Staying Between the Ditches

Staying between the excess and the deficiency is the way to a balanced and happy life. This is the virtue or the "Golden Mean" according to Aristotle, and is like saying that the way to a happy and sucessful trip is staying between the ditches.

Free Will and Salvation

Free will exists without question outside the area concerning righteousness. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “we are free only against God” ( Ethics ). But looking back at more foundational Christian Fathers, Saint Augustine goes much further in his response to Pelagius as do Martin Luther and John Calvin a little later.

In their mind, it is completely out of bounds to accept that mankind could play ANY active role in acquiring salvation as this would clearly be works based salvation. Therefore God working though the Holy Spirit is the only one who works in us to set up the correct conditions for salvation. Luther is adamant on this subject in his tirade against Erasmus, “we can endevour to do no good”, referring specifically to this subject of being saved. ( Bondage of the Will )

However, God is clear that he offers us a free gift and it is ours to accept. ( Rev 22:17, Ephesians 2:8, Romans 5:15-17 ) God delegates directly to us the responsibility ( i.e. freedom ) of accepting or rejecting his gift of eternal life. Yes it's true that we can do nothing to earn God's gift, but on the other hand we can not be compelled or forced to accept it against our will. It would be neither free nor a gift if we had no choice in accepting it

Augustine and Luther argue that references in the Bible stating our responsibility to act does not imply our ability to act. In fact moral obligations simply serve to make us aware of how incapable we actually are of meeting our moral responsibilities.

The difference I would maintain between what I am poorly trying to state and what Luther and company are stating is that when they speak against Pelagius and Erasmus of earning righteousness or endevouring to earn righteousness, they are speaking of outward acts such as baptism, or doing good deeds. This is very well and true, however, as we learned from Jesus in many of his teaching moments, righteousness wasn't about doing good or being baptised or keeping the law or any outward acts; it was about the purity of the mind first and foremost. That is to say, acting out of a position of love as opposed to obligation when obeying the law and doing those good deeds. As an alternative, I would describe the initial saving faith in Jesus as a completely inward and personal orientation, not requiring outward acts.

I maintain ( against Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc.. ) that we can, and should, and do endevour to believe ( align our free will with God's truth ) that Christ is Saviour and thus accept our otherwise unearned gift. It is this inward act, this endeavour of the will to recognize its own bondage, and then plead for release that “open's the door” and earns us our “free gift.” Confessing Christ as Saviour out of obligation or pre-destination would not mean anything in the sense of John 3:16, as it would not be possible to cooerce someone into believing something that they simply didn't believe.

My humble apologies to Saint Augustine and Martin Luther, but I think there is plenty of room for mankind to recognize it's sorry state and to confess our universal need for a Saviour out of our own free will without having to compromise on our completely sinful nature or the fact that on our own we can do nothing to earn our salvation. In addition, lets put responsibility back where it belongs. God has already done everything he needs to do, it is now up to us to reciprocate.

Knowing God

God is unknowable to the philosopher, unsearchable by the humanist and inconceivable by scientist.

Try to envision the most complete concepts of the universe developed by Stephen Hawking, or Richard Dawkins or any other popular theory of all existing matter - and you will start to get a blurry snapshot of 6 days in the eternity of who God is.

God is knowable only in so far as he allows himself to be known to each person.

Is this good reason to fail to attempt such a feat as knowing God? Or is it part of the amazing mystery that compels our search for deeper understanding of the God who created all that we can not even begin to comprehend.

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After 3 months of being unable to access my blog. It looks like I have got back the keys!!

A Precarious Peace - Huebner

my notes from the first night of reading:

Introduction

Need to understand how Chris Huebner is defining peace. It is not a "traditional" definition.

1) peace is a gift from God ( p20, p24, )
2) God is unpredictable ( p27 )
therefore:
3) Peace is precarious. It can not be owned, located, or established. ( p30, p31, p36, )

According to Huebner, he is defining a peace "in a way that is always for and against peace" ( p30 ) while most previous definitions of peace implicates those defining it in "some form of violence or another." p30

Chapter 1

Defining Mennonite Identity - many bold statements
"A split exists between the church's mission agencies and those devoted to social justice" p35
and goes on to explain " the very fact that we have institutionalized such a division of labor in the church suggests that the care of the soul is somehow separate from a concern for the body." Is this a fundamental flaw in our theology, or is it simply a recognition that in most cases, the church's social justice arms ( MCC, MDS ) are often not prohibited from naming "missions" as one of their aims. Should we turn our back on social justice opportunities because evangelism can not be one of the stated objectives? If we had the opportunity to do both, would we turn away volunteers who had only one of the 2 gifts? If CMU was hiring a talented ethics professor who could not preach, or a church hired a gifted preacher who could not teach ethics, would Huebner raise the same "institutionalized division of labor" concerns?

Are Mennonites really "in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis" and unable "to reach any kind of substantial agreement on what it ( our identity ) consists in." (p36) ???

Is the Mennonite church really "At its best ..... a kind of ongoing political experiment" ?? (p37)

on page 38 Huebner discribes the division of gifts that concerns him as "some congregations are dedicated practitioners of binding, while others are experts at loosing. Very rarely does one find both in one place." In order to have a more defined concept of our identity, Huebner hopes for a "more fluid and ambiguous conception of identity."

Ok, so Mennonites have TOO STRONG of a concept of identity. We tend to lean on, or rely on our concept of identity. I get it. Unfortunately, re-reading chapter 1 with this perspective does not fit the message. In fact it accentuates the impression that Huebner fundamentally believes that Mennonites do not have a correct conception of their identity, but how is that possible? Can we be wrong about how we conceive of our identity?

I could be persuaded that a professor, or historian, or writer could be instrumental in directing the concept of identity that an ethnic group has shapes in their collective concious, refreshes their memory of history, but the concept of identity in itself can not be "corrected" especially by expecting each congregation, each mission organization, each social justice initiative to embody the complete and historically acurate conception of the entire Mennonite identity.