Caputo, Barth and the Church (Part 1)

Well I've almost finished reading a book on Karl Barth, a theologian from last century, and started reading Jack (John) Caputo's, a contemporary philosopher, book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? I have found it interesting the correlation between the two, even though they come from different perspectives. I guess I'll start with Barth and allow the point of this blog to develop.
'In this way Barth [is] giving expression to the idea that Reformed theology is reforming theology. This committment, which arises from the Reformed concern for the ongoing reformation of the faith and practice of the church according to the Word of God in the context of everchanging circumstances and situations, is captured in the saying "The reformed church is always reforming according to the Word of God."...Reformed theology is always reforming according to the Word of God in order to bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the context of an ever-changing world characterized be a variety of cultural settings.'

It seems that for Barth God was God, and as such was free to come and go as pleased (he is not suggesting a fickle God). Barth reacted to a God imprisoned within a mere human understanding. As the Word of Scripture is revelation from God himself the church is to continually be reformed by it throughout time. But whatever is understood, must be understood through the revelation of Jesus Christ. I guess what I'm trying to develop here is the notion of Reformed theology as reforming theology.
Introducing....Caputo:

'...the existence of the church is provisional - like a long-term substitute teacher - praying for the kingdom, whose coming Jesus announced and which everyone was expecting woud come sometime soon. But this coming was deferred, and the church occupies the space of the 'deferral,' of the distance or 'difference,' between two comings...in the meantime the church is supposed to do the best it can to bring that kingdom about in itself, here on earth, in a process of incessant self-renewal or auto-deconstruction, while not setting itself up as a bunch of kings and princes. That is why the church is 'deconstructible,' but the kingdom of God, if there is such a thing, is not. The church is a provisional construction, and whatever is constructed is deconstructible.' pg 35.

Here Caputo is calling for a right to deconstruct the church and reveal what lies beneath. As a provisional construction (the church) we are here to present the gospel and by participation in the Spirit enlargen the kingdom of God. And this is where I pick up on Barth. By deconstructing the church, and by subjecting ourselves to the reforming nature of the Word of God and Jesus Christ, we continue to move forward with the culture we are unavoidably a part of. We move forward with the rest of the world, and move forward with our own situations and circumstances and continue to show people the path to Christ. I suggest this as something to consider for anyone who has not considered this yet.

Thus I find myself at the end of the blog, I hope someone somewhere enjoyed this.

Stay Golden

Jimmy

Truth, Christ and the Postmodern World

Well I read Voddie Baucham Jr's paper on Truth and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World found in the book The Supremacy Of Christ in a Postmodern World (edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor) last night. Through the questions 1) Who am I? 2) Why am I here? 3) What is wrong with the world? and 4) How can what is wrong be made right? he juxtaposes Christian theism with postmodern secular humanism.
Baucham Jr based his Christian theistic answers from Colossians 1:12 - 21. He works consistently from a reformant styled theology and was a good read in that respect. For example 'Who am I? The crown and glory of the creation of God. What is wrong with the world? What is wrong is me.'
In regards to the postmodern worldview he makes some interesting points against the consumer styled society. For example;

'What if we saw our studies as stewardship? What if we raised our children not to go and do something just because it would make us proud but instead raised them so that they would discover the way that God has put them together?...What if we continually taught them to focus on the supremacy of Christ in truth and how he relates to our very purpose for existing?'

However, while making these points it seems his view on postmodernsim is pessimistic and possibly simplistic. He arrives at the conclusion that the postmodern worldview leaves humanity

'empty and hopeless; man is left worthless, and you are left to pursue your own satisfaction and never find it.'

However despite this feeling I enjoyed his analysis of postmodernism more than the Christian theistic break down.
In the end he arrives the anticipated place where Jesus is supreme and the basis for Christian truth. From him we derive our meaning, purpose and a directive. I didn't find much new in the Christian breakdown, but I enjoyed his analysis of the postmodern worldview, despite the pessismistic feeling.

Name Change

Hey

Well we (Briar and I) decided on a name change finally.  Same Stuff Different Day was just a temp name inspired by the movie Dreamcatcher.  It is Kiwi's lowdown cause 1) we're Kiwi's 2) this is where we update on what we're getting up to (this is opposed to updating Facebook status every five minutes which sometimes seems a bit silly) 3) Kiwi-land (New Zealand) is pretty geographically low in the world.  In fact I think we should set Stewart Island up for attractive flights and cruises to the antarctic - which may include glass bottom boats to watch the underwater antarctican wildlife. 4) Also it seems that alot of theological discussion and influence comes from other areas of the world e.g. Germany, Switzerland,England, France, America.  I'm not saying there is none from the NZ, but that most of my reading around current ideas come from offshore people.  If only I had $500,000 to study overseas....

On other news, (as I'm relatively new to the blog scene I am discovering alot of stuff still) I have found a good blog by C Michael Patton on 'Will The Real Emerger Please Stand-Up?' Warning, it is quite lengthy, but it is quite informative on topic of emerging church.  It explains a (the?) relationship between fundamentalism, orthodoxy, evangelicism, emerging and emergent.  Perhaps the most useful for me was how he distinguished the difference between emerging and emergent.  There are other blogs on there bout emerging church, but I haven't had enough time to read them yet. I'm sure they're good.

Chairs

Jimmy

The Temple

Hey peeps

Thought I'd post something and show that I havn't forgotten bout the blog.  Been real busy with assignments.  Got 5 due in next week which I'm workin hard to finish off.  Briars got a big one due in next week as well.  Generally we're doing well though.
Hey it's also our friend Luzettes birthday tomorrow as well.  She does some interesting stuff for Scripture Union so if you want go leave her a strangers 'happy birthday' comment on her blog.

This site has a bit of interesting imagery and info on the temple during Jesus' life on earth. Check it out here if your interested.

Catch you guys laters

Chairs

Jimmy

Want to be Secret Service Administrator?

Well I have found an MI6 SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) site that tests your aptitude as a SIS administrator. It had five sections - communication, numeracy, attention to detail, prioritizing and finally data ordering. If you think you've got what it takes well check it out here.

On similar news it was interesting to see that MI6 is using facebook to find new recruits. I'll leave you the link and let you guys check it out.

Cheers

Jimmy

Ever Wondered What Were The Best Commentaries?

For any of those studying to the Bible and are left to wonder which commentaries are the ones you want to read, and which ones need to be left on the shelf. Well I have come across this very useful site: Best Commentaries. I'm not an expert on the series nor do I know a lot of the authors, but I have found this helpful. It lists the commentaries by author, series or book. If your browsing 'by book' it will put them in a rating system so the perceived best one is at the top and descending from there. It will also show you up and coming commentaries. I was happy to see Tim Meadowcroft in the top 13 for Daniel (he was thirteenth, but above many other peeps, including Calvin and Alan Harman), a guy who lectures where I'm currently studying. Anyways, thought I'd share this with the world.

Cheers

Jimmy

Road Rage

Found two bits of interesting news. First being a high speed cop chase that exceeded 85mph (136km/h). After 27 traffic violations the cops stopped him by using the PIT maneuver. The car lost control and hit a pole, the driver was barely hurt. While not fast in relation to other cop chases, it turns out the guy was an 11 year old kid. Check it out here.

The second were some crazy women who kept running out in front of motorway traffic. They ran out once, one got hit but it musn't have been serious cause the police were talking to them soon after. During their chat with the officer one of them bolted across the road again and the other one followed. One got nailed and the other one just kept running into traffic, even crossing the centre barrier into more traffic. She even punched over a policewoman. It took a number of people to detain her (like 8 or 11 or something). Crazy, I want to know more about what was going on for them. Whether they were mentally unstable, wanting to committ suicide together, high on drugs, depressed, traumatised or just straight crazy. Anyhow, check it out for yourself here.

Hope all your days are going well! Peace.

Jimmy

Reading the Bible

Well I have just had a listen to some guy talking about hermeneutics. You can check him out here if you want: Blue Letter Bible . I have also put up a post in the forum about it and some of my thoughts.

I’m about half way through a book on the emergent church. I will put up a blog about it in the near future.

Stay Golden

Jimmy

Click here for the forum post

Update

Well I have put up some of the article type things I wrote on this blog in the forum over on my other site. Feel free to have a comment - even a critical one..

Stay Gold

Jimbo

http://jimmynz.informe.com/portal.html

The Church

I'm currently working on an assignment which is looking at understanding the church by understanding the Holy Spirit. It doesn't take long to realise that it is not possible to only understand the church by understanding the Spirit, but also by understanding Christ. The church is the body of Christ, but the Spirit is the life of the church. It is what unifies us and brings Christ into the church and us to Christ. But what is the church? The church is the gathering of believers, not a building or even structure of people. If there is only one person in the world that believes in the reconcilatory work of Jesus, is that church? It seems to suggest not as one person is not a gathering. Church is understood then as two things; 1) it is a fellowship of believers and 2) it is a product of the gospel. The scriptures proclaim the good news, that is, the redemptive work of God and Jesus in bringing reconciliation to the world. As a result of people partaking in this reconciliation by believing in the work of Jesus a church is created. Thus the church is not authoritative of the scriptures, but the scriptures are authoritative of the church. But the scriptures have to point to Jesus and are thus subordinate to him. God as his work in Jesus that is the good news is the pinnacle of this structure that lands church at the bottom. One has to believe in the work of Jesus before they truly believe in the divinity of the scriptures, and thus the church as a gathering of people unified by the Spirit brought together for their same belief that Jesus brought reconciliation.

So how is church supposed to function then? A proclamation of the good news from the scriptures is needed as that is what the church came out of. But what else? Is it necessary to turn up on a Sunday, sit in a pew and have a preacher talk to the people about the 'right' way of doing things. Sing songs and then at the end maybe make a couple friends and go home again? We talk about sending people out into missions, but what about the whole church as sent on missions? Is it required of us to sit in the pews quietly and take in what the preacher says or can we have a discussion about it instead? This comes out of my own personal experiences. I feel that if my faith was a muscle, then all church services are doing on Sunday morning are trying to relax and pacify the muscle while it is being trained how to flex by the preacher. What I hope for is a place where everyones faith muscles are free to flex themselves, where they can own what they do, and we can grow in our own ways, not the preachers ways.

Some thoughts,

Jimmy.

P.S. I'm looking at building a forum over time as a place to discuss this. There are already plenty of places to do this, but I thought I'd give it a go as well.
http://jimmynz.informe.com/forum/theology-f9/ecclesiology-t9.html

Reading the Bible

I've been reading around hermeneutics recently trying to get a feel of
where it is all going. I don't know who reads this (if anyone), but I was wondering how
we all read the bible? A survey was recently done in New Zealand
around reading the bible. 11% of Christians in NZ read the bible
daily and 13% read it weekly (http://biblesociety.org.nz/global-news/
bible-unread-bestseller/). This is pretty dismal. Is it our faith,
our worldview or the way we read the bible or something else that has
produced these results? How should we read the bible? I believe that
the bible offers the reader a possibility. A different way of doing
life. When I read Isaiah 40 - 55 (the Servant Songs) I see a way of
living that Christ fulfills and the church is to live like this until
Jesus' return. This is a textual reading where I develop 'who' the
character is in relation to 'what' and 'why'. Take Hezekiah for
example, his first 8 days in office he re-opens and re-furnishes the
temple of Yahweh. This shows 'who' he is as a person, same as the
Servant as mentioned previously in Isaiah. But this presents other
problems, do we read the OT in an attempt to discover what the author
is trying to portray? what about the authors context? or do we read it
as how the audience would perceive what has been recorded? Should we
read it as literary text and move from the author? Or does meaning
only come from the reader? Apply all these questions when trying to
interpret the Servant Songs in Isaiah and a never ending problem is
produced.
Where I am at is that the text is only given meaning when the
reader actually reads the text. There is a relationship between the
text and reader, the text is given meaning and is changed during
reading. In the same way the text changes the world of the reader.
And the reader cannot interpret the text without formulating some way
of interpreting what the author is trying to say in the text, or the
world in which the textual content is set. Instead of approaching the
text objectively, we need to own our presuppositions and be honest
with ourselves and the text. Perhaps instead of scrutinizing over the
text, the author and it's origins, perhaps we should read the text and
it's content. As the content develops a story is played out, like a
picture being painted. Upon observing this picture both reader and
text is changed. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water
because this has the potential to become a highly liberal reading,
e.g. God is not love, but hate. So we are required to intelligently
inquire into the text, it's context, background, author as to grasp a
more grounded understanding of the text. This is to prevent a liberal
reading of it, but not make bible reading so specialized that people
give up before they start.

Just some thoughts. Feel free to give feedback, even critical
feedback is good.

Jimmy.

Google's Chrome

Hey customers

Well thought I'd leave something useless. You'll find time wasting games at Kongregate.com.  Much better than miniclips.com.  I started using Google Chrome the other day, it's not too bad. Quite buggy though and not all that appealing.  Get sick of the blue real fast, however it is simple and does what ya want (most of the time).  Most of the time it crashes with Adobe Shockwave or Flash (in light of this don't use Chrome to access Kongregate or Miniclips).  When it does freeze i've found right clicking the window thing on the bar on the bottom will bring it back to life.

Just got handed another assignment, this time on Maori worldview.  Was a bit annoyin, so I skipped class and wrote the assignment. Will hand it in today.

Happy day

Philip.

More Southern Photo's

Hey Babe I added some more photo's today for you to geez at if you want. There should be a slide show on the right you can click on to view them.

Cheers

P-Diddy

Gone South

Hey Babe

Here are a couple of photo's. It's freezing down here, my fingers were blue and numb doing this! Was rather heavy as well. Lookin forward to talking to you later.




Take Care!

P-Diddy