ethans feet

• “Unless you confess, God cannot bless” is wrong.  Is God by nature a non-contingent being?  Yes.  Is God waiting on us to act? No.  We cannot make conditions on God.  That is to make God an object/an idol.  God will bless who God will bless.  We respond.  In fact it is heathen to think so.
• Jesus talks about prayer as being persistent. But God knows already before I pray it.
• Death is not annihilation.
• Before God created he chose to become the creator.  And he had to contract himself to make space for God.  God has chosen to bind himself to time – or else he could not be called a “living” God.  Is that too Hegelian?  No, Hegel did not develop an understanding of the trinity.
• Pan-en-theism: means everything is in God.  But that’s only part of it, the more important part is that God is IN everything.  Calvin himself says that god is in everything only that we don’t have the eyes to see it.  If you see it in Trinitarian terms than we can understand it – If you see it in theistic terms it becomes problematic.

• Turning swords into plowshares: Double strategy of a community lived separately AND people who fight for peace.  The one needs the other to keep from becoming violent to see a picture of peace lived fully, and yet the separate community is not sufficient because it doesn’t really oppose evil.
• The influence of small groups of alternative life are very affective.
• The opposite of poverty is not property but community.  In a community we are strong.  Individualism is the lie of marketing.
• Individuals form a lonely crowd, only communities form communities.
• The church has 2 tasks: on the one hand to serve the need of the society and on the other hand a prophetic voice that speaks to those in power.
• The myth of progress is returning in the idea of globalization: and the abyss is approaching in the form of environmental catastrophe.
• “When I returned from the POW camps I vowed that I would never fight in a Germen military again, but I do vow to kill the dictator.”  JM

• The theodicy question is a problem that people have with God, but they wouldn’t have this problem with Jesus.  “If it weren’t for Jesus I would be an atheist like all of the people in my family”.
• Only the presence of God keeps alive the question of evil.
• Protest Hope: What is the art of hope 2 Peter 3:13sih, we weight AND hasten the coming kingdom.  To wait is not to adjust to unjust conditions in the present because you know it can be changed and will be changed.  So you resist conformity.  To wait and to hasten is to resist and to anticipate.
• We have 2 crosses, the real cross of Golgotha and we have the false cross of Constantine’s dream.
• Atonement: First there’s a Christology of solidarity – he suffers with us.  And he suffers FOR us, the guilty; the two have to be held together.  Justification is forgiveness of sin AND resurrection into new life.   Justification begins with the justification of the victims.

My wonderful friend Mike who tragically lost his son was in conversation with JM on how he too had lost his son, here’s a quote from JM.

• The why question cannot be answered because we would accept no answer.  The answer god gave to the question of Jesus was the resurrection and the new reality.  But refused to explain why it was necessary.  We have the consolation that we are not alone.  The other question is whether there is a process after death to fulfill the destiny of a life cut short.  God will bring to a good end what he had begun in a human person, and I trust in that.

It made me cry a little bit.

• On Method: Systems do not encourage discussion.  Behind all this, is the conviction that, humanly speaking, truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue.  Barth denies a natural theology but says that there is a theology of nature: it starts with the revelation of Christ that is reflected in the revelation of nature.   Is Christian theology for Christians or is for everyone?  Theology is the theology of the KOG which is coming.  We need a universal horizon if we want to be faithful to the gospel.  “reformed tradition is my tradition and the ecumenical church is my church”
• Read Elli Ezel’s book “Night”.  “God is not in control of everything; God is carrying and bearing everything”.
• The divine is apathetic:  platonic ideal in contrast to the tirades and emotions of Greco romans God.
• Incorporating experience into the work of theology.  Examples Mysticism, and doubt.  “theology not connect to life and death is a nice game, but only that, only a game for players.”
• On scripture: “I read the Bible with a presupposition to meet the dvine word in human words.” JM.  Galatians, “in Christ there is no male or female… etc” then Paul says “women don’t talk”.  What’s closer to Jesus?  Obviously Galatians.
• Political Theology: Over and against Luther’s “2 kingdoms”, in the face of Auschwitz.
• Postmodernity:“I think Post-modernity is another form of modernity.  We can only survive together.”

• Social trinity: “I am in the father and the father is in me”. The true human community is an icon and a witness to the social nature of the trinity. If you become in a relationship with Jesus you come into a relationship with the God that Jesus called Abba and you experience the life giving force of the spirit. The 3 persons of the trinity must “make room” for each other. And make room in each other for the indwelling

• Some time in church history Jesus prayer of “Abba father” was replaced with “our father in heaven”.

• His life:
• 3 years as POW in England and Scotland.  Born 1926 Harmburg Germany, secular family of school masters.  Fully modern.  Wanted to study mathematics and physics.  Drafted into the German army.  Was in the “Firestorm” of Hamburg.  Survived a bomb attack: asked “where is God?” and “why am I alive?”.    When leaving camp saw a “blooming cherry tree” the sign of life almost put him on his knees.  The Scottish families were kind to them, he began to feel forgiveness without confession.  An army chaplain distributed Bibles.  Moltmann read it, Spalm 39.  And the cry of Jesus on the cross is where Moltmann found the presence of Jesus in his life.  Gave up math/physics, pursued theology.
• 1946 started to study theology.  Started with Neihbur.  Studied theology at Gurtingham.  Pursued a dissertation to pursue a girl, now wife.  Pastor in a rural congregation, 5 year.  Learned to preach from life experience to life experience.  Taught in a confessing church seminary.  Felt a disconnect between being a professor and engaging in real life.  Became a professor at Trubingham.  67 & 68 taught at Duke.  Saw some of the worst of southern racism.
• 1967.  Theology of Hope published in US, featured in NYT displacing “God is dead”.  Was in a “theology of hope” conference interrupted by MLK shooting.  100s of Duke students sat in mourning for several days.
• Do good, love beauty, follow your instincts – secular humanism that Moltmann grew up with which collapses in the face of war.  They had no words for feelings of loss, guilt, forsakenness.  When a theological idea comes to him he thinks “what would the people make of it?” meaning his old congregation.  Professional theologians need to hear the peoples questions AND there answers.
• Liberation theology in Latin America.  1990 Invited to lecture in Buennes Airies – ended up spending 6 weeks in South America.  Go tired of “conference theology” started to teach in Nicaruaga.

• Christians don’t agree.  On anything, really.  Why?
• Assumption 1 – the Bible is sufficient to accomplish that task it undertakes.  Assumption 2 – God will give wisdom to anyone who asks.  Assumption 3 – the Holy Spirit will be at work in the whole church guiding us into truth.  Then how do we make sense of the massive diversity in Christianity since the beginning?
• Thesis: Orthodox Christianity is characterized by irreducible plurality and that is exactly what God intended.  It’s God’s plan.
• So What? That’s how we can say that we are all theologians.  That’s why we believe in conversation vs. lecture from an expert.  “The road emerged only as I walked on it” JM on theology.  “Lord, don’t ever let my theology prevent me from seeing what you are doing in the world.” JF.

I’m at a conference all about theologian Jurgen Moltmann and i am going to be recording some notes/thoughts here.  Here are some notes about his various books from an introductory session:

• The Theology of Hope:  We are, “Pierced to the soul by this hope”.
• The Crucified God:  What does the cross mean for God?  Those who are Godless kill innocence and those innocent are forsaken by God.  On the cross godlessness and God Forsakenness come together.  God suffers.  God is both the one who suffers and the one who hears the suffering and doesn’t respond – God is now in every place.  “no one can love the cross, its awful”.  The cross is the conflict of all things.  The resurrection is the answer to all of them.  “The resurrection is a cosmic money move” (teacher).  The cross is the litmus test for everything we believe.
• Church in the Power of the Spirit:  (his most practical book).  We are the people who get together and ACTIVELY wait for the coming of Jesus.  Before God, Before others, Before the future.  What will the coming new creation say about the work we are doing.  Our job is to glorify God BY (and only by) working towards the redemption and reconciliation of all creation. The question isn’t “what is church” but “where is it”, where do we see the KOG appearing in creation?  So we don’t protect, we look.  We’re just the people who point out the hope.
• The Trinity and the Kingdom: The New Testament talks about God by proclaiming the narrative of the relationship between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  There is a fellowship of God that has been opened to the world.  Jesus and the father are “one” not “one in the same”.  A dynamic fellowship of relational love.  In the dance there is mutual submission.
• God in Creation: Tension between immanence and transcendence.  God is present now and yet God is not fully present yet.  The promise to end all promises is that God will be all in all.  God is here, but God will be here far more at the new beginning.  Middle ground between God is everything (pantheism) and God is distant (theism) is God is in everything.  We are not the crown of God’s creation – Sabbath is.  The God that rests is not a God who dominates but a God who feels his creation.  We Sabbath in eschatological hope.  We rest in God and God rest in us.  The fall does not remove the imprint of God on creation.
• The way of Jesus Christ: Jesus is still on the way somewhere.  Jesus has not arrived.  Our Christology has to be a Christology on the way. The future is truly open.  It is a question mark.  We are trusting in the promise.
• The spirit of life: Holistic pneumetology.  Every experience of life we have that is joyful is done so by the power of the Spirit of Life.  God is bound to creation in love.  We are beloved.  “the whole misery of men and women is the love of God that is miscarried” JM.  The spirit with us in the down payment of what is coming.  God is in a sense homeless, in the new creation God finds permanent home.

So we were driving home from his school the other day and he had a toy in his hand, i think it was his “trumpet”.  He dropped it and the following conversation ensued:

“Daddy pick it up”

“I can’t babe, I’m driving, it’s not safe”

“Daddy, I told you to pick it up” (short pause) “If you don’t pick it up you will be in time out.” (longer pause, than in his best imp voice)

“…and that would be fuuunnn…. time out is fuuuunnnnnnn.”

I had no response to that.