Matthew 5:3 says “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” For Anne Sutherland Howard this reveals a “third way” to approaching the questions of poverty and wealth, a way that does not make absolute the divide between rich and poor, nor in spiritualizing poverty. Instead, she says we can choose a spirituality of abundance in the face of a culture of scarcity.
The next step in that unfolding narrative of grace is to expand the concept of marriage to include a gay man marrying a gay man or a lesbian marrying a lesbian. This timely, grace-filled step rightly extends the Christian concept of marriage to people whom the Church for too long has marginalized or demonized, the very categories of people with whom Jesus spent his ministry.
A brief review of marital practices described in the Bible and our evolving theological understanding of marriage simply emphasizes that concepts of Christian marriage have not remained static over the millennia. The history of Christian marriage is an unfolding narrative of increasing grace, albeit a history of slow and uneven progress.
The liberals were seeking the kernel of Christianity, that simple essence that could be realised by stripping away the clutter of the religion. Bonhoeffer, however, in his dealings with the busy, secular, practical world believed that there was a gospel encounter happening in and amongst the secular world – a kerygma.
As a theological student, your aim is to accumulate opinions – as many as you can, and as fast as possible. (Exceptional students may acquire all their opinions within the first few weeks; others require an entire semester.) One of the best ways to collect opinions is to choose your theological group (“I shall be progressive,” or “I will be evangelical,” or “I am a Barthian”), then sign up to all the opinions usually associated with that social group.
Whenever I teach a class, whether it’s at a seminary or in a church, I typically begin with a bit about how the past and the present play into one another in the construction of theological meaning. I’ve done it enough that it’s achieved a fairly fixed form and as I look over lecture notes for things I’ve taught it’s not uncommon to see a line near the top reading “insert history rant here”.
I have a strong sense that movement is more of a royal road to awareness and spiritual transformation than we imagine. Human beings danced themselves into spiritual awareness long before language emerged. Ritual is primal. Doctrine is a latecomer. I wonder whether as the implications of post-modernity gradually sink in we might realize just how alienated we are from our bodies in the religiosity our very recent ancestors invented.
“Why is there any evil at all in God’s creation?” Nadler explains: “It is not that everything will turn out for the best for me or for anyone else in particular. Nor is it necessarily the case that any other possible world would have been worse for me or for anyone else. Rather, Leibniz claims that any other possible world is worse overall than this one, regardless of any single person’s fortunes in it.”
Ascetical theology isn’t fundamentally about thinking and while deeds are involved it’s not fundamentally about specific acts either—it’s about our habits: how we think, how we feel, and ultimately how we behave towards all of the players in the relationship—God and our neighbors, which includes the whole of creation.
Howard E. Friend, Jr. says there is a “hope-based” movement that is reaching a crecendo among a wide variety of groups around the globe.