2. The Lord’s Prayer
• O God, whose love
makes us one family …
2. May Your unspeakable
Name be revered.
3. 3. Now, here on earth
may Your
commonwealth come.
4. On earth as in
heaven may Your will
be done.
4. 5. Give us today our
bread for today.
4. Forgive us our
wrongs as we forgive.
5. 3. Lead us away from
the perilous trial.
2. Liberate us from the
evil.
6. 1.For the kingdom is yours
and yours alone.
2. The power is yours and
yours alone.
3.The glory is yours and
yours alone.
4.Now and forever, amen.
7. 5. Now, here on earth may your
commonwealth come.
4. Here on earth may your
dreams come true.
3. Hallelujah
2. Hallelujah
1. Amen.
8. a new kind of
christianity:
ten questions that aretransforming the faith
9. What are the questions?
1. The narrative question: What is the shape of the
biblical narrative? Storyline, plotline?
2. The authority question: What is the Bible, and
what is it for? How does it have authority?
3. The God question: Is God violent? Why does
God seem so violent and genocidal in so many
bible passages?
10. 4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and
why does he matter?
5. The Gospel Question: What is the gospel -
a message of evacuation or transformation?
Exclusion or inclusion?
11. 6. The church question: What do we do
about the church?
7. The sex question: Can we deal with
issues of sexuality without fighting and
dividing?
8. The future question: Can we find a
more hopeful vision of the future?
12. 9. The pluralism question: How should
we relate to people of other faiths?
10. The next step question: How can
we pursue this quest in humility, love,
and peace?
15. The African slave trade spanned 450 years. It involved the kidnapping of 11.5 million
Africans. Billions of people today still profit and suffer in the aftermath of it.
16.
17.
18.
19. “Nothing is more susceptible to oblivion than
an argument, however ingenious, that has been
discredited by events; and such is the case
with the body of writing which was produced
in the antebellum South in defense of Negro
slavery.”
Eric McKitrick, Slavery Defended: The Views
of the Old South (1963).
20. From 1830 through the 1850’s, slavery was
defended in the United States as just,
Biblical, and good.
Sources:
William S. Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in
the Old South (1935)
Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the
Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840
(UGA Press: 1987)
21.
22.
23. Nellie Norton: or, Southern
Slavery and the Bible: A
Scriptural Refutation of
the Principal Arguments
Upon Which the
Abolitionists Rely: A
Vindication of Southern
Slavery From the Old and
New Testaments, (1864)
by Ebenezer Willis Warren, an
obscure 44-year old
Protestant clergyman from
Macon, GA. Last major
defense of slavery in the
U.S.
25. 1. The Inferiority Argument
2. The Southern Paradise
Argument
3. The Historical Realism
Argument
4. The Ad Hominem Argument
5. The Biblical Argument
The first 4 arguments are based on the 5th.
26. Leviticus 25:
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou
shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round
about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and
bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the
strangers that do sojourn among you, of them
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with
you, which they begat in your land; and they
shall be your possession. And ye shall take them
as an inheritance for your children after you, to
inherit them for a possession; they shall be your
bondmen for ever.
27. Nellie Norton:
“… the Bible is a pro-slavery Bible,
and God is a pro-slavery God,”
“… the North must give up the Bible
and religion, or adopt our views of
slavery.”
28. Meanwhile … in France:
A song lyric was written in 1847 by Placide
Clappeau, a French wine merchant, mayor
of the French town Roquemaure.
Adolphe Adam wrote the music.
Later the song was translated into English by
John S. Dwight –
It is said to have been the first music ever
broadcast over radio.
29. O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary soul rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!
30. Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy Name!
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!
31. How did the proslavers use the Bible?
How did the abolitionists use the Bible?
Which method do we want to follow?
32. Reading the Bible
• Proof-Texting or EvolvingValues?
• Letter or Spirit?
• Law or Love?
• Master or Servant of Humanity?
• Equal to Christ ... or Manger of Christ?
33. The Bible as
Constitution
• What purposes do constitutions (or social
contracts) fulfill?
• How is the Bible like a constitution?
• What problems arise with this approach?
34. Bible as Conversation
• The Bible as a cultural library
• Library as preserver of minority opinions
and ongoing arguments
• Artifacts from stories within stories
35. LEGAL CONSTITUTION COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Uniformity Diversity
Preserve order Preserve diversity
agreement argument
enforcement encouragement
36. LEGAL CONSTITUTION COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Rules to live by, Conformity Stories to live by, Creativity
One publication date Many publication dates
Analyze, interpret, argue Enter, inhabit, practice
amendments? new acquisitions
37. Inspiration
• what would an inspired constitution look
like?
• what would an inspired community library
look like?
• how would we engage with the Bible as an
inspired library?
38.
39. Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding
God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try
to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.When
someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example,
I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be
an abomination... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some
other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
40. 1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male
and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring
nations.A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans,
but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in
Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a
fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she
is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24.The
problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women
take offense.
41. 4.When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it
creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9.The problem is,
my neighbors.They claim the odor is not pleasing to them.
Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the
Sabbath.Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death.
Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the
police to do it?
6.A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there
'degrees' of abomination?
42. 7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I
have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading
glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some
wiggle-
room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the
hair around their temples, even though this is expressly
forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig
makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
43. 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of
two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to
curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the
trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16.
Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do
with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy
considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus Dept. of Curriculum,
Instruction, and Special Education
University ofVirginia
48. Derek Flood graphically displays Paul’s edited quotation of Psalm 18:41-49 and
Deuteronomy 32:43 in Romans 15:8-10. Notice what Paul picks to retain and what he
chooses to reject:
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant
of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the
promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles
may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: “I
destroyed my foes. They cried for help, but there
was no one to save them—to the LORD, but he did
not answer…. He is the God who avenges me, who
puts the Gentiles under me…. Therefore I will
praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to
your name.” (Ps. 18:41–49).
49. Again, it says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles,
with his people, for he will avenge the
blood of his servants; he will take
vengeance on his enemies and make
atonement for his land and people.”
(Deut. 32:43)
50. Flood concludes: “Paul is making a very different
point from the original intent of these Psalms. In
fact, he is making the opposite point—we should
not cry out for God’s wrath and judgment [on the
other], because we are all sinners in need of mercy.”
He concludes, “This is not a case of careless out-of-
context proof-texting; it is an artful and deliberate
reshaping of these verses … from their original cry
for divine violence into a confession of universal
culpability that highlights our need for mercy.”
52. a new kind of
christianity:
ten questions that aretransforming the faith
53. What are the questions?
1. The narrative question: What is the shape of the
biblical narrative? Storyline, plotline?
2. The authority question: What is the Bible, and
what is it for? How does it have authority?
3. The God question: Is God violent? Why does
God seem so violent and genocidal in so many
bible passages?
54. 4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and
why does he matter?
58. “Acquisitive mimesis” - What you want, I want.What I want, you
want.
We become mirrors or doubles of one another’s competitive
desires.Will we - supposed friends - become enemies?
Because of proximity, a dangerous friend is more frightening than
an enemy.
60. The reduction of canine teeth to their current dimensions
occurred a long time before the appearance of homo
sapiens, suggesting that stones had replaced dentition in
most of their uses, including intra-species combat.... If
instead of throwing branches at one another as they
sometimes do, chimpanzees were to learn to throw
stones at one another, their social life would be radically
shaken. Either the species would disappear, or like
humanity it would have to impose its own prohibitions.
(TH 86-87)
62. Rivalry creates the constant danger
of “all against all” outbreaks of
violence, which in turn creates
constant anxiety ...
“The more you get along together,
the less you get along together.”
How will this anxiety be relieved?
64. TheVictimage Mechanism
The opposition of everyone against everyone is replaced
by the opposition of all against one.Where previously
there had been a chaotic ensemble of particular conflicts,
there is now the simplicity of a single conflict: the entire
community on one side, and on the other, the victim.
The community finds itself unified once more at the
expense of a victim....The sacrifice is simply another act of
violence, one that is added to a succession of others, but it
is the final act of violence, the last word. (TH 24)
65. The aggressive transference [focusing a group’s general
social anxiety upon one individual] is followed by the
reconciliatory transference [which] sacralizes the victim...
Because the popular imagination tends to polarize its
hopes and enthusiasms, and of course its fears and
anxieties, around a chosen individual, the power of the
individual in question seems to multiply infinitely, for good
or ill. Such an individual does not represent the collectivity
in an abstract manner, but rather represents the state of
turmoil, restlessness, or calm of the collectivity at any
given moment of representation. (TH 37)
The peace created through scapegoating is counted as
sacred, supernatural, divine ...
67. Through prohibitions and taboos, societies seek to
avoid the conflict and competition of acquisitive
mimesis.
Through rituals, societies seek to diffuse the social
tensions that arise from that conflict and
competition - especially through ritualized sacrificial
scapegoating.
68. Religion is nothing other than this immense
effort to keep the peace.The sacred is
violence, but if religious man worships violence
it is only insofar as the worship of violence is
supposed to bring peace; religion is entirely
concerned with peace, but the means it has of
bringing it about are never free of sacrificial
violence. (TH 33)
69. People do not wish to know that the whole
of human culture is based on the mythic
process of conjuring away man’s violence by
endlessly projecting it upon new victims.All
cultures and all religions are built on that
foundation, which they then conceal, just as
the tomb is built around the dead body that
it conceals....The tomb-religion amounts to
nothing more or less than the becoming
invisible of the foundations, of religion and
culture, of their only reason for existence.
70. Since [many people] do not see that human
community is dominated by violence, people
do not understand that the very one of them
who is untainted by any violence and has no
form of complicity with violence is bound to
become the victim.
... people fail to understand that they are
indebted to violence for the degree of peace
they enjoy.
(210-211)
71. ... the primitive deity is essentially monstrous.” (35)
[God becomes an object of fear that is more frightening
than the threat of a competitive neighbor.]
Religious systems form a whole in this sense, such that the
infraction of any particular rule, no matter how absurd it
may seem objectively, constitutes a challenge to the entire
community....
In societies that do not have penal systems capable of
halting the spread of mimetic rivalry and its escalation into
a vicious cycle of violence, the religious system performs
this very real function. (TH 41)
72. [T]he common origin of all institutions ... is
the reproduction of generative* violence.
(79)
*Intentional, controlled, sanctioned violence
whose intent is to prevent unintentional,
uncontrolled, unsanctioned violence
74. From the first lines of Genesis, we have the theme of the
warring brothers or twins: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau,
Joseph and his eleven brothers, etc.
... It is always by violence, by the expulsion of one of the
brothers, that the crisis is resolved, and differentiation
returns once again.
... In the sacrifice of Isaac the necessity of sacrifice
threatens the most precious being, only to be satisfied, at
the last moment, with a substituted victim, the ram sent by
God.
75. What the prophets come down to saying is basically this:
legal prescriptions are of little consequence as long as you
keep from fighting one another, so long as you do not
become enemy twins.This is the new inspiration ...Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Lev 19, 18). [154-155)
So the three great pillars of primitive religion - myth,
sacrifice and prohibitions - are subverted by the thought
of the Prophets, and this general activity of subversion is
invariably governed by the bringing to light of the
mechanisms that found religion: the unanimous violence
against the scapegoat. (TH 155)
76. In the prophetic books, this conception [of God] tends to
be increasingly divested of violence characteristic of
primitive deities.... in the Old Testament we never arrive at
a conception of the deity that is entirely foreign to
violence. (157)
...The sacrifices are criticized, but they continue; the law is
simplified and declared to be identical to love of one’s
neighbor, but it continues.And even though he is
presented in a less and less violent form, and becomes
more and more benevolent,Yahweh is still the god to
whom vengeance belongs.The notion of divine retribution
is still alive. (TH 158)
77. 1. Imitation
2. Rivalry
3.Violence and Anxiety
4. Scapegoating
5. Religion, Prohibitions, Ritualization
6.The Hebrew Scriptures
7. Jesus and the gospels
78. The Old Testament [was] a first step outside the sacrificial
system, and the first gradual withering of sacrificial
resources.At the very moment when this adventure
approaches its resolution, Jesus arrives on the scene -
Jesus as he appears in the gospels.
From now on, it becomes impossible to put the clock
back.There is an end to cyclical history, for the very
reason that its mechanisms are beginning to be uncovered.
(206)
79. Behaving in a truly divine manner, on an earth still in the
clutches of violence, means not dominating humans, not
overwhelming them with supernatural power; it means not
terrifying and astonishing them in turn, through the sufferings
and blessings on can confer; it means not creating difference
between doubles and not taking part in their disputes.‘God
is no respecter of persons.’ He makes no distinction
between ‘Greeks and Jews, men and women, etc.’ This can
look like complete indifference and can lead to the
conclusion that the all-powerful does not exist, so long as his
transcendence keeps him infinitely far from us and our
violent undertakings. But the same characteristics are
revealed as a heroic and perfect love once this
transcendence becomes incarnate in a human being and
walks among men, to teach them about the true God and to
draw them closer to Him. (234)
80. [The text of the Gospels] speaks incessantly of everything
we have said ourselves; it has no other function than to
unearth victims of collective violence and to reveal their
innocence. [TH 138]
81. Satan = Destructive Imitation,Violence
It is no abstract metaphysical reduction, no descent into
vulgar polemics or lapse into superstition that makes
Satan the true adversary of Jesus. Satan is absolutely
identified with the circular mechanisms of violence, with
man’s imprisonment in cultural and philosophical systems
that maintain his [way of life] with violence.That is why he
promises Jesus domination provided that Jesus will
worship him... Satan is the name for the mimetic process
seen as a whole. (162)
82. Mary = Nonviolence
In innumerable episodes of mythical birth, the god
copulates with a mortal woman in order to give birth to a
hero. Stories of this kind always involve more than a hint
of violence.... the birth of the gods is always a kind of
rape...The orgasm that appeases the god is a metaphor for
collective violence.
... No relationship of violence exists between those who
take part in the virgin birth: the Angel, theVirgin and the
Almighty....The complete absence of any sexual element
has nothing to do with repression ...All the themes and
terms associated with the virgin birth convey to us a
perfect submission to the non-violent will of the God of
the Gospels. (220-221)
83. The Death of Jesus = End of Sacrificial Religion
The Gospels only speak of sacrifices in order to reject
them and deny them any validity. Jesus counters the
ritualism of the Pharisees with an anti-sacrificial quotation
from Hosea:“Go and learn what this means,‘I desire
mercy, and not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13).
There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that the death
of Jesus is a sacrifice, whatever definition (expiation,
substitution, etc.) we may give for sacrifice.At no point in
the Gospels is the death of Jesus dfined as a sacrifice....
Certainly the Passion is presented to us in the Gospels as
an act that brings salvation to humanity. But it is in no way
presented as a sacrifice. (181)
84. Jesus = Nonviolent Word of God
If love and violence are incompatible, the definition of the
Logos must take this into account.The difference between
the Greek Logos and the Johannine Logos must be an
obvious one, which gets concealed only in the tortuous
complications of a type of thought that never succeeds in
ridding itself of its own violence. (270)
85. The gospel interpretation of the Old Testament can be
summed up in this approach ... the replacement of the
God that inflicts violence with the God that only suffers
violence, the Logos that is expelled....When the
consequences of this substitution finally come to
fulfillment, there will be incalculable results. (275)
86. The sacrifical interpretation of the Passion must be
criticized and exposed as a most enormous and
paradoxical misunderstanding - and at the same time as
something necessary - and as the most revealing indication
of mankind’s radical incapacity to understand its own
violence, even when that violence is conveyed in the most
explicit fashion. (181)
87. To say that Jesus dies, not as a sacrifice, but in order that
there may be no more sacrifices, is to recognize in him the
Word of God,‘I wish for mercy and not sacrifices’....
Where violence remains master, Jesus must die. Rather
than become the slave of violence, as our own word
necessarily does, the Word of God says no to violence.
(210-211)
88. A non-violent deity can only signal his existence to
mankind by having himself driven out by violence - by
demonstrating that he is not able to establish himself in
the Kingdom ofViolence.
But this very demonstration is bound to remain
ambiguous for a very long time, and it is not capable of
achieving a decisive result, since it looks like total
impotence to those who live under the regime of violence.
That is why at first it can only have some effect under a
guise, deceptive through the admixture of some sacrificial
elements, through the surreptitious re-insertion of some
violence into the conception of the divine. (219-220)
89. 1. Imitation
2. Rivalry
3.Violence and Anxiety
4. Scapegoating
5. Religion, Prohibitions, Ritualization
6.The Hebrew Scriptures
7. Jesus and the gospels
8.The violent reversion of
“historical/sacrificial Christianity”
90. What turns Christianity in on itself, so that
it presents a hostile face to all that is not
Christian, is inextricably bound up with the
sacrificial reading. (225)
91. Historical Christianity covers the texts with a veil of
sacrifice. Or, to change the metaphor, it immolates them in
the (albeit splendid) tomb of Western culture. (249)
But the process requires an almost limitless patience:
many centuries must elapse before the subversive and
shattering truth contained in the Gospels can be
understood world-wide. (252)
92. ... there has never been any thought in the
West but Greek* thought, even when the
labels were Christian. Christianity has no
special existence in the domain of thought.
Continuity with the Greek Logos has never
been interrupted... everything is Greek and
nothing is Christian. (273)
*i.e. imperial, with centralized, sanctioned,
institutional violence
93. Sacrificial Christianity still believes in divine thunderbolts,
while its progressive double completely stifles the
apocalyptic dimension and so deprives itself of the most
valuable card that it has in its hands, under the flimsy
pretext that the first priority is to reassure people. (442-
443)
94. - Beware resurrecting what you are trying to lay to rest:
If we believed that we were justified in condemning
sacrificial Christianity we would be repeating the very
error to which sacrificial Christianity itself succumbed.We
would be taking our stand on the Gospels and the non-
sacrificial perspective they introduce, yet beginning all over
again the abominable history of anti-semitism, directed
this time at Christianity.We would be starting up the
victimage mechanism once again, while relying on a text
that, if it were really understood, would put that
mechanism out of use once and for all. (245)
95. 1. Imitation
2. Rivalry
3.Violence and Anxiety
4. Scapegoating
5. Religion, Prohibitions, Ritualization
6.The Hebrew Scriptures
7. Jesus and the gospels
8.The violent reversion of
“historical/sacrificial Christianity”
9. Our apocalyptic moment
96. The Christian religion doesn’t understand its own gospel:
[The Gospel] discredits and deconstructs all the gods of
violence, since it reveals the true God, who has not the
slightest violence in him. Since the time of the Gospels,
mankind as a whole has always failed to comprehend this
mystery, and it does so still. (429)
97. The ancient and violent violence-management system is breaking
down ...
In contemporary society ... no more taboos
forbid one person to take what is reserved for
another and no more initiation rites prepare
individuals in common, for the necessary trials of
life. (291)
98. Our weapons have achieved divine status -
A truly wonderful sense of the appropriate has guided the
inventory of the most terrifying weapons to choose names
that evoke ultimate violence in the most effective way:
names taken from the direst divinities of Greek mythology,
like Titan, Poseidon, and Saturn, the god who devoured his
own children.We who sacrifice fabulous resources to
fatten the most inhuman form of violence so that it will
continue to protect us... how can we have the
extraordinary hypocrisy to pretend that we do not
understand those people who ... made it their practice to
throw a single child, or two at the most, into the furnace
of a certain Moloch in order to ensure the safety of the
others? (256)
99. Either we are moving to ineluctably toward nonviolence,
or we are about to disappear completely....The genuinely
new element is that violence can no longer be relied upon
to resolve the crisis.Violence no longer guarantees a firm
base. For violence to be capable of carrying out its cyclical
development and bringing back peace, there must be an
ecological field that can absorb the damage done in the
process....The environment can no longer absorb the
violence humans can unleash. (258)
As for the terrors of the Apocalypse, no one could do
better in that respect nowadays than the daily newspaper.
(260)
100. 1. Imitation
2. Rivalry
3.Violence and Anxiety
4. Scapegoating
5. Religion, Prohibitions, Ritualization
6.The Hebrew Scriptures
7. Jesus and the gospels
8.The violent reversion of
“historical/sacrificial Christianity”
9. Our apocalyptic moment
10.The challenges before us
101. - A new kind of Christianity must be resurrected from the
old:
... this sacrificial concept of divinity must ‘die,’ and with it
the whole apparatus of historical Christianity, for the
Gospels to be able to rise again in our midst, not looking
like a corpse that we have exhumed, but revealed as the
newest, finest, liveliest and truest thing that we have ever
set eyes upon. (235-236)
102. - We must rediscover Jesus as the nonviolent Word of
God
- Reflecting on John 1
There is no privileged stance from which absolute truth
can be discovered...That is why the Word that states itself
to be absolutely true never speaks except from the
position of a victim in the process of being expelled....
[F]or two thousand years this Word has been
misunderstood, despite the enormous amount of publicity
it has received. (435)
103. - We must make a break with all violent images of God:
[T]he complete break between the sacrificial god and the
non-sacrificial God - the Father who has been made
known to us only through Christ - in no way excludes a
continuity between the sacrificial religions and this
universal renunciation of violence to which all humanity is
called....There is an absolute separation between the only
true deity and all the deities of violence, who have been
radically demystified by the Gospels alone. But this should
not prevent us from recognizing in the religions of
violence, which are always in search of peace, anyway, the
methods that initially helped humanity to leave the animal
state behind and then to elevate itself to unprecedented
possibilities, though they are combined with the most
extreme dangers. (410)
104. - We must rediscover the primacy of love:
The New Testament contains what amounts to a genuine
epistemology of love, the principle of which is clearly
formulated in the first Epistle of John:
He who loves his brother abides in the light, and in it
there is no cause for stumbling. But he who hates his
brother is in the darkness and walks in darkness, and does
not know where he is going, because the darkness has
blinded his eyes. (1 John 3:10-11)
... Only Christ’s perfect love can achieve without violence
the perfect revelation toward which we have been
progressing.... (277)
105. - We must not slip into another cycle of fruitless
scapegoating:
I do not think that we should mince our words.We must
refuse all the scapegoats that Freud and Freudianism have
offered to us: the father, the law, etc.We must refuse the
scapegoats that Marx offers: the bourgouisie, the
capitalists, etc.We must refuse the scapegoats that
Nietzsche offers: slave morality, the resentment of others
and so on.All of modernism in its classic stage ... merely
offers us scapegoats. (287)
106. - We must practice the opposite of scapegoating - the
sacred protection (rather than sacrifice) of victims:
... there can be no victim who is not Christ,
and no one can come to the aid of a victim
without coming to the aid of Christ. (429)
107. - We must rediscover the Bible:
Pascal writes somewhere that it is permissible to correct
the Bible, but only by invoking the Bible’s help.That is exactly
what we are doing when we re-read Genesis and the whole
of the Old Testament, and the whole of culture, in the light
of these few lines from the Prologue of John.The immense
labor that went into the inspired text of the Bible (which is
also the onward march of humanity toward the discovery of
its own truth) can all be summed up in this repetition of the
first sentence of Genesis and the ‘slight’ rectification it
carries out. (276)
We were able to detect a series of stages in the Bible that
invariably pointed toward the attenuation and later
elimination of the practice of sacrifice. (443)
109. Two Christologies:
1. Define God.
2. Apply Definition to Jesus.
1. Define God.
2. Encounter Jesus.
3. Re-define God in light of Jesus.
110. Jesus as the non-violent
word of God.
God with and for the
poor.
God who cares for
creation.
111. a new kind of
christianity:
ten questions that aretransforming the faith
112. 4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus, and
why does he matter?
5. The Gospel Question: What is the gospel -
a message of evacuation or transformation?
Exclusion or inclusion?
- Reign, kingdom, economy, ecosystem,
dance, friendship, network of God.
113. 6. The church question: What do we do
about the church?
- The church as school of love, training
and deploying of love-peace-justice
activists.
114. 7. The sex question: Can we deal with
issues of sexuality without fighting and
dividing?
- Deeper issue: sexuality to
embodiment to humanity to creation
8. The future question: Can we find a
more hopeful vision of the future?
- Evacuation plan to incarnation plan, a
Participatory Eschatology
115. 9. The pluralism question: How should
we relate to people of other faiths?
- Seeking a strong and benevolent
Christian identity
10. The next step question: How can
we pursue this quest in humility, love,
and peace?
- Winning a hearing, not winning an
argument.
116. we need a theology of
institutions & movements
119. QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Ivan Illich (Austrian
former priest,
philosopher, social
critic, 1926-2002)
120. Neither revolution nor reformation
can ultimately change a society,
rather you must tell a new powerful
tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps
away the old myths and becomes the
preferred story …
121. … one so inclusive that it gathers all the
bits of our past and our present into a
coherent whole, one that even shines
some light into the future so that we can
take the next step…. If you want to
change a society, then you have to tell an
alternative story.
- attributed to Ivan Illich (Austrian former priest,
philosopher, social critic, 1926-2002)
122. Something is on the way out and something
else is painfully being born.
It is as if something were crumbling,
decaying, and exhausting itself,
while something else, still indistinct, were
arising from the rubble....
We are in a phase when one age is
succeeding another, when everything is
possible.
Vaclav Havel,“The New Measure of Man”
123. Fr. Vincent Donovan:
Do not leave others where they
are.
Do not bring them to where you
are, as beautiful as that place
might be.
Instead, go with them to a new
place neither you nor they have
ever been before.
124. Go into all the world and proclaim the
gospel (the good, joyful, healing story)
to all creation.
- Jesus
125.
126. The Lord’s Prayer
• O God, whose love
makes us one family …
2. May Your unspeakable
Name be revered.
127. 3. Now, here on earth
may Your
commonwealth come.
4. On earth as in
heaven may Your will
be done.
128. 5. Give us today our
bread for today.
4. Forgive us our
wrongs as we forgive.
129. 3. Lead us away from
the perilous trial.
2. Liberate us from the
evil.
130. 1.For the kingdom is yours
and yours alone.
2. The power is yours and
yours alone.
3.The glory is yours and
yours alone.
4.Now and forever, amen.
131. 5. Now, here on earth may your
commonwealth come.
4. Here on earth may your
dreams come true.
3. Hallelujah
2. Hallelujah
1. Amen.
132. something is trying to be born:
envisioning a new kind of Christian faith
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