Beth Allison Barr is my guest. She is the author of The Making of Biblical WomanhoodCompanion episodenotes and links for this episode can be found here in exchange for a small contribution to support this weekly work: https://www.patreon.com/posts/59908253Get the book here: https://bookshop.org/a/15826/9781587434709Listen now with the AUDIO PLAYER:
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Genesis and Science speak two different languages.
Medieval Jewish readings of the Genesis story Adam reflects and parallel the story of Israel and paradise land.
Adam as a symbol, theme, or pattern. Be aware of literary structure.
Bible written as thoughtful theology not history (or science). Written as the story of Israel that show their ideology. (and identity)
MIN 13
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Literalism is a modernist reading strategy [of the Bible].[/ictt-tweet-inline]
(To share this nifty quote above on TWITTER, it takes 4 seconds. Just click the blue bird icon. And keep your eyeballs open for other easy-to-tweet quotes throughout these show notes.)
Different books of the people (in different eras) adjust and revise other parts of scripture.
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]I find that the most conservative way of reading the Bible is the most unbiblical.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 15
Pete, what do you mean by “GOD”? (and how he encounters that in his newest book.)
Using the word “God” is almost lazy.
MIN 19:30
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]There is no one portrayal of God in the Bible.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
It changes depending on the culture, theology, time, circumstances, and author or authors writing the book. The New Testament comes from the Old Testament trajectory.
MIN 22:00
[In Paul’s letters] Paul [is] trying to make sense of Jesus when it’s a radical departure from Jewish thought.
[The bible is] [T]he development of how humans think about God. The tribal God is warlike [is one example].
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]The “biblical God” is the God we see through our own lens.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 25:00
God in our image.
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]“It’s not just that we use psychology, we ARE psychology.”[/ictt-tweet-inline]
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]“All theology is psychology and sociology, [because] we are people who live in communities and people with histories.”[/ictt-tweet-inline]
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]“God allows [God’s] children to tell [God’s] story from where they are from their perspective.”[/ictt-tweet-inline]
Hold with an open fist.
MIN 28:30
The mystery of the Incarnation and how we see the world.
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]“Jesus is the model and Savior and messy and a 1st century Jewish man.”[/ictt-tweet-inline]
What’s the divine part of Christology?
MIN 32:00
How has Pete’s personal concepts of God have evolved?
My experience of God is not irrelevant and not relegated to just the academic and the life of the modernist mind.
(Eastern) Orthodox “God as Being” (rather than a Being)
When you think of God what do you think of?
God is in you and without God there is nothing. And God is all around you. (New ideas for Pete).
Hear Adam and John the previous time they came on the Spark My Muse show: Episode 59.
SHOW NOTES for Episode 72
It’s a special podcast powwow with Adam and John as we deconstruct / unpack their recent conversation with remarkable guest John D. Caputo! (often referred to as Jack)
Min 2
“What Would Jesus Deconstruct” by Jack Caputo
Tragedies bring out the questions of Theodicy (or so-called “weak theology”) and the questions of why good God would allow humans to suffer. We talk about how we perceive weakness compared to how God might encounter or solve that. It’s a loving term of weakness.
Looking at Jesus dying on the cross as a metaphor for weakness. (sacrifice)
Violence begets more violence.
The solution is a surprising one.
MIN 6:30
(Adam)
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Foolishness of God is the great reversal and is the premise of weak theology.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 8:20
Why the Deconstructionist podcast is not heterodox or counter-orthodoxy or heretical:
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Theology isn’t something you can capture and freeze.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
Beliefs are constructed through history are relatively stable (this is why they last throughout time) but they are also relatively unstable then too. It’s both dangerous to mess with the beliefs and dangerous to keep them frozen too.
MIN 10
(John) The nugget John found in the conversation:
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Deconstruction is not a drive-by shooting.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
Ancient people, scribes, leaders, and rabbi’s were always struggling with how to interpret scripture.
MIN 13:00
The cultural legacy of a modernity mindset is to think that the Bible could be seen as inerrant.
The re-imagining of the Scriptures.
MIN 13:30
(Adam)
Theo-poetics
It’s not that we have to destroy it but we have to continue to to image and expose the Scripture to its own future.
MIN 15:00
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]If Justice or Hospitality exists, it calls to us. It’s something we imagine and pray for and long for. God doesn’t exist, God insists.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 16:30
“You can’t be a fascist of knowledge.” -Adam Narloch
MIN 17:30
Some people think deconstructing is negative and a dead end. Why deconstructing is not a dead end but rather life-giving.
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]The desire beyond desire. It calls us to the next thing. We mistake desire for the thing.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 18:30
(Adam)
Further up and further in…
the thing calling us forward. The beyond the beyond. The deconstructive process continues and we have to keep opening it up.
MIN 20:00
(John) Being comfortable of the Mystery of God.
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Who created God? you realize is the wrong question.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 23:30
(Lisa) My own deconstructing the image of Jesus, of God, and the mystery of understanding how our brains understand reality through constructions.
MIN 25:00
(Adam)
The alien orb. Sphere a Michael Crighton novel.
The Anthropomorphic problem – people make things people-like.
Jewish people are iconoclastic. No graven images. Images don’t capture the meaning.
Jesus is iconoclastic because he comes as divine coming in human form.
The temple curtain is torn revealing that nothing was there behind it because there was more to be revealed.
MIN 29:00
(John)
[ictt-tweet-inline via=””]Pluralism helps us deconstructs and helps take us to deeper truth.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
MIN 32:00
(Lisa)
Wrestling with God is our “calling” (as humans). In other words, it’s our most basic human experience.
Check out Pelagiusand see if maybe he wasn’t a heretic.
MIN 39:00
on Paul’s letters (which became part of collection of books now know as The Holy Bible) were the documents that were preserved the best (and most shaped what is now Christianity)
MIN 43:00
Paul’s authority.
The scandal of turning Paul’s letters into a new law would have deeply grieved Paul.
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Shownotes
Doug Jackson, Returning Guest and All-Star, Explains the 3 Stages of Spiritual Development and Dispels the Biggest Myths.
Do you know St John of the Cross?
What you don’t know could hurt you…but good news, you are now in for a treat!
Listen and get a fascinating perspective of the darkest places on the spiritual journey with your guide Professor Doug Jackson. See the show notes below!
3:00
Historic context of 16th Century Catholic Revival-Era Spanish Mystic, St John of the Cross
4:30
3 stages of spiritual development
How do we know if we are making progress and what can we expect?
St John (1542-1591) provides a roadmap for night travel.
The Beginner Stage
(The beginner loves God for the self’s sake. The beginners thinks, “What’s good for me.”)
Doug explains the Dark Night of the Soul, the important next stage of spiritual development, in keen and helpful detail.
7:00
God starts at the first stage (in a place of joy and thrill in God) and allows us delight in spiritual things and feed on “mother’s milk” spiritually.
Next, God helps us get used to our baby teeth by moving us to love God for God’s sake.
John of the Cross takes the 7 deadly sins and show how they can happen to us in a spiritual sense.
8:10
God is weening us away from nursing and from spiritual milk. Like a baby, we may misunderstand and feel unloved or unnoticed, at first.
9:00
Commodified is the Dark Night of the Soul in Amercian Evangelicalism. The phrase itself is often used inexactly.
It’s not feeling sad or a string of bad things have happened for which we feel upset and confused.
BUT—It is that without cause we feel God has abandon us.
It is not a loss of faith, nor not depression, nor a felt distance because of sin.
It was also an analysis of depression 400 years before Freud!
11:00
God withdraws sensible (sensory, felt) affects. The dark night of the senses. (first phase).
12:30
Maybe it feels like prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. Maybe it feels that songs or sermons that had made an affect no longer do. This sense of loss will be different for each person.
13:30
Essentially, the delight in God disappears.
13:00
Mistakenly, we often may try to shock people back into spiritual infancy with a method, tactic, or suggestion that seems like it might cause feeling once again. (like a book, a conference, a service, etc)
14:10
The spiritual advice from John is to not abandon your spiritual practices (like prayer, fellowship, meditation, service, etc) continue to obey God and carry on until you pass through the night. They won’t be fun, but you continue for God’s sake, not your own.
Then you can come out on the other side to the stage of the Proficient. (Though the stages are actually more porous.)
15:00
The 2nd stage is where John says most of us get and hardly proceed from.
2nd dark night, is rare, and is horrible and includes a bewilderment and even a loss of faith in God and one comes out with a much richer deeper faith and far more settled and fuller understanding of God.
John Coe using 1 John 2:12-14 explains the stages as well.
18:00
John of the Cross found this understanding through terrible suffering and imprisonment and he saw the spiritual connection.
19:30
In the Dark Night of the Soul, spiritual answers are obscured and things are hidden from view.
Walking by faith and not sight.
22:00
If you can’t find the answers it doesn’t mean that something went wrong, it’s just that you can see right now. There will be a lack of certainty.
22:30
Stick with the basics in the dark night.
23:30
In the dark night we aren’t doubting our Faith, or God, but but we are doubting our understanding of God and our Faith.
The call is to obey God and persist in our ways as before. Eventually a dawn will come.
23:00
In this stage, we jettison things that are not core, central and true and come to understand God in a better way.
BE WARNED: Others may feel anxious to get you back in to where you were.
24:00
Backsliding is not the same thing as a Dark Night experience. The Dark Night is progression.
24:30
Prophets in the OT go through the dark night times.
25:00
Using a different lens to see what is already there.
26:00
Examples:
Elijah after Mt Carmel
Apostle Paul
Job
Jesus (wilderness and Gethsemane)
Jesus “learned obedience” and the the will of God was not pleasant
We all go through these types of dark nights
28:00
John of the Cross’s work was (and is) written for [spiritual] guides (leaders) so they can recognize what is happening and to know what not to do.
30:00
Some mystical-style theologians have been hijacked and grafted into a different (sometimes New Age) model of how the reality is ( i.e. “divided self”.)
30:30
The Devil – So what about the Devil which is a prominent feature in the writings?
A CAUTION:
John takes the readers’ Christian theology for already granted. The basic Christian theology was assumed because that was the background and beliefs of his audience.
32:00
Doug answers…Devil with a Big “D” questions. How do we come to understand John and what he is saying, if it is different than our understanding of The Devil and the spiritual world?
Don’t rehabilitate [John], or superimpose our ideas on his work.
Don’t judge or put parts on trial for the embarrassing and difficult sections of St John of the Cross.
34:30
Approach the text thus: “Eat the meat of the fish not the bones”
35:00
If the language bothers you, then let it lie fallow and see what is going on in your own heart as you read.
The promise is (found in Scripture and from those who’ve gone ahead of us in the Faith) that we come out (into dawn) and see the value of what we went through.
God says to Job: I’m God and you are not.
Job says, “Now I have seen you. I spoke out of turn.”
42:00
A word of hope for those in the dark night.
1. Those in the dark night bless those around them and their pride does not effect this because of the Night itself. We are spiritual protected.
43:00
In the Dark Night we don’t get to be proud of our humility.
Be faithful know that God is using you and wait it out.
43:30
Modern example Mother Teresa. She lived most of her life with a sense of abandonment by God.
“If I ever become a Saint I will be a Saint of Darkness, facing the dark to guide souls to the light.”
44:00
People were drawn to her service and work for God even though she felt God’s silence.
45:00
On her critics who say she stopped believing in God.
Christopher Hitchens wrote slanderously about her and others in his book “The Missionary Position”. He said she did have the courage to admit publicly that she didn’t believe in God and never had.
46:00
Mother Teresa–her fruit shows otherwise (it’s sow belief and faithfulness).
Apostasy is a deliberate walking away from God which is a danger of misunderstanding the Dark Night. This is why trained and wise spiritual guides are essential.
47:00
C.S. Lewis character Screwtape urges: “Use the word “phase” to tell him he had it all wrong”
In a genuine Dark Night, we may think we have abandon God or want to and then find ourselves incapable of it.
48:00
Doubt in God is like holding a volleyball underwater with just one hand and senses all the force and then thinking there is no volleyball because it cannot be seen.
“We aren’t working without a net and we won’t fall out of the arms of God.”
49:00
If you are in the Dark Night…(it helps) remembering “it’s a thing, a documented thing”.
49:30
Walking in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before.
51:00
What to do if you are in the throes of it all. best advice.
Richard Foster’s advice in the Celebration of Discipline. The chapter on solitude.
Don’t try to explain this to people when you are in it.
(It’s like Fight Club) “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about fight club”
Most people will not get it. It can hurt our spiritual reputation. God is drawing us into obedience and faith in the absence of feeling. We carry on
“The Spiritual Journey: Crucial Thinking and Stages of Adult Spiritual Genesis”
Henri Nouwen “The Way of the Heart”
55:00
Protestantism running thin in certain areas.
Psychology tainted some spiritual experience as pathology and than co-opted with modern Christianity.
57:00
Baptists were not systematic theologians early on because of the persecution from the Mother Church (in Rome).
58:00
Puritan writers like Jonathan Edwards take God as Physician of the Soul very seriously.
59:00
The one sermon that did in Jonathan Edwards in our time.
“The Religious Affections” To teach that the Great Awakening was just an emotional experience or demonic experience. He writes on how to understand what is of God.
60:02
On taking your time understanding the Dark Night. God is trying to bring us into greater maturity and Christ likeness.
Have you ever gone through a Dark Night of the Soul?
If you’ve reached the dawn, what was strengthen or changed in you?
Blessings in your night travels. If you aren’t in a Dark Night, it’s coming. Stay Calm and Carry on.
If you have any questions or you would like to drop me a line about what you are going through, please use the contact page. A helpful (worldwide) listing to find qualified guides is here.
Shownotes: PART I
A conversation (in 2 parts) with
the author of Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality, by practical theologian Tom Reynolds
Bio:
Tom joined the Emmanuel College (part of the University of Toronto) faculty in 2007. He is committed to an interdisciplinary, practical, and relational vision of theology, his teaching and research address a range of topics related to constructive theology (particularly the doctrine of God and theological anthropology), theological method, intercultural and interfaith engagements, contextual theologies and globalization, philosophical theology, disability studies, and the thought and influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Incorporating the theology of disability into his work training pastors at Emmanuel Seminary, because theology is personal, and not disconnected from the real world concerns of the church and people living their lives.
4:30
About his son Chris sparking his interest and work in the theology of disability.
5:30 Learning that disability isn’t a problem to figure out, but rather it’s about a person who I love and live with, and care with and for, which radically reoriented my perspective on theology.
5:50
Disability and God’s Providence
(Questioning does God “cause” disability as a curse or opportunity for healing…or a kind of moral lesson…)
6:30
His son exploded the theological categories (and assumptions) pertain to Providence…making everything confusing and needing to be re-thought.
7:00
What is abnormal? What is “faulty” humanity?
Amos Yong, Hans Reinders, John Swinton writing on the topic too.
8:15
Tom details the new book on the Theology of Care which builds on the first book.
8:40
Some churches stress Cure over Care in terms of disability.
8:50
(Lisa) My visit to a church where the leadership was interested in healing my son from his non normative experience of the world.
10:00
The range of responses churches have when encountering people with disabilities.
The church’s “urge to cure” is better than outright exclusion, which plenty of families have encountered.
11:00
It comes from the the idea of remaking and fixing someone in a way that is more comfortable for non disable people and normalcy (what they consider normal). Not helpful or Christian.
12:00
About the church that didn’t want his son as a disruption and a church that did receive them.
13:00
“How can we help you?” was water for his parched soul. How the church accepted and welcomed the uniqueness of his son.
14:15
Hospitality vs. a narrow view of what is preferred.
15:00
The messiness of various kinds of people, in general, means we have to expand our view of grace.
15:30
Who gets to be a full-fledge member of the church community?
and the “mascot syndrome” for those with disabilities.
16:30 – 17:50
Levels and types of responses:
• Tolerate disabled, but they do not get to be a true part of the church.
• “Inclusion” sometimes means means the the “outsiders” get invites to the inside group based on the good graces of the in group, but are still treated as problems to be solved, or people that are to receive the gestures of charity from others (people for whom things are “done for (them”)”. Doing for instead of “being with”.
18:00
What is access? In is not just accommodations (i.e. ramps and special bathrooms) and alterations but ongoing…
Faith communities may be not expecting and not ready to receive those with disabilities.
18:30
It’s not an issue about outsiders, because disability extend to a broad range of issues, both visible and not visible, including mental health challenges that are already there.
18:50
Thinking of the word “BELONGING”
as in “to be longed for when you aren’t there in the fullest sense.”
John Swinton and belonging
19:40
Jean Vanier “In giving and receiving do we really thrive as people”
20:30
Unconscious bias that includes “fear of the stranger” and “fear of the stranger within”.
21:00
We fear weakness and vulnerability.
21:30
Before “mainstream”…the stigma of “retard”…and fearing and disposing weakness.
22:20
Nathan means gift. (Lisa) I learned that I had to recognize weaknesses (shortcomings) in myself the I saw reflected in my son…and communities can do the same type of thing unconsciously.
23:00
“The encounter with disability punctures the illusions of what we think of as our own strengths.”
23:50
The journey with a child with disabilities is isolating.
25:30
Societal epidemic that fears being vulnerable or perceived as weak or unable to perform in ways that are considered valuable by society.
26:00
We have to see what are myths about autonomy, independence, and productivity where are assume we are self-reliant and these qualities are prized so highly. “Able-ism” (The idea that being able in body and mind is normal and most vital which serves as the lens by which we see and judge the world and others outside those parameters as faulty.)
27:00
Tom’s latest work called “A spirituality of attentiveness”. Christianity: St Paul’s strength in weakness serves as a prophetic witness against a society that prizes the strong as the main thing of value. 1 Corinthinians pretense of strength undercuts our ideas of grace)
29:20
We are all only temporarily-abled. (Lisa).
31:00
On hearing “You must be so blessed to have a disabled person as a teacher.” Is this sometimes a reframing of the situation that spins the situation to be more palatable? A glossing with spiritual truths and making it about spiritual growth.
31:20
Instead, Chris’s life seeks its own flourishes, and he may at times function as a teacher.
33:00
Thoughts on intellectual ability (or inability) and belief in terms of Salvation.
God’s works God’s own path in different ways and in different capacities with people. This undercuts my arrogance (as a theologian), so I don’t think I can so easily map it out definitively and universal for all people in all places.
34:00
His son’s atheism (who is the God he doesn’t believe in)…and how that challenges our presuppositions about God.
34:50
“It is in the kind of relationships of mutual belonging that the full image of God is borne out.”
35:30
(Lisa) To my son I said, “when you see someone who is loving you, you are seeing God.”
(Lisa) On how I changed from thinking “right belief” as the way to understand God was central. Our intellectualizing what God has done is not salvific.
38:00
Martin Luther’s theology of the Cross:
The pretense that we know exactly where God is and how God works. Where God is most hidden is where God is most vividly revealed in saving ways.
38:30
“Who I am to declare that God’s grace only works in some ways? and the God’s capacity and God’s own mystery is limited to what I would deem and my community would deem adequate.”
39:30
What the practical theology of disability tells us about Grace with God and relationships with others.
40:00
“The longer I live and work as a theologian the more I realize the limitations of theology and the true infinite mysteries of God.”
Jesus was disruptive to religious pretense and suppositions. “You say this..but I say this…”
Theodicy – The question of why does God allow suffering and how should we think about suffering.
How Tom, as a theologian, answers the question,
“Why would a sovereign God allow a person to be born disable and encounter such suffering?” (This is great!)
The best is yet to come! Come back for part II next week.
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