Jesus is, for us Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life. As the Word and Wisdom and spirit of God become flesh, his life incarnates the character of God, indeed, the passion of God.
In the judgement of the majority of mainline scholars, atonement theology does not go back to Jesus himself. We do not think that Jesus thought that the purpose of his life, his vocation, was his death. His purpose was what he was doing as a healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement initiator. His death was the consequence of what he was doing, but not his purpose. To use recent analogies, the deaths of Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. were the consequence of what they were doing, bu not their purpose. And like them Jesus courageously kept doing what he was doing even though he knew it could have fatal consequences.
In it's first century setting, the statement "Jesus is the sacrifice for sin" had a quite different meaning. The "home" of this language, the framework within which it makes sense, it he sacrificial system centered int he temple in Jerusalem. According to temple theology, certain kinds of sins and impurities could be dealt with only through sacrifice int he temple. Temple theology thus claimed an institutional monopoly on the forgiveness of sins; and because the forgiveness of sins was a prerequisite for entry into the presence of God, temple theology also claimed an institutional monopoly on access to God.
In this setting, to affirm "Jesus is the sacrifice for sin" was to deny the temple's claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God. It was an antitemple statement. Using the metaphor of sacrifice, it subverted the sacrificial system. It meant: God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God; you have access to God apart from the temple and its system of sacrifice. It is a metaphor for radical grace, of amazing grace.
Thus "Jesus died for our sins" was originally a subversive metaphor, not a literal description of either God's purpose or Jesus' vocation. It was a metaphorical proclamation of radical grace; and properly understood it, it still is. it is therefore ironic to realize that he religion that formed around Jesus would within four hundred years begin to claim for itself an institutional monopoly on grace and access to God.
Because the sacrificial metaphor has often been taken quite literally, we in the church have often domesticated the death of Jesus--by speaking of it as the foreordained will of God, as something that had to happen,a s a dying for the sins of the world. But it ant he other purposive ways of seeing the death of Jesus are post-Easter retrospective providential interpretations. They matter, they're important, and rightly understood, they continue to be a way of proclaiming the gospel. but they should not be allowed to eclipse the historical reason for his execution.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 92-95
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Grace, Transformation, Life, Heaven
Unconditional grace is not about how we get to heaven or who goes to heaven. The notion that salvation is primarily about "going to heaven" is a distortion; and when it is seen as primary, the notion of unconditional grace leads to the notion that everybody gets to go to heaven, regardless of their life and faith. However, unconditional grace is not about the afterlife, but the basis for our relationship with god in this life. Is the basis for our life with God law or grace, requirements and rewards or relationship and transformation? Grace affirms the latter.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 77
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. And as you ring,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. And as you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world shall cease to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
And to the rushing water speak, I am.
say to the silent earth: I flow.
And to the rushing water speak, I am.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I have been circling around God, that primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and still I don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
I've been circling for thousands of years
and still I don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Thursday, July 11, 2013
James Faulconer - On Alleviating Suffering
It is easier to give when we see pictures of disaster or when our heartstrings are tugged by someone forlorn. It is easy to understand the psychology of our reaction: seeing pain or suffering we want to alleviate it, and the closer the person suffering is to us, either spatially or in a relationship, the more our desire to help. But understanding why we are more prone to help our own doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to also help those who are not ours.
There are always people in need. We cannot escape our obligation to help them, even when we do not know who or where they are, or why they suffer. If we have received God's grace, we must share it. Not to share it would be to receive it ungratefully.
James Faulconer, "What Can I Do?", Speaking Silence
There are always people in need. We cannot escape our obligation to help them, even when we do not know who or where they are, or why they suffer. If we have received God's grace, we must share it. Not to share it would be to receive it ungratefully.
James Faulconer, "What Can I Do?", Speaking Silence
Monday, July 1, 2013
Adam S. Miller - Religious Transformation.
The point of religion is to wake up. "The dream of going to another world is just that: a dream, and probably also a deep sin" (WS 437).
On Latour's account, the test for religious competence is clear. "If, when hearing about religion, you direct your attention to the far away, the above, the supernatural, the infinite, the distant, the transcendent, the mysterious, the misty, the sublime, the eternal, chances are that you have not even begun to be sensitive to what religious talk tries to involve you in" (TF 32). Religion has no interest in selling you insurance or in telling you something you don't already know. It does not want to teach you or inform you. Religion wants to change you. It wants to render you sensitive to the passing worlds alrady hard upon you. "Information talk is one thing, transformation talk is another" and religion is about the latter, not the former (TF 29).
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 156
On Latour's account, the test for religious competence is clear. "If, when hearing about religion, you direct your attention to the far away, the above, the supernatural, the infinite, the distant, the transcendent, the mysterious, the misty, the sublime, the eternal, chances are that you have not even begun to be sensitive to what religious talk tries to involve you in" (TF 32). Religion has no interest in selling you insurance or in telling you something you don't already know. It does not want to teach you or inform you. Religion wants to change you. It wants to render you sensitive to the passing worlds alrady hard upon you. "Information talk is one thing, transformation talk is another" and religion is about the latter, not the former (TF 29).
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 156
Adam S. Miller - Religion and the Two Faces of Grace
Religion corrects for our farsightedness. It addresses the invisibility of objects that are commonly too familiar, too available, too immanent to be seen. To this end, it intentionally cultivates nearsightedness. Religion practices myopia in order to bring both work and suffering into focus as grace. Redemption turns on this revelation.
...
Double-bound, grace has two faces. On the one hand, grace presents as the ceaseless work required by the multitude's resistance. On the other hand, grace presents as the unavoidable suffering imposed by our passibility. Work is grace seen from the perspective of resistance. Suffering is grace seen from the perspective of availability. Hell is when the grace of either slips from view. Work and suffering are the two faces of Grace.
...
The business of religion is "to disappoint, first, to disappoint" (TF 32). Religion aims to intentionally, relentlessly, and systematically disappoint this desire to go away by bringing our attention back to the most obvious features of the most ordinary objects. Its work is to bring us up short by revealing our desire to be done with the double-bind of grace. To disappoint this drive, "to divert it, break it, subvert it, to render it impossible, is just what religious talk is after (TF 32). Habitually, we smooth over the rough edges, downplay the invompatible lines, and fantasize that the relative availability of a black box depends on something other than the unruly mobs packed-away inside. Sin is the dream of an empty black box, of a black box that is absolute rather than relative, permanent rather than provisional. Sin repurposes the obscurity imposed by ta black box for the sake of obscuring grace. In this way, sin is as natural as the habits upon which substances rely. But in religious practices, "incredible pain has been taken to break the habitual gaze of the viewer" (TF 39). Great effor is expended to show work and suffering as something other than regrettable. "Religion, in this tradition, does everything to constantly redirect attention by systematically breaking the will to go away, to ignore, to be indifferent, blasé, bored" (TF 36).
Mark this definition: religion is what breaks our will to go away.
...
...This revelation of the ordinary as a grace already given, as a life already being lived, is nothing exceptional, but it is something that must be enacted. It is a revelationt aht must be practiced. Attention is difficult to exercise, it resists focus and is available for distraction. It is a little bit subtle and requires great care. Religion, rather than fleeing, practices attending. It bends the flight of our attention back toward the ground that's already bracing us.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 143-145
...
Double-bound, grace has two faces. On the one hand, grace presents as the ceaseless work required by the multitude's resistance. On the other hand, grace presents as the unavoidable suffering imposed by our passibility. Work is grace seen from the perspective of resistance. Suffering is grace seen from the perspective of availability. Hell is when the grace of either slips from view. Work and suffering are the two faces of Grace.
...
The business of religion is "to disappoint, first, to disappoint" (TF 32). Religion aims to intentionally, relentlessly, and systematically disappoint this desire to go away by bringing our attention back to the most obvious features of the most ordinary objects. Its work is to bring us up short by revealing our desire to be done with the double-bind of grace. To disappoint this drive, "to divert it, break it, subvert it, to render it impossible, is just what religious talk is after (TF 32). Habitually, we smooth over the rough edges, downplay the invompatible lines, and fantasize that the relative availability of a black box depends on something other than the unruly mobs packed-away inside. Sin is the dream of an empty black box, of a black box that is absolute rather than relative, permanent rather than provisional. Sin repurposes the obscurity imposed by ta black box for the sake of obscuring grace. In this way, sin is as natural as the habits upon which substances rely. But in religious practices, "incredible pain has been taken to break the habitual gaze of the viewer" (TF 39). Great effor is expended to show work and suffering as something other than regrettable. "Religion, in this tradition, does everything to constantly redirect attention by systematically breaking the will to go away, to ignore, to be indifferent, blasé, bored" (TF 36).
Mark this definition: religion is what breaks our will to go away.
...
...This revelation of the ordinary as a grace already given, as a life already being lived, is nothing exceptional, but it is something that must be enacted. It is a revelationt aht must be practiced. Attention is difficult to exercise, it resists focus and is available for distraction. It is a little bit subtle and requires great care. Religion, rather than fleeing, practices attending. It bends the flight of our attention back toward the ground that's already bracing us.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 143-145
Adam S. Miller - God Suffers Grace
The very premise of an object-oriented metaphysics excludes the possibility of a traditional, omnipotent, impassible, wholly transcendent God who created the world out of nothing...God, if he does or will exist, is an object, one among many, who suffers the grace of resistant availability like the objects that compose him.
Monday, June 24, 2013
...to be is to be passible. God is no exception to this rule. God, should such an object exist, would be one being, one particularly complex multiple, that composes, is composed of, and is in interdependent relation with many other objects. Like every other object, God would be available, passible, resistant, and graced by the unavoidability of hard work.
This last point about the link between grace and passibility is crucial to the experiment I've undertaken because it fundamentally reframes the problem of suffering. To say that grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility is to say that grace guarantees the universality of suffering. Moreover, it is to say that the imposition of suffering (classically understood as the problem) and the reception of grace (classically understood as the answer to this problem) are equivocal....both sin and salvation turn on this equivocity.
However, whatever the nature of salvation, suffering, because it names the double-bind of resistant availability constitutive of every object, cannot be expunged. To be is to suffer and, outside of classical theism, suffering must characterize both activity and passibility. Available for relation, every object passively suffers its passibility to being enlisted, entrained, repurposed, or redistributed by other objects. Moreover, even in actively influencing other multiples, each object will suffer the only partially reducible resistance of those objects it means to influence. And it is important to note that, because every object (God included) must also suffer itself.
This universality, though, is not simply bad news because suffering is the universal mark of grace. Without exception, grace comes. Suffering it to be so, grace is what enables us to act, think, feel, love, an be.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 80-81
This last point about the link between grace and passibility is crucial to the experiment I've undertaken because it fundamentally reframes the problem of suffering. To say that grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility is to say that grace guarantees the universality of suffering. Moreover, it is to say that the imposition of suffering (classically understood as the problem) and the reception of grace (classically understood as the answer to this problem) are equivocal....both sin and salvation turn on this equivocity.
However, whatever the nature of salvation, suffering, because it names the double-bind of resistant availability constitutive of every object, cannot be expunged. To be is to suffer and, outside of classical theism, suffering must characterize both activity and passibility. Available for relation, every object passively suffers its passibility to being enlisted, entrained, repurposed, or redistributed by other objects. Moreover, even in actively influencing other multiples, each object will suffer the only partially reducible resistance of those objects it means to influence. And it is important to note that, because every object (God included) must also suffer itself.
This universality, though, is not simply bad news because suffering is the universal mark of grace. Without exception, grace comes. Suffering it to be so, grace is what enables us to act, think, feel, love, an be.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 80-81
Grace is suffered in that it is passively received rather than actively controlled...There are no exceptions to the rule of availability, interdependence, co-composition, passibility, and passivity. This means in turn, that there are no exceptions to the rule of grace. Every object is shaped by forces and relations that exceed its knowledge and control. Every object suffers the conditioning and enabling gifts of the other objects that compose, sustain, and cannibalize it.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 79
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 79
As a working agent, every possible object is dependent both on the other objects that compose it and on the other objects that can be leveraged into business with it. Grace is enabling precisely because the gift of agency is always borrowed. Grace may no longer make every impossible thing possible, but it does enable the fermentation of every possible thing.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 78
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 78
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
The human and the nonhuman bleed into each other as human intentions are animated by powerfully purposeless forces and purposeless processes like natural selection bear the emergence of order and direction...Agency is always only borrowed and a specifically human agency can be borrowed only from a complex of nonhuman objects. Everything human is organized around an unavoidable detour through the nonhuman because everything human is composed of and dependent upon nothing else.
..every agent is a machine that dissembles the multitude from whom its strength is borrowed. An agent is an object that speaks on behalf of others fromt he sake of itself. But such agency is always a two edged sword because there is no simple way to determine when the agent is ventriloquizing the multitude and when the multitude is ventriloquizing the agent. We're not likely to go wrong if we say taht agency is always both.
In an object-oriented theology, grace is the concurrently imposed and enabling strength that emerges in the give and take of agency. Grace shows up in the way that agency simultaneously endows an object with and divests it of itself. Agency ist he grace of acting for oneself on another's behalf. Or, agency is the grace of acting for another on one's own behalf.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 57-58
..every agent is a machine that dissembles the multitude from whom its strength is borrowed. An agent is an object that speaks on behalf of others fromt he sake of itself. But such agency is always a two edged sword because there is no simple way to determine when the agent is ventriloquizing the multitude and when the multitude is ventriloquizing the agent. We're not likely to go wrong if we say taht agency is always both.
In an object-oriented theology, grace is the concurrently imposed and enabling strength that emerges in the give and take of agency. Grace shows up in the way that agency simultaneously endows an object with and divests it of itself. Agency ist he grace of acting for oneself on another's behalf. Or, agency is the grace of acting for another on one's own behalf.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 57-58
In reference to Ether 12:26-28
the Lord does not address in this passage the question of our human "weaknesses" (plural) but the question of human "weakness" (singular). The difference is crucial. The Lord is not claiming to be responsible for the particulars of whatever various sins or weaknesses we may have. However, the Lord does claim to he "gives unto men weakness." The weakness referred to here is constiutive and essential. Rather than naming our sinfulness it names precisely the opposite. Weakness names our createdness, our lack of autonomous sovereignty, our persistent dependence on God and his grace for life and agency. In short, weakness names our essential relatedness to God and, thus, our unity with him. Or, again: our weakness is God's grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 104
the Lord does not address in this passage the question of our human "weaknesses" (plural) but the question of human "weakness" (singular). The difference is crucial. The Lord is not claiming to be responsible for the particulars of whatever various sins or weaknesses we may have. However, the Lord does claim to he "gives unto men weakness." The weakness referred to here is constiutive and essential. Rather than naming our sinfulness it names precisely the opposite. Weakness names our createdness, our lack of autonomous sovereignty, our persistent dependence on God and his grace for life and agency. In short, weakness names our essential relatedness to God and, thus, our unity with him. Or, again: our weakness is God's grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 104
The world will resist you. It will exceed your grasp. It will gractivce indifference towards you. Like a borrowed shirt, it will fit you imperfectly, it will be loose in the neck, short in the cuff, and the tag will itch. The world will irritate you, bruise you, thwart you, anger you. In the end, it will even--for at least a time--kill you. Suffering the indignity of these rounds, yo will, be default, be tempted to just flit from one offense to the next, simmering in frustration, stewing in quiet desperation. But to live, you will have to let these offenses go. You will have to learn how to make and accept recompense. You will have to forget the fiction of cash equivelances and barter with whatever is at hand. You didn't get what you wanted? Or even what you needed? Your life was repurposed by others fro something other than what you had in mind? Join the party. I'm sympathetic, but in the end these objections are going nowhere. That bus, while always idling, never actually leaves the station. You presume a world that doesn't exist, and you fantasize a fixer-God who, unlike ours, is Himself doing something other than divinely serving, borrowing, and repurposing. Ask instead, what were you given? where were you taken? what was your recompense? Learn to like lemonade.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 57
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 57
To address the unconditional character of the present moment is to address the nature of my relationships with my parents and family. To lay aside the screen of judgment and preference in favor of life is to set myself the task of unknotting the threads of fear and desire that have prevented me from unconditionally embracing my family and my family from unconditionally embracing me.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 17
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 17
In sin, we become unplugged. When we refuse the givenness of life and withdraw from the present moment, we're left to wander the world undead. Zombie-like, we wander from one moment to the next with no other goal than to get somewhere else, be someone else, see something else--anywhere, anyone, anything other than what is given here and now. We're busy. We've got goals and projects, We've got plans. We've got fantasies. We've got daydreams. We've got regrets and memories. We've got opinions. We've got distractions. We've got games and songs and movies and a thousand TV shows. We've got anything and everything other than a first-hand awareness of our own lived experience of the present moment.
If we are not capable of being where we are right now, we will not be capable of being fully present when we arrive at some ostensibly more desirable destination later on. Thus unplugged, what good would heaven be?
The zombie-life of sin sets us wandering away from the present moment because it sifts everything through a screen of preference that inevitably filters out the absolute givenness of life itself. Spiritually undead, we see things only in terms of our own (often legitimate) preferences. Undead, we see things only in terms of our selves. How will this benefit me? How will this harm me? How might this current situation be leveraged for my own profit? If something doesn't show up as being to my advantage, then typically it doesn't show up at all. Absent the appearance of what fails to comport with my preferences, the fountain of life is squeezed back to a trickle.\
....
Sin refuses the unconditional givenness of life by imposing its own conditions.
The results are predictable. Striving after the gnat of pleasure, straining away from the sting of pain, we ignore the bulk of life and marvel at our own morbidity. Failing to be where we are, to receive what is given, to feel what we are feeling, we fantasize instead about what has not come, fret over what has already passed, and are bored to tears by the grace of what is actually present.
Fantasy, fear, and boredom: the hallmarks of sin.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 11-12
If we are not capable of being where we are right now, we will not be capable of being fully present when we arrive at some ostensibly more desirable destination later on. Thus unplugged, what good would heaven be?
The zombie-life of sin sets us wandering away from the present moment because it sifts everything through a screen of preference that inevitably filters out the absolute givenness of life itself. Spiritually undead, we see things only in terms of our own (often legitimate) preferences. Undead, we see things only in terms of our selves. How will this benefit me? How will this harm me? How might this current situation be leveraged for my own profit? If something doesn't show up as being to my advantage, then typically it doesn't show up at all. Absent the appearance of what fails to comport with my preferences, the fountain of life is squeezed back to a trickle.\
....
Sin refuses the unconditional givenness of life by imposing its own conditions.
The results are predictable. Striving after the gnat of pleasure, straining away from the sting of pain, we ignore the bulk of life and marvel at our own morbidity. Failing to be where we are, to receive what is given, to feel what we are feeling, we fantasize instead about what has not come, fret over what has already passed, and are bored to tears by the grace of what is actually present.
Fantasy, fear, and boredom: the hallmarks of sin.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 11-12
The present moment, so irreparably and unconditionally given, brings the full weight of life to bear upon us. givenness gives without consulting us, without condition, without recourse. We suffer the imposition of its grace with an unavoidable passivity. In opening our hands to receive what it offers and give what it requires, we must confess our dependence, our insufficiency, our lack of autonomy. but we grit our teeth at the shame of it, refuse to suffer the grace of it, and seek refuge from the present moment in the conditional character of sequence. we cower before the absolute, failing to recognize its image in our countenances, and hide behind a fragile veil of fantasies, memories, and projected improvements. we withdraw from the present, abandon life, give ourselves wholly to the past or future, and die.
Sin: a refusal of life.
Sin: a refusal of givenness
Sin: a refusal of grace
Sin: a refusal of the present moment
Sin: death.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 10-11
Sin: a refusal of life.
Sin: a refusal of givenness
Sin: a refusal of grace
Sin: a refusal of the present moment
Sin: death.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 10-11
To the extent that work is instrumentalized as a means to an end, its value is conditioned by that end. Work, in and of itself, is devalued. In order to take work seriously, a theology would hav to uncouple work from its outcomes and consider it non-sequentially. That is to say, in order to take work seriously as work, we would have to acknowledge its unconditional givenness. We would have to see work as a grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 8
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 8
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)