyone make the right choice now."

God puts it in us to understand what is decent. We have that desire and the tendency to find the indecent repellant, becuase God put it there. We have to choose the right path to exercise it fairly and unselfishly. We have conflicts within ourselves and with others. We are all at different levels of growth and maturity. We are all selfish and we are different stages in our ablity to mediate selfishness with decency. Of cousre this is going to make for a rough edged world. God does protect us. He does give us the strength and ability to cope if we turn to him for that strength. He can't just stop the world and make it all even becuase that would negate the free chosen of those who have not been through the learning process yet, which is most of us (including me).

I can't really jibe with the Niebuhr thesis because by this logic, self-transcendence should only lead to sin when the subject's needs aren't being met. Per your example, sin wouldn't have occurred if you weren't hungry and cold to begin with, or if you were given adequate ability/resources to pay your rent honestly. 

 That's because the world can't be made even. It's always going to be filled with people who are different stages in development because we have different ages and different rates of maturity. It takes some of us longer to get the message. You should have seen me the other night. The cowboys did it again! they are up to their old tricks. why can't ever get it together!?? It's Jerry Jones it's all Jerry Jones. The woman I was watching with kept saying "It's not important it's just a game." Just a game! You don't undersatnd, the Cowboys aren't good anymore! It's a catastrophe of epic proportion. I'm going to start building a boat. You start rounding two of every kind of wine and beer.

The anxiety of spoke of is always present and stems from self transcendence. That process is not just about need that's just the example. You are assuming God could just give us everything and make it all good we have no trials. Then you can't understand why I call that entitlement? We have a higher purpose that is not based just giving me a good life. You are acting like that's some kind of catastrophe to think that way. That life is not about my happiness is not a catastrophe. Happiness comes from fulfilling what you are made for not from just always getting what you want. We have higher callings than just saying out of harm's way. So we have to live in a world where people are searching for truth and working on the decision making process in contemplation of God's reality. That means a world where people are free to abuse their decision making process and make other people miserable.

If you hadn't been put into a hostile climate that demands shelter, or if you'd been given the means to provide for your basic needs, or if god had zapped the rent money into your account, or if god had inspired the landlord to mercy, or any number of alternate scenarios would have made sin unnecessary. If god is aware that sin is the result of need and sets you in an environment of need, who's responsible for the sin?

 Sure but all you are really saying is that life should be about your happiness and fulfilling a higher purpose is wrong it means you have to suffer. That's what I call entitlement. I guess you call it "having a good life."

Something is going on in the universe. There's more to living than just getting your way and being safe and being happy. That's a big catastrophe and some people never forgive God. that's just the same as saying "why didn't taht big mean old God make me God? Until God gives up and makes me God I'll hate him." OK then you die having God. The study data proves that we are happier when we seek God and find his purpose for our lives rather than demanding our own way. I say that because the studies show religion is the number one factor in well being, that those who have had religoius experiences (of the kind known as "spiritual" or "mystical") are happier and better adjusted.


 Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD

Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness

Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.

Nielsen again:

In the days before research boards reviewed research proposals before the studies were conducted, Pahnke devised an experiment to induce people to have a religious experience. On a Good Friday, when they were to meditate in a chapel for 2.5 hours, twenty theology students were given either psilocybin or a placebo. The students who were given the psilocybin reported intense religious experiences, as you might imagine. Their levels of happiness also were significantly greater than the control group reported. But what is especially interesting is that these effects remained 6 months after the experiment, as the psilocybin group reported more "persistent and positive changes" in their attitudes to life than did the placebo group.

 Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predictor of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combination of religious items, including prayer, relationship with God, and other measures of religious experience to begin to adequately clarify the associations of religious commitment with general well-being."

 There's a bigger picture to consider.  It's not just about me it's about everyone in the world and our need to seek truth. That brings into play my theory on Soteriolgoical Drama.

I've posted about that many times. It's my answer to the problem of pain and evil. Please read it again. It's not that i think that's the answer. It's a theory and it indicates this a logical answer to why God allows the kind of world we have. It may not be the answer I give but the logic of it suggests the possibility that there is a logical answer.

Does God Set us UP to Fail? My answer to a reader

 

 

 

In the comment section to my commentary "Christmas and the Crucified God"  about the eighteenth person to call himself/herself "Anonymous" on this blog wrote:

I do appreciate your education and willingness recognize strengths/weaknesses within Christian theology. I also appreciate the uniqueness of your personal thoughts on atonement. However, I personally can't see how any of these explanations reinforce the idea of a just or loving god.

No matter how you choose to pitch it, I see Christianity promoting a system in which a god has designed a system in which every participant will fail. A person born, being sinful by nature is already on an inevitable road to destruction. The only rescue from said situation is via the same god that put us on this path to begin with.

To me, the imagery is of god placing you on a raft in a swiftly moving stream that's headed toward a deadly waterfall which will not come into view until it is too late to change course. If we realize our predicament ahead of time and cry out for help, has god really saved us, given that he put us into the stream in the first place? And if we're too ignorant, or too distracted or just misinformed and go over that waterfall, is that god not still to blame for our destruction?

 

 First of all the assumption that s/he seems to start with is what I said in my piece, that we feel entitled and we blame God for subjecting us to the indignity of having to exist. God owes us something for thrusting existence upon us without asking our permission. We should be given all the goodies because we have to go through the mess of living. Yet that's the opposite of the attitude my grandfather had, and my father for that matter, that living is a gift of God, God is  the good, we should just be happy to be alive.

 

 S/he can't see how God is jut or loving. He's obviously loving becuase he is willing to be in solidarity with us. The sign of his solidarity is that he became a man and went through it too. It's not necessary that he go through the most horrible suffering ever, he did go through horrible suffering and not that makes up for our pain but it is a sign of his willingness to identify with us. The problem we are not in solidarity with God. It's a  covenant, that means there are two sides. We don't want to be stuck with a side. We think it should all come to us and we don't have to do anything. That doesn't make sense. God in solidarity with us, that means we should be and must in solidarity with God. That means seeking to obey God, to please God and allow God to work through us as expressions of his love. To do that we have to be open to God's love. God will put love in us by means of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:1).

God is just, because he is the basis of justice. Why do we have a concept of Justice? We have no examples of it on earth. We don't even have to be conscious. If evolution was efficient we would be like ants and not think. It's efficient enough that we are the top of the food chain and survive (if we have not contrived our own extinction as a species) and yet not efficient enough to keep us form making up concepts we can't embody and can't produce because they require perfection, such as justice. That in itself might be a good reaosn to assume that God is the author of justice. Justice is what we don't want. That would mean we have to pay for your sins and we can't. Of course modern people don't feel sinful becuase they are entitled. If we examine the way people felt in ages past, we sin all the time and we never truly pay.

 

 Anon's next point is interesting. There are two sub points to it: (a) we are born to fail, we are not created perfect; (b) "The only rescue from said situation is via the same god that put us on this path to begin with.." There's the hidden atheist premise again. Blame God, God owes me a big whupping recompense for putting me through this. Remember the studies I've talked about that show us that atheists feel self hatred? Atheists hate themselves, thus they hate God for making them they way they are. Those assumptions would fit perfectly with this kind of thinking. The basic premise that we are all born to fail, we are born sinful we have a sin nature that will lead us a stray we can't choose otherwise, good point but the next statement just implies that God should be punished for this. What God is the rescue, he did it to us! He should be punished for forcing life upon us. Now God is the sinner and we are his judge! How screwed up can you get in your thinking? The source of all goodness, the only truly objective judge is the defendant and flawed stupid me is the judge of the source of good? come off it!

Why not be grateful that God, who doesn't have to give a rat's ass about us, is willing to give us the hope of salvation without our meriting it all we can do is feel put upon? After all God could just go impersonal on us and be like the unthinking uncaring nature that they love so deeply, the non-God they wish they had. The cancer, the car wrecks all random and unfeeling, is what they worship? No of cousre not, they worship themselves. They are only worthy things in existence! Ok pardon my sense of outrage, I have to right to impose that on them since I do this too. When I'm in a spot I start getting entitlement fever and goign 'why are you doing this to me!??" "I write his cool blog!" On second thought, maybe I better not remind him about the blog! So that's true that I worship myself because I'm selfish it's non voluntary. I am a pretty pathetic object of worship.

So let's just answer the point, are we born to fail? Every single person is made to fail and that as the stick to get us to go for the carrot of salvation? first of all Reinhold Niebuhr in his brilliant work, The Nature and Destiny of Man Vol I.   shows us that sin nature is connected to the very nature of being sentient and having a brain. The the fact that we are conscious and we can think about the future and remember the past (self transcendent) is the basis of sin. This is so because sin grows out of the anxiety that self transcendence foments. For example I can remember being hungry and cold, I can reason that if I don't pay the rent I'll be hungry and cold again, but I can't pay the rent so I steal the money to pay the rent. Thus I've committed a crime not because I need to but because I can understand the concept that I will need to and I fear it. So the anxiety of that fear had led me to treat others unjustly (stealing).

Atheists will always say "O but God is omnipotent so he could fix it up where we all our needs met and we have to do anything." That wont work, first because omnipotent doesn't mean the power to do all things it means jurisdiction over all being. It's about the circumcise of power not ability. There is no reason to think God can violate logical necessity. For example God can't smell next Thursday. Days of the week don't smell.So then the assertion that if God doesn't smell the days then something is wrong with the concept of God is merely a problem with the concept of God's power. So God can't create sentient beings that are self transcendent give them fee will and not allow them to feel the anxiety of self transcendence. Then the idea that if God is the answer that somehow makes it worse because God is unworthy to be the answer: that is merely the complain of the God hater club. God is the only worthy candidate in all of being to be the answer. The whole dilemma comes from the hidden premise "why did God make me the way I am, I hate the way I am." Learn self acceptance. That's one of the primary lessons I learned when I first God saved. That was one of the big revelations of my life I can love myself and accept myself because God loves me. I could not accept myself as an atheist. There was no basis for acceptance. How can you love yourself when you are the thing that turns you off?

God did not create us to fail. If that were true he would not give us the answer. In giving us himself as the answer he's not saddling us with the big cruel meany that made life bad, he's giving us the best thing there is. God is the first and eternal aspect of all that is, God is the basis of all things. God is the source and origin of love. So in giving us himself God is giving us the only true and objective judge, the source of all compassion and goodness, what could be better? God has perimeters for creation, he has a reason for creation he doesn't need to consult us first. We can't assume that we are of such great importance that God's purposes must be subverted to our needs. Yet he did put as at the center of creation. We obviosuly pay a key role, so much so that he organizes the whole universe so we can have this search in the heart and find God and get saved. That should be a huge honor rather than a curse.

See my essay on Soeteriological Drama to find the details of the theodicy solution, my own version of the free will defense.

finally s/he has this image of God placing us on a raft of course it's laded to make God the bad guy. Let's change the imagery. Not that I think we need a bible verse to justify an image that helps us understand but it is neat to see how many passages in the Bible use female imagery of God. This is the basis for my image to answer the raft image. So observe the imagery of the Bible in dipecting God as a mother, especially a mother giving birth.

Deu 32:11 "As an eagle stirs up her nest, and hovers over her young, and spreads her wings, takes them up, and bears them on her wings.

Deu 32 :18 "Of the Rock that bore you, you were unmindful, and have forgotten God that formed you." (that one may be hard to get, baring children--female image).

Job 38:8 "Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb."

Job 38:29 "From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven."

Isa 45 9-10 Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter. Does the clay say to the one who fashions it: What are you making, or Your work has no handles? Woe to anyone who says to a father: What are you begetting? or to a woman: With what are you in labour?

Isa 49:15 "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (comparing God's attitude toward Israel with a woman's attitude toward her children).

Isa 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

Hosea 13:8 "I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart";

Mat 23:37 and Luk 13:34 Jerusalem, "Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing."

Let's think of God as a mother who is going to bring forth new life, a new person, an infant. She conceived so it's our "fault" yet its not a crime to reproduce. The woman is not committing a sin yet it might be a hard birth, the kid is in danger then it has to live. So we say the mother is forcing the child to live and that's her fault? Or even the father. The mother can't be a mother without the Father being the Father. In his analogy both parents are God. Not two God but one entity that is in two parts. Sort of bienity. The problem is God is not an entity but the basis of all being. Thus we need not look at it as some pre conceived plan (no pun intended). Even though we are told it is (from the foundation of the world). It's also just the unfolding of being. The hardships and pain we go through are just the birth pangs of having life and learning what life is about. God is the center of that process. It's a rich privilege and rare gift to live we should thank God that its bestowed upon us. Finding Jesus and being saved and getting out of the flaws and problems of human sin is nothing more than the proper way to reduce the anxiety of self transcendence and learn love. That's the bottom line of all of it. God is doing all of this and bring us forth through birth and re-birth to enable us to learn and experience love and learn to give love.

We are not made to fail, we are made to find love and learn to give love.

Guest View point by Tercon: Truth that's God

 


This is it until after new years. At that time I will answer Anonymous's comments on the problem pain and free will. Until  then have a Merry Christmas!

this is by a friend on carm. I thought it had some good features and is interesting. So it's a guest spot.
CARM 12/14/13

God doesn’t hide from man, but man hides himself from God in and with his own unbelief. There's nothing to hide in and from the truth, God didn't make us to hide from us, but he is known to us through and in how everything else we know exists and is known to us, through our own personal first person belief.

God desires to know whoever does believe the truth; do you desire to know God? If not, is it then a mystery to you that you don’t know him? Stop pretending that you don’t know that you have to believe first before anything is known; as you can’t know without first believing.

God is made known to us in the truth we believe in and about Him, but if you disbelieve he exists, then the reason you don’t know God is because you don’t believe he exists, it’s that simple; as no-one in their own unbelief is able to know the truth of something's existence in the first place.

What is it that we can know without first believing it, as we gain all the knowledge we have through belief.
And it’s premature of anyone to say that “God doesn’t exist” before they have themselves done what is required of them to know God or anything to exist in the first place, as no knowledge of anything is available to anyone in the midst of their own unbelief and this is without exception. All what we know; we know through and by the psychological act of belief and in no other way do we know of anything without this mental act upon what it is that we first must believe to exist before we are able to gain any knowledge of what is believed to exist. Believe the truth, for through and by this is the knowledge of God known.

The Epistle of John and through John’s words in which he believed and wrote in and of the truth he knew in the same way John knew Jesus, and Jesus did love John.

In the Beginning (Christ) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this one was in the beginning with God; all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that has happened. In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light in the darkness did shine, and the darkness did not perceive it. He was the true Light, which does enlighten every man, coming to the world; in the world he was, and the world through him was made, and the world did not know him: to his own things he came, and his own people did not receive him; but as many as did receive him in belief to them he gave authority to become sons of God -- to those believing in his name; that He is truth itself, who -- not of blood nor of a will of flesh, as not through the senses, nor of a will of man but -- of God were begotten through belief, through the truth believed. And the Word in truth became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we realize His glory in this, realized as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth. John the Baptist does testify concerning him, and has cried, saying, `This was he of whom I said, He who after me is coming, has come before me, for he was before me;' and out of his fullness believed in us did we all receive, and grace over-against grace; for the law through Moses was given, the grace and the truth through Jesus Christ did come; God no one hath ever seen; the only begotten Son, who is on the bosom of the Father -- he did declare.

For every one who is doing wicked things hates the light of the truth, and does not come to the light, that his works may not be detected; but he who is doing the truth does come to the light, that his works may be manifested, that in God they are having been created.'
After these things came Jesus and his disciples to the land of Judea, and there he did tarry with them, and was baptizing; ye worship what ye have not known; we worship what we have known, because the salvation is of the Jews; but, there cometh an hour, and it now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father also does seek such to worship him; God [is] a Spirit, and those worshipping Him, in spirit and truth are we to worship.' Another there is who is testifying concerning me, and I have known that the testimony that he does testify concerning me is true; you have sent unto John, and he has testified to the truth. `But I do not receive testimony from man, but these things I say that you may be saved; Jesus, therefore, said unto the Jews who believed in him, `If you may remain in my word, truly my disciples you are, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'

Wherefore if you do not know my speech? because you are not able to hear my word of truth. `Ye are of a father -- the devil, and the desires of your father ye will to do; he was a man-slayer from the beginning, and in the truth he has not stood, because there is no truth in him; when one may speak the falsehood, of his own he speaks, because he is a liar -- also his father. `And because I say the truth, you do not believe me. Who of you does convict me of sin? and if I speak truth, wherefore do you not believe me?
Thomas saith to him, `Sir, we have not known to what place do you go away, and how are we able to know the way?' Jesus saith to him, `I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one does come unto the Father, if not through me; if you had known me, my Father also you would have known, and from this time you have known Him, and have seen Him.'

And I will ask the Father, and another Comforter He will give to you, that he may remain with you -- to the age; the Spirit of truth, whom the world is not able to receive, because it does not believe him, nor know him, and you know him, because he does remain with you, and shall be in you. `I will not leave you without, I come unto you; but -- that the word may be fulfilled that was written in their law -- They hated me without a cause. `And when the Comforter may come, whom I will send to you from the Father -- the Spirit of truth, who from the Father does come forth, he will testify of me; and you also do testify, because from and in a beginning you are with me from the day you first believed the truth.
But because these things I have said to you, the sorrow hath filled your heart. `But I tell you the truth; it is better for you that I go away, for if I may not go away, the Comforter will not come unto you, and if I go on, I will send Him unto you; and having come, He will convict the world concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment; `I have yet many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear [them] now; and when He may come -- the Spirit of truth -- He will guide you to all the truth, for He will not speak from Himself, but as many things as He will hear He will speak, and the coming things He will make you know and understand in what you believe; He will glorify the truth, because of only truth He will take, and will tell to you and you will recognize the truth as is the same in you.

`Of the world they are not, as I of the world am not; sanctify them in Thy truth, Your word is truth; as You did send me to the world, I also did send them to the world; and for them do I sanctify myself, that they also themselves may be sanctified in the self-evidence of the truth. `And not in regard to these alone do I ask, but also in regard to those who shall be believing, through their word, in me;
Jesus answered, `My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my officers had struggled that I might not be delivered up to Jews; but now my kingdom is not from hence.' Pilate, therefore, said to him, `Art thou then a king?' Jesus answered, `Thou dost say [it]; because a king I am, I for this have been born, and for this I have come to the world, that I may testify to the truth; every one who is of the truth, does hear my voice.' Pilate saith to him, `What is truth?' and this having said, again he went forth unto the Jews, and saith to them, `I do find no fault in him;

Christmas and The Crucified God

This is my annual Christmas article. I have a guest article for friday and so I'll be off until after New Years. So I wish everyone a Mary Christmas!


The Christian part of Christmas, that's the nativity scene with no trees or elves. That's the part you go to chruch to talk about. Show some mangers and some wise men and play the drummer boy song (eeeeee can't stand that son, p-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum...enough already!) and you've done your bit for Christmas. I actually love Christmas, I like the manger and the baby and all that. Yet that is not what it's about. The entrance of Christ into the world in a lowly birth, worshiped by wise-men and heralded by angles and a star, those are nice folk tale elements. That masks what it's all about in the guise of cute fluffy heart warming imagery. Christmas is about the birth of Christ, God come in the flesh, and that signals to us the death of Christ; its meaning, it's end, it's un-final end and new beginning. The birth heralds more of the positive side of Jesus time in the flesh, his career, his mission, the promise and the possibilities. After all the angels said "peace on earth, good will toward men." How does that connect to a kid born in a manger?

Even with the positive possibilities of peace the birth hearlds the death and since we are compelled to think of both they both remind us of the meaning of Christ's mission and the reason for his coming. I used to read a book every Christmas, the same book. It was one of my all time favorite books; The Crucified God, by Jurgen Moltmann. The subtitle is very important: The Cross of Christ as the foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. That book seemed to most adequately sum up what the incarnation is about.

Motlmann was from the 60's to the 90's and maybe even up to the present was the greatest living Protestant theologian. He was best known for this book and his Theology of Hope. both of which served to dramatize and legitimize the theology of liberation and the struggles of Latin America. Moltmann's book is actually an argument for placing Praxis on the front burner of theology and leaving the dray musty doctrinal stuff on the back burner. Praxis is the idea of reflection upon material need, how to apply the lessons of theology in a practical way to people's needs.
....... 

To get to the core of the book and it's relation to Christmas, the argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the big deal? There are much worse ways to suffer. Crucifixion is bad but it is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. So why was it a sacrifice, I mean after all he is God, what would it matter to him if he dies? And he got to come back."

First, most Christians try to answer this out of a need for piety. They do not give a theological answer, they give a pious one. The pious answer can't be undestood by modern people, they lack pious feelings, so it just makes it worse. The pious answer of course is to try and mount up the pain and make it seem so very much worse. O. Jesus suffered in hell and he suffers every minute and he's still suffering and he felt all the agony in the world. Of course it doesn't' really say that anywhere in the Bible. While I think this is true, and while my pious side feels the proper sense of devotion and gratitude to our savior for his work, we can't use this to answer the question because modern impiety can't understand the answer. They just hear us reiterating their hidden primes.
....... 

The other Christian answers are Propitiatory atonement, Substitutionary, or Moral government. These are the tree major ways of looking at the atonement. Propitiation means to turn away anger. This answer is also incomprehensible to moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't stand the sight of us, he has to stick Jesus between himself and us so he will see Jesus and turn away his anger. This just makes God seem like a red faced historical parent who couldn't comprehend the consequences of his creation when he decided to make it. Substitutionary atonement says that Jesus took our place, he received the penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial transaction, Jesus paid the debt. the other is closer to moral government, Jesus was executed because he stepped in and took the place of the guilty party. Both of these are also problematic, because they really allow the guilty to get off Scott free and persecute an innocent person. Again modern people can't understand this kind of thinking; you could not go down to the jail and talk them into letting you take another prisoners place. We can harp on how this is a grace so fine we can't undersigned it in the natural mind, and relapse into piety again singing the praises to God for doing this wonderful act, but it wont answer the atheists questions.
....... 

I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and  actually explains why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do atheists seem to think,  that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, in conceiving of us by creating us. The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?

I mean consider the idea that usually acompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a little torutre death cant' hurt him. In the old days, when we had a culture that ran on Christian memories, people said how great that God would do this for us when he didn't have to! Now the argument is "Of course he had to, it's the least he can do, after all I didn't asked to be born, so I'm entitled to whatever goodies I can get in compensation." That's why I think the hidden premise is to blame God; its as though they are saying God has to suffer more than anyone to make up for the suffering he caused as creator. This sort of attitude marks the disease of the modern mind.

In any case, my view is the Participatory atonement. It was embraced by several church fathers and modern theologians supporting it are mentioned below:

I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.

........A. The inadquacy of Financial Transactions

Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogous to a financial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadequate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monetary arrangement and business transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrament for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primitive notion of sacrifice. The one making the sacrifice pays over something valuable to him to appease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiation view" becuase it is based upon propitiation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatory" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finiate humans, and he dide as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not in the manner of a premature animal sacrafice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.

.......B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity

In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his character, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cause as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and societies. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is propitiatory.

.......C. Death in Solidarity with Victims.............. 

1) Support from Modern Theologians

.......Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crucified God Moltmann interprits the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).

..............2) Scrtiptural

...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certanly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)

.......In Short, if we have united ourselves to Christ, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and resurrection through our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it stands tto reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.

.......This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity creates the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him through the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.

.......D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

.......Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Christ died in Solidarity with victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposely angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all victims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselves up and secure our conditions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultimate consequences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guatemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escort the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.

.......The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. government funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focused on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the victimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).

.......E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?

.......This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, especially Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept with the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrifice itself is a prematurity notion. If one commits a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a premature concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the manner in which it secures salvation, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself others sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declares one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidarity and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and cry of his own creation.

The Blogging Parson

Moltmann's theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of individualising the work of the cross.

Moltmann's work turns out to develop a "Trinitarian history of God." This works through a dialectic through which God rejects the Son, then accepts the son, then raises the son to a hope and a future in which we can participate. This also raises a dialectical relation between God and man because the son becomes part of humanity then humanity becomes part of the son through adoption to sonship and participation in the future. Christ particpates in our life and We in his. That's quite a philosophical turn on for a German.

Blogging Parson again:

We might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.

While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.

This last criticism I think is valid on the surface. Mostlamann doesn't spend a lot of time focusing on individual piety I think the implications for the individual are obvious and it's up to the individual to step into a relationship with God. For me I find Chrsitman can be a great way to do what but only if you overlook the commercial crap and read a book like the Crucified God..



Online copy of Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann

No Will Greater Than My Own?

The other night I received an IM from a guy who posts on a certain message board. He's an atheist and we had exchanged a few barbs here and there, but didn't really know each other. He didn't attack me, he was polite enough but he said some very disturbing things. First he began with a lot of break the ice sort of questions, such as was I a YEC and what did I think about it? We got into a very shallow exchange about God arguments, by that I mean neither of us got into it deeply enough to say anything profound. Then he began to say that if God was real, he would still choose to go to hell. Why? He said he hates God. He said in no uncertain terms as he proceeded to issue forth the most blasphemous stream of bilge, complete with all sorts of imagined violations of God's body, I'm suer the reader can fill in the blanks. I asked him way he felt that way he said "no evidence." Well, I told him, he's bordering on abusive lanague and what he said if he could do it would definitely get him in put in jail. No one says stuff like that just because there's no evidence. That's pure hate, no one hates something (or someone) just because you can't prove they exist. He said "I hate dictators."

Now I can well imagine things one would say about why God might be considered a dictator, especially the God of the OT. But I asked him Why is God a dictator. The answer floored me. I expected him to say wiping out the Amalekite babies and such, but instead he says "he tells people what to do." I ventured the theory that a dictator is more than just someone who tells people what to do. God, in so far as he created us, might actually be in a valid position to tell us what to do. He seemed not to understand that concept. I don't think this guy speaks for all atheists. I think he might be just a fringe element, but it made me think. A week or so latter I had a discussion on my boards and it was enough like a lot of other discussions of that topic (moral issues, grounding of ethical axioms) that I have to wonder, do the atheists of this generation, the gen xer atheists really understand the concept of authority? Has no one ever introduced them to the notion that there might be a valid authority that really has the right to tell one what to do?

I am sure that atheists can understand this concept, what I'm not sure is that it has been sufficiently pounded into their heads to the extent that they are willing to actually take it seriously. The Xaths are the product of the selfish, hedonistic seventies and the "go along get along" "we generation" eighties, via their parents. That should make them more docile toward authority, but it also means they may never have been taught that there's a valid reason to think of a will higher than their own. They may resent a will that others purport to know but for which they can find no overt empirical demonstration. Following rules of a system is one thing, but submitting to the unseen is another. This is not something that we can reason about intellectually, its' a cultural difference, a generation gap, and there may be no way to bridge it. What was the discussion on my boards that made me wonder about all this?

The issue was advanced by an atheist friend that morality is genetic. Of course they have no data and certainly have no empirical proof, but sometimes atheists are content with speculation and assumptions, when it suites their side. So the argument is advanced, morality is genetic. we have genes to tell us right from wrong, thus we need no appeal to God. But the Christians counter with the bit a bout objective ethics. So it becomes the usual hum drum argument, "tastes great, less..." I mean, objective moralist vs. no need for God. I argued that objective morality is not the issue. The real issue is grounding of ethical axioms. Morality is not objective, but axioms can be grounded or ungrounded. God provides grounding because he created the universe and thus, is the author of its purpose. But the atheists counter by saying that being author doesn't give God any privilege at all. They are free to do as they please because if God was really kind he would have created them as robots so they wouldn't have worry about moral choices. I have seen this argued a hundred times. I've seen it argued on every major atheist board from CARM to Sec Web.

Many atheists will give it a long protracted argument; so what if God created me. That doesn't give him the right to tell me what to do. He's no more special than a drunk in bar on Saturday night. But every time I try to argue that God is necessary to ground axioms many of them chime in with "no he can't because he doesn't exist." This is merely circular reasoning. They are confusing the distinction between the effects of God's hypothetical existence upon meta ethics, and the actual fact of God's existence. Clearly this is circular since the answer to the question "if God did exist what difference would it make to morality?" Just cannot be "God doesn't doesn't exist so he can't make any difference." Then we spend about fives posts going "If he exists," "but he doesn't exist," "if he exists," "but he doesn't exists..."

I think the problem is it just never occurred to them to ground their moral axioms in some higher authority because they have always been taught to think of themselves as the ultimate authority. I wonder if perhaps they are coming at this from the stand point of consumers. They can understand following rules, but ultimately no other will can be imposed upon them since for each one he/she is the final authority and the only one to whom he/she must answer. If one worships the self, the highest blasphemy is that I am not the center of the universe.This is why my argument about the atonement as solidarity is as big a scandal to them as the financial transaction model or any other model. They see no logic in it and no sense. For the willingness of God to be in solidarity with them would be major blasphemy because God dares to put himself on equal grund with them. This must be what Paul meant when he said there would come a future generation that would be lovers of selves rather than of God.

Of course there are exceptions. There are valid concerns, I am not saying there are not. One such valid concern is wiping out the Amalekties. I am not saying that there aren't problematic Bible issues that have to be dealt with. But when push comes to shove the major cultural difference is, I think, that this nrew trend of atheism, while not very significant numerically, may represent the coming to fruition of many issues unresolved revolving around the ego in the modern age. As modern people we see ourselves as individual units, with rights, invested with a total package of personhood; a package that includes right, privileges, and revolves around the "punctual self" as the center of all navigation in the world. We see this tendency to center self in the world and make the world go around it in the Descartes and in the philosophy of modern world. I think, therefore, I am. I am the center, my perceptions determine reality. There is no tribe, there is no higher power there's only what I want and what I can get and what I have to put up with to get it.

Of course they realize that they have to cooperate. Of course they realize that we can't all be the center so we have to work together, that's why they have teleological ethics. Ethical means can't be based upon duty and obligation, that would necessitate another will than my own. I have to form a corporate will for the purpose of cooperating in society so not duty, but outcome becomes the major sticking point for moral value. That outcome revolves around soft values, like greatest good for greatest number, or avoiding pain since we can't impose anything upon anyone. Outcome ethics always leads to a disaster because it proceeds from the premise that there is no duty to impose and the only obligation is to cooperate so we can all have what we want. It can easily lead to the sacrifice of a small helpless group to support the cooperation for the greater number, because after all, the greatest good is getting what I want. Thus Regan's contra war of the eighties could be justified upon utilitarian grounds; and utilitarians supported the salve trade, because the "ignoble" black man had to be sacrificed to support the greater good (white people making money). I am not saying that atheists are on a par with slave traders. Please don't misunderstand me. This is not an argument about atheists not having morals. Atheists can have morals but they can't ground their axioms. They have to coast on Christian memories to ground their axioms.

There could be no stronger grounding than the authorization of the author of the universe. But we cannot move into this through winning rational arguments. One sees on message boards the bitter result of trying to confront the secular minded hoards with logic and theology. We have to find some new way around it. We have to get our bearings again. We are spoiled to live in a society which coasts on Christian memories. We have to find again the way Paul did it. We have to find out how to live in the power of God. We have to show the power and love of God to a pagan world. But it should help to understand the intellectual basis of the struggle.