LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

understandings, images of god(s), and traces the evolution of spirits to polytheistic god-images through these stages of cultural evolution understanding that it is the facts on the ground that drive our understandings/images of god(s), and probably not any mystical, god-driven revelations that shape man’s understanding. And who can tell whether the god(s) are evolving? Instead Wright is pretty clear that he is uncovering the culture’s evolving needs of god(s) and whether the god itself is evolving is moot and non-discernable. Then he moves on to the evolution within Hebrew Scriptures from polytheism (the worship of many gods simultaneously) through monolatry (the insistence of devotion to one god exclusively in the midst of many co-equal or hierarchical gods), and finally to monotheism (the conviction that there exists only one God), a late, third to second-century BC achievement in Hebrew devotion. His primary tool in doing this is the JEDP schema, unraveling those threads and putting times to their authors. What emerges is that those four authoring sources, writing in different periods, have differing needs of god, imagine the god differently in both word and deed. And Wright sees an evolutionary pattern in those differing images, a gradual movement, albeit in fits and starts, toward greater transnational and transethnic inclusiveness.

      He sees this pattern continuing in the early Christian writings, Paul’s letters being the earliest (first generation), then Mark (circa 70 AD), the Q source, Matthean source, Lucan source, and finally John (probably post 100 AD). Wright sees Jesus as very much in the prophetic-healer mode (preaching the immanent, Isaiah-like kingdom). In Mark Jesus uses the word “love” only once, in the Great commandment (Love God, and neighbor as self.) Jesus’ God is not the Christian God of love we have received, but rather a God of judgment. Without Paul Jesus would probably have been forgotten and his sect lost within a few generations. Paul introduces and emphasizes the love theme, building his new congregations around love, i.e., transnational and transethnic inclusiveness, a taking care of each other (e.g., “See, how they love each other”). Paul’s version of Jesus is probably more important than Jesus himself, what he taught and did. It is those caring communities which Paul created in the urbanizing and industrializing (impersonal, oppressive, dehumanizing) Roman empire that made Christianity so vital and attractive. And Wright also points to the alternative, competing versions of Christianity (Gnosticism, Marcionism, Ebionism, et cetera). Paul’s Christianity was one of several (many?) versions, all competing with other mystery and pagan religions across the Roman Empire. The facts on the ground were that the empire had stopped conquering and was in a consolidating, unifying mode, and Paul’s version best met those needs. And then Wright tracks the evolution of the dominant theological doctrines: Jesus as savior, the kingdom as heavenly (vs. earthly and militant), born-againness, original sin, et cetera.

      With all that regurgitated, where does the experience of reading his book leave me? I think Wright and I handle the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures differently. He seems to treat them mainly as fabricated (albeit unconsciously) fictional history, though he allows they might be inspired without exploring how that might be or what that might mean. He does some obligatory light wrestling with whether God really exists, remaining agnostic and coming to no conclusion. He allows that he cannot believe in the Judeo-Christian God, though he is fairly convinced that there is a moral directionality to history, and to cultural evolution guided by non-zero-sumness, and that there is a moral axis built into the universe, and finally that his good consists of aligning himself as well as he can with that moral axis. And that is as close as he can come to allowing a God.

      Most of what Wright reports I find makes profound sense to me. I probably should explore his authorities on the dating and unraveling of JEDP, just to satisfy myself that Wright’s reporting is accurate. He does fairly thoroughly rip the Scriptures to shreds, and leaves those shreds in a disorderly pile. I found that ripping apart process somewhat disconcerting for me, although it does not offend my sensibilities, but rather lends some grounds for my own wanderings away from the Scriptures and orthodoxy and toward the mystical.

      I would guess that my own growing sense is one of assurance that our Scriptures (Hebrew and Christian) are inspired by mystical visions, and to that extent are validated. But they are no more (nor less) inspired than the holy writings of other major religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, et cetera). And I’d go farther to accept that the reporting and interpreting of those mystical experiences are certainly very shaped by the facts on the ground in their respective moments. And while I can empathize with Susan’s not giving a hang for the invisible God, still I yearn to touch God for myself, fully aware that whatever that experience might be, it cannot be communicated to others by any means, and that however I apprehend it will be violently shaped and filtered by the facts on the ground as well as my own ground-into-my-bones training and sensibilities. It cannot be otherwise.

      ********************

      Pentecost XVII—September 27, 2009

      A string of Marcan teachings, including “He who is not against us is for us.” Margo commented on my taking notes during the sermon. I was arrogantly self-assertive enough to disabuse her, “No, I’ve already preached that text many times.” I had been starting notes on prayer, a knotty topic that I need to address. But in overhearing Stephen’s preaching, I was reminded that I’ve not yet come to any useful (to me) conclusions about the function, the purpose of the sermon, just what is that monologue (or dialogue) about? Throughout my active ministry I considered the purpose of the sermon to be the explication of the gospel text for the day. I began my ministry with the understanding (however mistaken or misguided) that people knew very little about our holy Scriptures, and that one of my primary tasks, if not the paramount task, was to acquaint them with the texts, at least as I understood them. So my goal was to present them with a viable twentieth-century understanding of the scriptural text of the day. My imagined (coached by Herr Spielmann) concept was that in the early church, in the dark of the morning as the congregation straggled in (there being no alarm clocks and Sunday, the Lord’s Day, being a working day in the Roman Empire) the elder, presbyter, forerunner of the priest, interpreted the Scriptures to fill the time as the congregation amassed, following the synagogue’s precedent. So I saw my task in that light as interpreting the Scriptures to the gathered congregation. I told the story, offered the latest critical understanding and some thoughts, or at least a couple of questions about how it might be applied in our lives. A noble model (I mused to myself).

      But with my present sense of my faith, of the faith of understanding the story, the Scriptures, the whole ball of wax to be not fact but metaphor, without a clear sense of exactly what stands behind that complex of metaphor, I’m very unclear what I have worthy of being preached. Perhaps, as Wright suggests, the closest I can get to God is as the moral axis of the universe; then the most I have to offer from a pulpit is my sense of how I think that moral axis is tending at this moment, in this circumscribed situation. And, Lord knows, my sense of that right at this moment is no better, no more guiding than anyone else’s (though perhaps a scuidgeon better than Dick Cheney’s but with nowhere near his self-confidence). So I’m not feeling I have any right to preach, nor any thing to preach these days.

      So what is the sermon? A moment of moral guiding? But by whose authority?

      ********************

      Pentecost XXIII—November 8, 2009

      Musings: after William James’s, Jack Miles’s, Karen Armstrong’s, a couple of Jack Spong’s, and Robert Wright’s books I find myself left with a creator and a moral axis and all the rest is a metaphor which ill-defines the creator and the moral axis. Maybe the deists had it right: the creator made it, set it to running and walked off, leaving us a moral axis by which to run it. Good luck! And it’s up to us to sense the direction in which the moral axis is pointing and then make it happen.

      So a sermon then, is a conversation in which I prompt the people to discover along with me the directions in which the moral axis prompts/points/compels us. But it’s my (the preacher’s) responsibility to first discern the moral axis and in which way it’s pointing, and then in conversation to direct their attention and thoughts in that direction. And all the while I feel no more apt (perhaps even less apt that many of the wiser of them) than the rest of the people to do that discerning and to point their attention and thoughts in the right direction.

      ********************

      Advent

Скачать книгу