Dan J. Brennan

An Urgent Message: God is Love

Perhaps last week you somehow stumbled across David Wilkerson's, An Urgent Message. In that post, he wrote, "AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE - EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US." 

The caps are his. 

If you follow the link, you will see the rest of his message if you would like to. 

I'm with Grace.

What would be truly a radical notion, is that we had an urgent message that God is love.  Yes, since I am an evangelical, I already know the immediate evangelical responses that want to tame or put the love of God and his good gifts into proper theological and biblical context.  One of my fundamental core objections to presenting God as such a wrathful, vengeful Deity to all who are susceptible, is that fear becomes a deeply embedded motivation in such spirituality in the evangelical subculture and community.  When such a notion is so deep into communal psyche, it bleeds into our views of leadership, male-female relationships, marriages, families, mentoring, discipleship, and automatically reframes hope--one of the greatest realities for all Christians as something, well, less than robust and authentic for the here and now.  "Even the godliest among us," Wilkerson says, are going to "tremble."  And although some evangelicals may distance themselves from such rhetoric, it doesn't take long to see where fear is portrayed as a deeply embedded motivation in evangelical spirituality. 

Christian Spirituality, Friendship, and Community

It's been a while since I've blogged.  I have had some amazing conversations about community, friendship, freedom, love, and transparency.  If you get to know me, I am a transparent guy.  The typical stereotype of men is that we are invulnerable, non-transparent, and independent.  I've been socialized differently.  I come at it from the opposite end of the spectrum as it were. 

I'm into transparency and vulnerability.  I like connecting with people (men or women) who send signals they value transparency and vulnerability.  I don't initially connect well with people who give the image they have it altogether.   Men who are into vulnerability and transparency fall short of ideal evangelical stereotypes about masculinity and independence--the evangelical subculture's interpretation of independence. 

I'm also into deep grace, freedom, feasting, and love these days.

This makes for some fascinating conversation and connection in community.

Living Spirituality

Greg Laughery's book, Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path is a book born out of his experience at the L'Abri Fellowship community in Switzerland. 

 

When Christians Overuse Logic

I was reading John Armstrong's blog on his recent post, More on the Pluralism Debate.  In that post he refers to the late John Gerstner who was a staunch calvinist who had preached in John's church on several occasions.  I was a member of John's church during that time and vividly remember Gerstner.  John talks about Gerstner's questioning John Stott as a real Christian because Stott did not hold to the traditional view of hell.  What a trip down memory lane, in reading John's post.  John and I have gone down different paths and I think in many ways, he and I would, strangely, have more things in common even though we took different paths out of calvinist fundamentalism.  John still embraces the distinctives of  the Reformed faith.  I don't think I can say that.  I know that God is good, loving, and sovereign.  I know men amd women are free.  Yes, I am familiar with all the compatibilist debates among calvinist and arminian philosophers and theologians.  I say, I declare it's a mystery.  John has an inclusive Reformed faith--I can't say that.  For those of you who only know me through this blog, you may be surprised to know that I loved theology--and I was always up for a conversation or debate about theology from the 80's until about three or four years ago.

Part of the reason where I am today is my total revulsion of the calvinist fundamentalism I chose to be a part of in John's church in the '80's.  John Gerstner was not the only calvinist fundamentalist to have visited there.  The church thrived on calvinist fundamentalism and it was life and death to me.  I was oblivious to the social dynamics intermingling with calvinistic theology and I about lost my soul and my mind after struggling for a period of years with election, God's sovereignty, and my self-deceptive heart.  Those are like three non-negotiable values to calvinist fundamentalism.  I went through deep periods of depression and darkness--especially in the 90's.  The wicked thing about calvinist fundamentalism was that it will kill all assurance and hope for those who wrestle with self-contempt--like I did during the 80's and 90's.  I know there are Christians who are calvinist fundamentalists still thriving today.  What happened in my experience (and for several others too) was that God's transcendence was always supreme at the expense of his immanence. 

A Community Called Atonement: An Emerging Look at the Atonement

Scot McKnight's A Community Called Atonement

As Geoff over at the church and postmodern culture has said, this book is a refreshing read.  I've unintentionally taken a sabbatical from reading theology--as soon as I say that I remember I am knee-deep in Stanley Grenz' The Social God and the Relational Self  but that is for writing for my book--but Scot's book is a refreshing read coming from a New Testament scholar.  I maybe biased, because I find myself almost at every page saying, he's spot on here, he's fair here, he's connecting other theological themes here.

Here's a statement I love: "atonement is something done not only by God for us but also something we do with God for others.

A Community Called Atonement

On the golf course, I'm sure Scot McKnight has dreamed of hitting a hole-in-one.

In theology, Scot has hit a hole-in-one--and miraculously used all of his clubs doing it!!--in his newest book, A Community Called Atonement.  If we could combine the world of theology and the golf world, McKnight becomes a Tiger Woods--by presenting us with the spectacular phenomenon--the atonement in all of its biblical and theological richness in our contemporary context.   

Love, Attachment, Eros, and the Trinity

Nicholas Wolterstorff in his chapter on "Is There Justice in the Trinity?" (great question itself!) from God's Life in Trinity.

Commenting on Anders Nygren's infamous contrast between eros and agape:

The Beauty of God 1

"Both God's providential sustenance of creation and the redemptive particularity of the incarnation call for dynamic rather than static approaches to beauty, and they seem to disallow generic endorsements of the arts as inherently sacramental activities.  In Scripture the sacraments are signs of God's saving activity, and they possess both temporal and spatial density.  The idea that all of nature is a sacramental repository of grace is problematic inasmuch as it trades on a static conception of value as something that is fixed in objects and readily accessible to human imagination.  Similarly, for such a view the particularity of the biblical sacraments and their essential connection to the work of Jesus Christ easily fade into the background or disappear entirely when eclipsed by a general theory of revelation.  If everything becomes sacramental, then nothing is sacred--or to be sacred means nothing much in particular."

From editors in the introduction of The Beauty of God: Theology and Arts

Obviously, this is a distinctively evangelical/protestant kind of logic.  I'm wondering what your reactions are to that statement.

Trinitarian Friendship Intimacy

Sunset. Delight. Kindness. A glass of red wine. Joy. Blue. First kiss. Poetry. Apple pie. Roses. Beethoven. Smiles. Diet Coke. Bald Eagles. Love. Friendship. Purple. Music. Sweetness. Orgasms. A listening ear. Stars. Massage. Acceptance. Gentleness. Desire. Direction. Passion. Community. Oral Sex. Guinness. U2. First snowfall.  Conversation. Intimacy. Perfume. A smile in the eyes. Big hug. Rembrandt. Baby ducks. Tears of happiness. Birds singing. Soft touch. Self-sacrifice. Attraction. Play. Laughing. Angels. Fiction.

 

God and Gender 2

As I seek to open this up more, I invite more of your comments--because God and gender have deep implications and repercussions for male and female relationships--and yes, cross gender friendships.  God and gender affect our spirituality, our prayers, our sense of connectedness to each other, the atonement, authority, dependency, intimacy, worship and our view of the Bible at the very minimum.

For example, I would make the observation that a fundamentalist and evangelical patriarchy (even the generic kind like C.S. Lewis' "Basic Christianity") have reinforced a particular masculine mode of relating with God and with each other--in prayer and in human relationships.  Both genders have been caught up in a "side by side" relationality in our commual relationships as well as addressing God as Presence.  God and gender definitely have wide ranging implications in bringing *both* the "side by side" as well as "face to face" in our spirituality and our cross gender relationships outside romance and marriage. 

With the predominant masculine paradigm we have insisted that men and women in their same sex relationships and cross gender relationships act as a side by side mode only--including how we relate to God.

Thoughts?  Reactions?