earth

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Getting the a priori doctrines right

I’ve been thinking for some time about how that, if you don’t have the a priori doctrines straight, all the doctrines that follow get screwed up. By a priori doctrines, I mean Creation (what the world is, what it is for, what God wants for it), the doctrine of man (what humans are, what we were made for, and what our goal is) and the doctrine of God’s will (what God’s intentions are, and His own desire). When these get off-track, everything after them gets way off course.  Soteriology (what ‘salvation’ even is, and what’s its aim is), Eschatalogy (what the end-goal for Christian living is, based on God’s intent), to name just a couple, but really two of the biggest in the overall scheme of a Christian understanding of, well, everything!

 

Even simple categories of things like what the word ‘good’ means, get twisted bizarrely out of shape in Christian theology, when we get the a priori doctrines wrong. I have heard versions of Protestant theology that actually take a Hebrew word like ‘good’ and, by the time they have wrenched a few verses from St. Paul out of shape, end up boldly stating that ‘good’ really means ‘bad’ in the Bible, especially in regards to soteriology! It’s bizarre. And, unfortunately, common.

 

One of the mechanisms through which this happens, is to play the ‘two covenants’ card at every turn. In doing so, the phrase “well, that was the Old Testament” comes up continually, spiritualizing virtually every concept out of its Hebrew shape, and landing us in a much more gnostic religion than the one Jesus grew up singing, praying and worshipping in. I have even read of one of today’s leading Reformed preachers stating that if you want to understand what Paul means about salvation, you have to go back and read the 16th century Protestant reformers! Lol! How about, if we want to understand Paul, we investigate the worldview he lived in, and what his words meant in the first century and its context, rather than what people 15 centuries and three worldviews later thought!

 

One of the things commonly occurring in this discussion is people believing that they have a ‘biblical’ view of things, when they actually have a 15th century, Western European, Latinized, Christianized, Greek philosophical view. To get the a priori doctrines right, we have to go back to the Jewish beliefs of Jesus’ day, and ancient times before that, to the original (and subsequently developed) meanings of the Old Testament. This solid foundation (which ‘will not pass away’, and which Jesus ‘came to fulfill’) will provide us the ability to get a biblical shape to doctrines of salvation and what God wants us humans to do. The New Testament’s meanings are understood when we aren’t confused about the Old Testament’s meanings. We have to get right the a priori doctrines of the purpose of the Creation, humanity, and God’s will.

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Earth is Not Detention Hall, Part Two

Part One can be read here  https://toddrisser.com/2013/11/12/earth-is-not-detention-hall-part-one/

The tikkun olam (repairment of the world) is a doctrine so lost in American evangelicalism, most modern Christians have never even heard of it. In fact, it is very common for life-long church-goers to say to me at funerals “I get the heaven thing, but what’s this about the resurrection of the body?” Resurrection and repairment of the world are two doctrines that go inseparably hand in hand in the Scriptures. Somehow we’ve lost track of some major parts of the Bible’s story.

I find it difficult to enumerate in a small space the vast, profound difference between believing earth is a short rehearsal before we leave forever, and believing that earth is the locus of God’s redemption, now and forever. This has profound effects on how we view the Creation, the scope of salvation, environmental and foreign policy, and a host of issues in our lives here and now, and tomorrow.

Seeing the world as God’s beloved creation, emerging/postmodern Christian faith has a stake in the state of this world. They realize atheist Sam Harris asks a good question when he asks “Can people who believe in the imminent end of the world really be expected to work toward building a durable civilization?” (Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, xii).

Rapture theology and end of the world despair is a two hundred year old rabbit trail that gained lots of traction in American folk theology, but that earlier Christians never believed. Getting back to a biblical eschatology is in itself a good thing, and of course affects our soteriology and morality here and now. Postmodern Christians, not longing to jet away to some ethereal heaven, have theologically compelling reasons to engage this world’s problems and conundrums with the Way of Jesus, and thus bring about more of the justice,  reconciliation and shalom God desires for His creation, which longs for the Day (Romans 8: 19-22).