The Meetup of Divine Intent

Driving in to work this morning, I was listening to a lecture on St. Bonaventure. I have always been fascinated by the mystics of Christian history, and I have read many of their works and summaries of their lives. The problem for me, though, is the explicit Neoplatonism that informs their ideas. The mystic way is not something I would have learned from the lips of the apostles. Its descent into the soul to find God is not the kind of spiritual advice that I read Jesus encouraging his followers to practice. So, as much as I admire these devout men and women of the church, I respectfully believe them misguided with respect to their Biblical theology. And that is no hidden scar.

But this morning I realized that I have come to find myself at the door of a better mystic way. This way is not a ladder of divine ascent. It does not struggle inward to God. Instead, it journeys outward--soul and body together--into the lives of one's neighbors and the needs of our communities. Instead of the cloud of unknowing, the self disappears into God's love for others. One is carried sideways in the eucharistic direction, to be broken and distributed. Perhaps there is still the threefold pattern of purgation, illumination, and union. Purgation of the self. Illumination about the people and communities in which one lives. And union with the Spirit as it pours itself kenotically into the world setting apart the name of God, living out the kingdom rule of God, and seeking to do the will of God.

Plastic People

In 2012 science writer Annie Murphy Paul published a summary of then-recent research into brain science and language called "This is Your Brain on Fiction." In it, she wrote, “The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Writer Mike Sowden referred to Paul’s article in his Nov 26, 2025, Substack Entry “Nothing Lies Like Your Own Memory.” Given research that calls into question the mind’s ability to unchangeably hold any memory and to resist bias and illusion, Sowden ultimately wonders what we even anchor ourselves in? “Without the sturdy edifice of our personal history to place ourselves in, how [can] we ever know who we are and where we belong? . . And if even our most fundamental memories [cannot] be trusted, where [does] that leave us?” Sowden goes on to talk about the vivid power of false memories, and how those who object most to the plasticity of memory are those most subject to it. He closes thus:

To avoid your personality flying to pieces, how about leaning into the findings of Annie Murphy Paul, and start regarding yourself not just as an amalgam and summation of your memories of everyone you’ve been and everything you’ve done (both of which may not be far less accessible to you than you think) - but as an ongoing story of your own continuous re-imagining. . . Identity is stories all the way down, and instead of feeling hemmed in and victimized by yours, how about acting like the author you actually seem to unconsciously be at the neuron-by-neuron level, with all of your self-rewritten components in the form of memories. How similar to who you’ve ended up are you to the person you want to be? What would that person be doing and how would they be acting? How about trying to add a few of those things until your fickle memory does its work and you completely forget you haven’t been like that until now?

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Mimesis: a short definition
Hermeneutics is love's desire to know

A short introduction to liberation theology

Robert McAfee Brown. Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993. 143 pp.

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What is liberation theology? It is a modern style of theology, an apocalyptic style, that begins with people and, specifically with the poor. It asks questions about now, and applies the gospel concretely to real situations and toward real goals. It says the world, because of the kingship of Christ, should not be the way it is.

Brown identifies four recurring themes in liberation theology.

Compromiso. This word is not a Spanish form of the English word compromise. Quite the opposite. It means commitment of the whole person. And a good test of such commitment, says Brown, is one’s degree of concern for children. Y los unicos privilegiados seran los ninos, “and the only privileged ones will be children.”

Hope. This is the existential dimension that Juergen Moltmann discusses in his Theologie der Hoffnung. This is the attitude resulting from living in the Easter light. This is the possibility that change in every way is not only possible but promised.

God’s Presence. The poor can hope because God is with them and sees them, for he himself did not come as a rich man but as a poor one. And, Jesus spoke of bringing good news to the poor. Jesus tabernacled among us; he labored and lived among us.

Preferential Option for the Poor. Certainly, the gospel is for all people. But the Bible begins with the poor, with widow and orphans. The preferential option points to the kind of change necessary to bring about the justice the lordship of Jesus requires. The question put to any reform must be, “Will this or will it not improve the situation of the poor?” And if so, all of society will benefit.

Someone who wishes to practice liberation theology should do their research. They must open their eyes–-especially if they are privileged. "Criticial thinking without hope is cynicism," said the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova, "but hope without critical thinking is naivety." Seeing requires struggle. The insights of social analysis, economists, and the sciences help. But one cannot stand apart and seek to understanding. In order to open one’s eyes (called conscientization), one must personally cross the gap.

“The commitment being described is not a form of intellectualizing so much as one of experiencing and ‘encountering.’ It is not enough to read books about poverty; commitment means encountering poor people. It is not enough to learn about ‘the root causes of poverty,’ . . . it is a matter of learning about and entering into and making common cause with persons who are being destroyed by these root causes, and seeking for legislative–or more drastic–ways to dispose of the causes. And it is the almost universal witness of those who do so, that in encountering the poor they are somehow encountering God, learning that whoever else God is, God is ‘the God of the poor,’ the one who takes their part, who works with and form them.” (56)

Brown lists three emphases of liberation theology clustered around its call for liberation. All three hang together. This is important: one cannot be over emphasized or considered apart from the rest. (1) Liberation from unjust social structures or “structural evil.” (2) Liberation from the power of fate. Nothing is “the way it is.” Things needn’t remain as they are. (3) Liberation from personal sin and guilt. These all hang together because Jesus, among other things, is the liberator and the gospel is an announcement of the personal and political liberation consequent of his reign. A Christian cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and not include its second half. There is no theology without ethics; no resurrection without hope.

Brown concludes by calling his reader to some next steps. First, we must consciously form communities of Christians committed to Bible reading and contemporary action. Second comes a commitment to the truth, to speaking the truth. We must be truthful with ourselves, with others, and we must speak the truth to the dominant community. And finally, we must take risks.

“I believe there is an eleventh commandment for Christians: Thou shalt not decide that someone else should become a martyr. . . . Christians must seek to discern the kind of witness that is demanded of them, and then go with it.” (119)

Every Christian must do a hermeneutic of their situation and decide what martyrdom—meaning witness–demands of them. And every church, too, has to do the same. The forces and temptations that buffet the individual will be different than those that afflict a church. “Either we believe in a God of life, or we serve the idols of death.” (Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero)

“A sacrifice from ill-gotten gains is tainted
and the gifts of the wicked win no approval.
The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the godless,
nor do countless sacrifices win his forgiveness.
To offer a sacrifice from the possessions of the poor
is like killing a son before his father’s eyes.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and to deprive them of it is murder.
To rob your neighbor of his livlihood is to kill him,
and he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood.”

~ Ecclesiasticus 34.18-22, the passage that “converted” Bartolome de las Casas

Dorothy Soelle on the existential origin of feminist theology

"Feminist theology arises, as does every liberation theology, from the experience of being wounded. It grows from the destruction inflicted on the lives of women, whether conceived in economic, political, social, intellectual, or psychic terms. It makes mutilations visible. It arises among women who perceive their situation and take common steps to change it, breaking out of the conventions and forms of the dominant theology and its pact with power. The pact which is made there tenders a cultural task for the church which contradicts its mission and its tradition: the church is supposed to make the victims of our situation invisible; and if this isn't possible, at least the causes of the misery should remain fatefully uncertain. Preachers may tell of Mary and Joseph but should not know the particular homeless in our own cities. They expound on the story of the paralytic and his friends, but whether those suffering from AIDS have friends, they don't know. They mention the 'hungry,' but the feminization of poverty remains outside of their horizon.

"In view of the real suffering of women, the theology and devotional practices of churches show up as strangely blind and ignorant. Among feminist women who have begun to reflect from the perspective of their wounds, there has spread astonishment concerning the dispassionate abstractness of masculine theology, boredom with biblical exegesis removed from experience and praxis, and revulsion against spiritless masculine administration within the institution. 'Therefore I ask God,' writes Meister Eckhart, 'to rid me of God.' There is no heresy but rather the petition for liberation from the prison of a language which is too small for God. Therefore I ask God my Mother--so I understand Eckhart today--to rid me of the God of men." (Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God, Augsburg-Fortress, 1995), 39-40.

Esau McCaulley says his church, the black church in America, has something to say

Yesterday, I finished Esau McCaulley's book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. IVP Academic. 2020. McCaulley's bona fides are beyond question. He has a PhD from St. Andrews. His Doktorvater is N. T. Wright. He teaches New Testament at Wheaton College. He is a priest in the ACNA. He is a black man and a Christian. This is a book McCaulley was born to write. And it is a book with a message: the South got somethin' to say.

These notes are not a book review. Rather, they are a short treatment of some of his ideas. Nevertheless, if you have never read his book, I do recommend it. The faculty and staff of my alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, read it together. That encouraged me to pick it up; it took five years to find a cheap copy bc I'm a cheapie. Plus, I am very interested in looking at the faith through the eyes of non-white people.

Chapter One: The South got Somethin' to Say

As he grew up, McCaulley found himself caught between two communities in the Black church. One of these was evangelical scholasticism and the academy. The other, social justice and the pulpits. He appreciated the serious scholarship of the former, but its papers and commentarites "displayed little concern for how biblical texts speak to the experiences of Black believers" (12). He also thought they read for a white audience, if they even made it out of the first century. "To me, it was a sign of privilege to imprison Paul and Jesus in the first century (13). But what about the social justice side? Here, scholarship was viewed with suspicion. Getting the exegesis right and whiteness have often gone hand in hegemonic hand. Wasn't exegesis the tool of white churches seeking to baptize slavery in the first place? McCaulley cedes the point but disagrees. Looking at the earliest strate of Black ecclesial leadership, he finds plenty of exegesis--and a thoroughgoing message of liberation and freedom.

As McCaulley argues, God is a liberator. Liberation erupts from God's very character, from out of and to his ontological sabbath shalom.[1] God desires freedom for his people. And his expectation is that his freed people will live lives of holiness, living out their liberation before the world. They participate in God's continual and peaceful call. Any reading of the Bible that says otherwise is in error. Scholarship and justice pick up the liberating cross together in whatever historical situation it is found and partner with one another to discern the mind of Christ for this day.

Handpicking other points of interest

McCaulley goes in for re-examing texts used historically to subdue and subjugate Black Christians. Eschatology is on his mind, the kind of eschatology that bubbles up into every living moment. Eschatology stimulates the church to act for justice and for liberation against the horizon ofeventual and certain shalom. But eschatology is also "not yet." And, in the intervening time, there is mourning.

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, McCaulley writes, "To mourn involves being saddened by the state of the world. To mourn is to care. It is an act of rebellion against one's own sins and the sins of the world. . . A theology of mourning never allows us the privilege of apathy. . . Mourning is intuition that things are not right--that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is. Our politicians run on our desires by convincing us that utopia is possible here and they alone can provide it." (65) I do also like his emphasis that this mourning leads to a hope to see elements of the Kingdom of God come to be, its liberation unto justice. And that this involves telling truth. As Luther said, A theologian calls a thing what it is. "Peacemaking is a sign of God's inbreaking kingdom. . . . Through our efforts to bring peace, we show the world the kind of king and kingdom we represent. . . . Therefore the work of justice, when understood as direct testimony to God's kingdom, is evangelistic from start to finish." (Ibid.)

I am caught by this: "For Zecharaiah and Elizabeth, the miracle child is John. For the African American Christian, the miracle is the Black Church born of truly miraculous circumstances and whose witness to Jesus has served as something of a forerunner preparing America to accept a truer and fuller gospel" (84). This fuller gospel is one that, while grounded in respectful and canonically comprehensive exegesis, includes the necessary hermeneutic to place those exegetic results in dialogue with today. Preaching is a public gift of the Black Church.

McCaulley reads with the end in mind. His work is eschatological. He understands the Christian vision of the future--the liberated, risen church--as one that embraces difference: difference of skin, of language, of culture. "These distinct people, cultures, and languages are eschatological everlasting. At the end, we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God's glory. . . . Our distinctive cultures represent the means by which we give honor to God. He is honoered through the diversity of tongues singing the same song." (118) Liberation does not lead to the removal of color, thinking of people who claim to not see color. That approach to difference is well-meant, perhaps, but incorrect. "The gospel does not cancel ethnic identities.(113)"

So when McCaully approaches scripture, he considers it in its historical-grammatical context and he considers it eschatologically.[2] In the Easter light, as von Balthasar said. So, he weds the careful tools of the evangelicals with the social energy of the progressives.

Laws of restraint suggest an eschatological purpose

McCaully discusses a way of reading Biblical ethics that I found very helpful. Referencing Jesus's teaching on divorce, McCaully observes that Jesus brings ethics back to creational intent. Let's call this the creational ethic. But, Jesus acknowledges that the law does exist to restrain error. Paul does the same when he says the law is the paidagogos. The law makes pastoral sense of difficult situations. Let's call this pastoral consideration.

Applying this to the slavery question in America. The Bible's teaching around slavery is pastoral consideration. Its teachings limit the worst aspects of slavery. And, as they do their work, they erase the foundation that supports the sinful institution itself. They do this because the creational intent--the deeper ethic--is liberation-unto-freedom. God made all human beings to be his imago in the world. So the limiting effort of the law serves a temporary purpose guided by the deeper and eventually overcoming liberation of eschatological reality, in this case, a free people worshiping God's messiah together.

Scars suffered in the present do not prevent eschatological participation

Finally, there is McCaulley's discussion of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Christ is our reconciler, our liberator to shalom in the Kingdom of God. One would not have thought a eunuch could ever be liberated. Weren't his public wounds permanent? He was not only a a Gentile, but he was permanently impure by the nature of his injury. As McCulley reminds his reader: eunuch's were despised. The man suffered the injustice of castration from the community at large, and "in a culture with strictly defined gender roles, he would be seen as aberrant" (110). But the eunuch is in fact liberated. He "found hope in the shamed Messiah whose resurrection lifts those with imposed indignities to places of honor." And "The eunuch [was always] an image bearer [of God]. Christ showed the eunuch who he truly was." McCaully's point is that blackness, like castration, does not prevent Jesus's liberating act from fully delivering black men and women to wholeness, dignity, and value in the Kingdom of God, to "God's eschatological vision for the reconciliation of all things in his Son." Christ's redemption is a liberating act for all people who for whatever reason suffer indignity and shame. Christ has made a place for them all in the kingdom.

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[1] I hope one sees the divine mission underneath this mention of liberation.
[2] cf Theology Along Three Axes

Six ways the Bible contributes to philosophical ethics

Ethical philosopher Dr. Arthur F. Holmes suggests six contributions the Bible makes to philosophical ethics.

1. It gives a theological basis for our [Christian] moral obligation, in terms of our obligation to the will of God, the creator and lawgiver.
2. It gives an account of the relation of morality to God's purposes in creation, our perversion of those purposes through sin and our restoration to righteous living by the grace of God.
3. It teaches us the principles of justice and love which describe God's character and should also characterize us.
4. It reveals the moral law of God, declaring duties in many areas of human life. This is summarized in the Ten Commandments and spelled out by precept and example throughout Scripture.
5. It demonstrates that from love for God and gratitude for his mercies come the motivation and dynamic for moral living.
6. It depicts the ideals and promise of the kingdom of God that Christ came to establish, first in our hearts and lives and eventually throughout the entire world.

Holmes goes on to say that studying philosophical ethics is right for people informed by the Bible because a framework is needed for evaluating and applying its principles that arise and are applied in different times and places. "We can learn to distinguish universal and unchanging principles that transcend cultural and historical differences from case applications in culturaly variable situations." Ethics can lift itself out of "case applications" and construct a useful framework that brings consistency to today's decision making. This too allows for dialogue across the cultures of our time.

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Arthur F. Holmes. Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions. Contours of Christian Philosophy. ed. Stephen Evans. 2nd ed. InterVarsity Press. 2007. pp. 16-17.

Chuck Alley of "The Living Church" writes a short description of love

"There is not anything self-serving about God's love. God's love is not an emotion--a good or warm feeling that God has when he thinks of us--because God's love is not emotional but rational. Love is the essence of God. The supreme illustration of God's love as an enacted love is found in John 3:16 . . . . We learn that God's love was manifested in his giving for the good of everyone, regardless of whether they chose to receive the gift. . . . The love of God was revealed to us through his actions. Those actions are taken for our good and without any expectation of return. Love at its heart is an act of grace. It is not dependent upon the worthiness of its target, but simply the need of those on whom it is lavished. In addition, the quality of love is not measured by its effect upon the recipient, but rather on the intent of the lover. Love is not expressed, however, as a kind thought or good feeling toward another. It is an action taken for the best of the neighbor. If we want to love, then we must act. If we wait until we 'feel' love before putting love into action, then it is unlikely we will ever get around to loving. The rational nature of love is revealed by the fact that if we continue to act in love toward other people, we will ultimately find ourselves feeling love for them. Thus, it is not impossible for us to love our enemies or those who persecute us. In fact, love has nothing to do with liking someone. To love is to practice doing what is best for the other person--without any expectation of personal return." (Feb. 16, 2025 p. 40)

Seamus, and me, and evil makes three

So, Seumas Macdonald. He has a newsletter (which are all the rage these days), and in it, he is reading along with James K. A. Smith's On the Road with Saint Augustine. Seamus's April 24 edition quotes Smith quoting Camus and then switches to his own thoughts.

After his talk at the monastery, a priest who was an ex-revolutionary stood during a time of discussion and confronted Camus: “I have found grace, and you, Mr. Camus, I’m telling you in all modesty that you have not.” Olivier Todd, his biographer, recounts: “Camus’s only response was to smile. . . . But he said a little later, ‘I am your Augustine before his conversion. I am debating the problem of evil, and I am not getting past it.’” pp. 178-179

The question of evil is an intractable one. Where does it come from? Why is there evil? Great questions to ask, but devilishly impossible to answer. And I have two comforts in this. Firstly, I do think Christianity provides a better means for wrestling with this question than any other philosophy. Secondly, I think we ought to suspicious of any system of thought that wraps it all up in a nice rational package, ties a bow on top, and says, "there, makes sense, doesn't it?"

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I like Seumas's insight that if we could really solve evil, then it would not be evil at all. As Smith writes, "To make sense of [evil], to have an explanation for it, to be able to identify the cause would mean that it has a place in the world. But then it isn’t evil. Evil is what ought not to be, the disorder of creation, the violation we protest."

This very much reminds me of what I have posted before about what "creation" means. Perhaps these nodes: the incarnation, creation, evil, are the places this drapery of life hangs down from but to which no human beings may climb (save one).

Indeed, speaking as a Christian man, I think that the Bible sets up that problem and does not answer it. Why? Because its answer comes at the end of the story. One knows one is at the end of the story when that question is answered. And one knows who the hero has been all along because only the hero can answer it. Having said this, it puts atheists and self-appointed skeptics to shame because, thinking they have skewered God’s character on a pole, they are simply repeating where we are in the story and claiming they have discovered some secret. It is no secret. It is the plot."

List of Reasons for an Old Earth

Here we go and in no particular order.

1. Evidences of natural time esp. geological and astronomical
2. Fitness of natural selection to explain and predict biological changes
3. Evidence of ancient life / fossil evidence
4. Paucity of the challenges
5. The false-friend of ID (really an attempt to resurrect the Argument from Deisgn or the Teleological Argument. These are not explanatory; we see what we want to see. 
6. The "brain weight" including contemporaries like Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne as well as ancients like Augustine
7. Hermeneutics properly practiced: thinking correctly about how to read ancient documents especially according to time and genre
8. The "very good" of God / God as trustworthy
9. The goodness of matter / natural law and its necessity for confessing the incarnation, the benefit of Jesus's sacrifice, and obtaining a real hope for eschatological deliverance
10. The danger of replacing the theology of the cross with a theology of glory
11. The importance of the Book of Nature
12. Animals need to hope as well
13. The danger that bad thinking poses for the health and growth of the church.

Objections that a friend of mine raised: Radiometric dating -- when does it start? Tampering. Mt. St. Helen's rocks. Slow formation of sediment trees. Logs in Mt St. Helens. Ken Ham and his group-basis for evaluations.

Excerpts from "Matigari ma Njirungi" (The Language of Languages)

I ran across a beautiful book in a bookstore in Lexington, KY last summer. It was published by the University of Chicago and titled The Language of Languages: Reflections on Translation. It is a collection of lectures by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o. His insights leapt from the page that afternoon. Here are a few that spoke to me.

This excerpt is about translation as the emancipating antidote to heirarchies of domination.

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"If we think of culture as the eyes through which a people see the world, the implications of a people being denied their language and having to use the language of [a] dominating power becomes clear. The aim and the result are to make the dominated people look at themselves and their place in the world through the eyes of the dominant social forces. That's why language control has always been at the center of imperial, cultural, and psychological conquests. . . . The language of conquest becomes the language of being. A people so subjected may even come to see their own language as that of non-being. Therefore, for such peoples, language emancipation is a necessary component of psychological emancipation. For, in reality there is no language which is inherently more of a language than any other language; all languages, big and small, are equal in their potentialities.

"If you know all the languages of the world and you don't know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, that is enslavement. But if you know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, and add all other languages to it, that is empowerment.

"In reality it is impossible for any person to know all the languages in their own country, let alone in the world. This is where the art of translation comes in. Translation makes dialogue between languages and cultures and different histories easier and more enriching. I would like to see translation elevated to center stage in relations between languages and cultures. . . . Linguistic emancipation anywhere is central to the emancipation of the mind everywhere (60-61)."

"Hierarchy as a conception of being is more clearly reflected in the relationship between languages. . . . All languages in the world, big and small, have a lot to contribute to the enrichment of our common human culture. . . . Languages and cultures can and should relate in terms of network, not heierarchy. And a network is really a system of give-and-take between equals. Translation is central to this entire system. . . . So I'd like to end by rephrasing Aime Césaire's maxim that cultural contact is the oxygen of civilization with a statement to the effect that language contact through translation is the real oxygen of civilization (70)."

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This excerpt is about language as the cultivation and humanization of nature.

********

"Humans translate the language and the laws of nature into those of nurture. Humans are of nature, like plants, animals, air, say ecology, and yet they stand outside it, as it were, act on it and reproduce themselves and give rise to processes which are clearly not identical with the nature of which they are a part. And yet, what humans have achieved is an extension of the various aspects of nature. The most wonderful technological tools are an extension of the human hand. The farthest-seeing telescope is an extention of the eye as are the speediest vehicles--rockets and spaceships for instance--extentions of the leg, the act of walking. And computers--don't they try to imitate the human brian? So the translation of the language of nature into their own tongues has enabled humans to create their nurture out of nature. The nurtural world of the human is an endless reproduction of what obtains in the natural nature and even the word 'cultivate' gives rise to the concept of culture as a social practice. Agriculture and social culture have a common root in the notion of cultivating nature, itself a process of translation from one environment to another.

"In short, the humanization of nature is itself a process of translation and bespeaks of the centrality of translation in the make-up of our human community. Aristotle said that poetry was more universal than history since history dealt with the particulars while poetry dealt with what could be. But there is a way in which we can say that the subject of translation is the universals contained in the particulars of nature and social experience (35)."

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And now the theology:

As I read the above, I cannot help but think of the major places in the Bible where language matters: the Tower of Babel, the miracle at Pentecost, and the image of the church as a numberless multitude of tribes and languages from John's Apocalypse. The first comes from the ancient world. The last comes from the world to be. And the harvest festival is our world today. I want to apply Ngugi wa Thiong'o's meditations to each and see what comes out.

Language and the World that Was