The Doors to the Sea was written by David Bentley Hart after the horrific Indonesian tsunami in 2004. Today I’ll be interacting with a portion of it that explains ideas of Providence, Evil, and God’s will, better than anything I’ve come across.
Please, find the companion page (PART 2) for the article link, the book link, more on the author, and my personal reflections.
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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.
Shownotes: PART II
A conversation with Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality, author 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, and 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.
Tom on Theodicy – The question of why does God allow suffering and how should we think about suffering.
1:00
How would Tom, as a theologian answer the question, “Why would a sovereign God allow a person to be born disabled and encounter such suffering?”
2:20
The Why questions and the answers are messy, ongoing, and evolving. These answers are limited and open to ongoing revision.
3:00
Reframing needed. Question the question and its suppositions about seeing suffering first and foremost as the issue.
3:40
If we are pitying a disabled person and seeing them how we would interpret suffering, we might be off base.
4:10
Exclusion as suffering. Social suffering is something we can alleviate as the church or community.
4:40
Tom on the central questions of Theodicy.
5:30
What would a good world be? Interdependent and that holds up the preciousness and fragility of life and human experience as valuable. Good things can be fragile things.
6:30
Does God cause suffering and determine it? Maybe it’s (all) unfolding for us in mysterious ways.
Who sinned? (disciples of Jesus thinking of blindness as a curse)
So the glory of God can be revealed. (What might that mean that we haven’t understood yet. [Lisa])
The story is less about curing the disabled and more about reveal Jesus’ power and legitimacy as the Messiah.
9:20
NT Wright author of Evil and the Justice of God
(on the Problem of Evil)
• God as the Incarnation steps into human suffering as a means to assuage it and also, in that, provides us a model for how to encounter it in the world ourselves, practically speaking.
The answers to suffering can become “incarnational”, not cerebral and (held) at a distance.
12:00
The why questions signal a (good) unsettledness which can be productive…
12:20
1. God is bigger than our questions and we should feel free to engage in dialogue with God and each other about God.
2. And because it calls us to live into the world and the lives of people will engage who ask, “Where are you?” and we can be there in presence and not (just) with answers.
13:00
“being-with”
(The heart of Incarnational living.)
13:30
In many cases God’s own presence is us to each other.
14:00
“Care isn’t so much “doing for” but “being with”.”
15:00
1 in 5 families regularly encounters a serious disability of some kind.
15:30
We (as a family) chose to continue to come to church even though it was sometimes messy so he (and everyone) could figure out how to make it work. (Lisa)
16:00
How can people in Christian Communities or leaders in Christian communities do better when it comes to being truly hospitable and caring well for people with disabilities.
17:00
Training ministers to come along side is important.
17:30
In his mission and intro to Theology class, what is framed is practical wisdom lived out in relationships of caring regard with other people. (not in the academic halls or in isolation).
18:00
On developing the perception to see/understand differently and to see places where people have been harmed by certain ways of seeing these…like the healing narratives…illness as curses from God, or metaphors of seeing and hearing language and attitudes (able-ism) for example.
18:50
How to show consideration:
Asking before you assist someone. Or asking how you can best help and not presuming that you know (or know better).
Listen first, then do.
19:30
Ministry doesn’t have to be deficit-focused to the “needy”…but rather possibility focused.
As all people of resources and gifts [are] welcome among the community…this turns things upside-down.
20:30
Think of people as sites of wisdom that help a community of belonging.
Members having the same care for one another. All can care and contribute.
Living out the image of God with shared affinity.
22:00
Transformative and vulnerable communion within our communities…being together.
23:20
[There is] dignity in participation. (Lisa)
Allowing people to serve along side means that we are equal.
25:40
Equality isn’t sameness. Difference doesn’t mean a hierarchy.
27:40
(Tom) Music is my therapeutic other life.
A Call for Help!
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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.
Will you help me meet my goal of raising $100.00 in August to keep Spark My Muse going? Use the Donate button on the left sidebar. Thank you for being a big ball of love!
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