demilitarizing the kingdom of God

A few needed thoughts on the kingdom of God by Gerd Theissen in The Religion of the Earliest Churches:

This myth (the kingdom of God) is simply consistent Jewish monotheism: God will finally be the one and only God, alongside whom there will no longer be any other powers to limit his rule …

In Judaism this includes the rule of the one and only God. Now Jesus combines this talk of the kingly rule of God, i.e. a political metaphor, with a second, family, metaphor: the image of God as father…

It is striking that Jesus always speaks only of the kingdom of God, of God’s basileia as an objective entity, but never of God as ‘king’, of basileus as a personal role. This produces a void for him which he fills with the metaphor of father: in God’s kingly rue God comes to power not as ‘king’ but as ‘father’. As familia dei, the ‘family of God’, his sons and daughters have a privileged relationship to him and take part in his rule. Therefore in the Our Father the central message of Jesus is summed up as ‘Our Father, your kingdom come… ‘ In every respect this message is this a revitalization of the Jewish sign world in the light of two basic metaphors which come into the centre. However, for Jesus this ‘myth’ of the coming kingly rule of the Father takes a form which is characterized by two special features. In both cases the mythical world is extended or transformed in a unique way: by a historicizing, poeticizing and ‘demilitarizing’ of myth.

Just a note, when Theissen refer to Jewish thoughts, he specifically do not refer to Pharasaic thought.

Second note. Maybe this demilitarization of the kingdom of God need to be kept in mind when modern metaphors for the kingdom of God is looked for.

pray for Amahoro in my home town, Piet Retief

The little town in which I grew up, Piet Retief (google earth view), is experiencing serious problems! Although we struggle to confirm reports at this stage, it would seem like residents of the one township outside Piet Retief, eThandakukhanya, is “on a rampage” (to use the words of newspapers) because of corruption by the authorities.

I know very little, actually, most people seem to know very little at this stage, but eThandakukhanya is closed down, no one entering or exiting, two of the mayor roads out of town is closed down. Buildings and cars have apparently been burned down.

The words of the newspaper reports read that the residents said that they will make the town “ungovernable”. This is the same things that protesters said in the 80’s against Apartheid (I’ve been reminded of that again while visiting the Apartheidmuseum this weekend).

The following newspapers all gave the same report:

News24

South African Times.co.uk

Pretoria News

SABC news of June 29 on youtube (1:16)

Augustinian guilt and Apartheid guilt

I know very little of Augustine, I must admit. Same with Luther, Calvin, and most church fathers. What I know of them I know from second hand knowledge. Well, in reality I’ve met very few people who actually know the giants from the past first hand, so I don’t feel that alone, although I’d like to change this over time. Someone said somewhere in the past few months at a place that I attended (I think it was Scott McKnight), that Augustine’s confession was the prototype for a conversion that went together with extreme experiences of guilt. Luther’s was similar. And this has become the prototype for how conversion stories must.

This was the classical conversion story that I’ve heard in my life. The recognition of my own total depravity, my absolute guilt, my being a worm in the eyes of God, and God then coming to take away this guilt. Recognition of sin always lead to an experience of guilt over this. Then the sin was forgiven, and God never though about it again.

In conversations on Apartheid, there is a group which I’d call that “sal-nie-langer-jammer-sê-nie”-group (translates with “I-will-not-say-sorry-any-longer”-group). This is from a song by a well-known Afrikaans band in which they sing about how they won’t say that they are sorry about Apartheid any longer. It was in reaction to this that Tom Smith and some friends started a website which said that they are sorry for Apartheid.

Let me quickly put down my thinking and then ask you to respond. I wonder whether there is a link. In this classical tale of conversion, past sins need to be forgiven quickly and gracefully, if not they lead to feelings of guilt. For those caught in this approach, the wrongs of Apartheid will lead to feelings of guilt if they make themselves part of the people who did this, and if they consider this a wrong which still must be addressed.

However, I also see some who don’t consider recognition of past, and even present, sins to be a source of guilt, but rather a source of change. In this approach guilt do not lead to redemption, but redemption lead to recognizing sins. Moving closer to God will reveal my own wrongs, my own sins, which I embrace because in time this will help me change. It’s not something bad, something which should be gotten rid of, but something good. Maybe it’s this lack of Augustinian guilt that make it easier for some to continue being sorry for Apartheid?

What’s your thoughts?

Helen Suzman remembered… and this has made a difference

After visiting the Apartheidmuseum while at Amahoro I made a kind of a personal vow that I will for the coming months take people their, and let them reflect on what they experience. Saturday was our first such a trip, with 11 people in their 20’s, 2 in their teens and one in his 50’s.

The museum has just too much to take in in one visit, so I picked about 5 stations which I didn’t spend time on last time, and really worked through them. The first was the Helen Suzman exhibition. What struck me was the part where she said that the stories of Jewish oppression (I think in the Holocaust, but it might also have been some other, or a few other, instances of anti-semitism) which she remembered was a strong influence in her fight against Apartheid.

For 13 years Suzman was the only member of parliament wholly against Apartheid, but she kept on fighting. Remembering Apartheid, not in order to experience guilt, but in order to change the future, has become very important to me, so Suzman’s remembrance of Jewish oppression and how this influenced her fight against Apartheid is a story which I also think should be remembered.

Well, will visit the museum with another group of interested people again in about a months time. Let me know if you are interested.

Steve Hays shared some remembrance from Apartheid, he still remembers.

one Afrikaner’s Amahoro calling

Chris asked me today what Amahoro meant to me. My answer probably surprised the room: Amahoro called me back to the white Afrikaner people. Amahoro called me back to the Dutch Reformed Church, the white one. Linking with everyone from Africa was a great experience, and I look forward to joining the family next year in Nairobi, but for me the calling of Amahoro was not primarily to the worst suffering in Africa, but to a small tribe of people who are known for the efficiency with which we could oppress.

I probably need to explain.

This probably started when I seriously began digging into the missiology of David Bosch, and seeking for an approach to the emerging field of public theology which would take the work of Bosch into account. Up to now this haven’t really happened in the public theology conversation. Part of my discussion of Bosch was understanding his ecclesiology, specifically the way he used the alternative community concept of the Anabaptists, combined it with his own Reformed theology.

Bosch talked about the church as God’s experimental garden. The church is not only the community that is sent out to change the world, but also the place where we show the world what God’s dream would look like. For Bosch in the Apartheid years this would have meant showing an Apartheid government that black and white can live together, that the world isn’t going to come to an end when black and white share a meal.

What exactly all this mean to me I don’t know. But I do know that I pray for my people, and yes, I call the Afrikaners my people. I pray, and hear the voice of God calling this, that these people can in the years to come journey out of our heritage, and become part of Africa, of this continent with it’s struggles, with it’s African theologians and our beautiful way of talking about God amidst suffering. It’s like the way Bosch understood the reign of God, it’s here, but it’s still coming. The Afrikaner is part of Africa, but we are also still becoming part of Africa.

In different ways we responded to Amahoro. For me it wasn’t walking away from this church that still refuse to embrace Belhar, but embracing this church. Not embracing it as it is, but this deep feeling that I cannot go without them. I need to see these people transition. I cannot run and call them from afar, tell them how wonderful it is here on the other side, where we are wholly part of Africa. I need to walk with them. The world need us to make this journey, to show that yes, whatever you might remember about this group of people, through God even we can make this journey.

Nic said it at one stage at Amahoro. We pitch our tents out far, and then come back to the church and journey with them. Amahoro stretch the road to when my tent is pitched even further, but it also sent me back, I’ve seen something of the road, now I must go on the journey with others.

This is most probably not the last time I’ll blog on this. I just know that these words it not what’s going on in my head, but I need to start to try and formulate this truckload of thoughts that’s still racing.

down the missiological rabbit-hole (Transforming Mission – chapter 5)

Theology never should be a simple set of answers to lifes complex questions. It’s a system that creates a whole understanding of reality, God, life, and if it’s Christian theology, the place that the story of Israel and the life of Jesus of Nazareth takes in understanding this reality. This said, reality is that you cannot simply change one of the answers on your list, and expect everything to remain the same. Rather, when you start pulling on one of the threads on your web of ideas, and observe closely, you’ll soon notice that the whole web is changing, the whole system is changing.

It’s like falling down Alice’s rabbit-hole, the further you fall down, the more you realize that the world in which you lived will never again be the same. Everything has changed. And you cannot go back. This is obviously not only true of theology. This trip down the rabbit hole we call a paradigm change.

• If you fall down the rabbit-hole and realize that the three-storied-universe need be dropped, much need to be changed. Where is hell if not down under? When is heaven if not up there? Where is the spirit world if not inbetween?
• If you fall down the rabbit-hole and Plato’s dualism starts crumbling, it raises a number of questions (most of which I don’t even understand yet) on body and spirit, spirit-world and flesh-world, God-world and human-world. Can these actaully be taken apart like we do?
• If you fall down the rabbit-hole and western rationalism with it’s veto-right in every conversation starts to become a little blurry, then much of you’re critique on mystical experiences feel a little shaky. Then much of you apologetics, from whichever side of the argument, just becomes relativized.

Thomas Kuhn called the rabbit-hole paradigm changes, “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community”. Hans Küng used his theory and applied it to theology. David Bosch has made one of his biggest contributions to the world of theology by applying Kuhn and Küng to missiology. This was the task of Transforming Mission. The church still seem to be struggling with the implications of the rabbit-hole that we are falling down into when it comes to missiology.

• The imperialistic approach of medieval and colonialist times still pops up every now and again, where mission and the expansion of the empire (or the expansion of American culture) goes hand in hand.
• The apologetics of conservative high-modernists still remain popular in places.
• The conversion of souls to become part of heaven and the church from early Roman-Catholic times has not left us yet.

If you want to understand Transforming Mission, if you want to understand David Bosch. One of the key chapters would be Chapter 5. You need to understand how Bosch used Kuhn, Küng and Capra. Not doing this will make Transforming Mission another book of quotes which you use when it fits your own approach to missiology.

This post is part of the posts growing out of our discussion of Transforming Mission. I’ve blogged on previous chapters here:

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

And others who have blogged on our last discussion (chapter 5 and 6 of Transforming mission) can be found here:

Arthur Stewert

healthy atheism and the way of Jesus

I’ve mentioned my critique of the New Atheist movement a number of time now. Kevin Parry has mentioned my critique on this as well, it’s one of the things that we have in common. What we don’t have in common though, is our believe in God. I believe in God, Kevin believe that there is no God. I call myself a Christian, Kevin prefer to call himself an Atheist. We are aware of our differences, but agree that both New Atheism and religious fundamentalism is unhelpful. Funny that both these extremes do the same thing: not listening to those with whom they differ.

When I find newly deconverted people, I promtly refer them to Kevin’s blog. I do this not because I think Kevin neccesarily has the best arguments for Atheism and I think that newly deconverted people need good arguments, but because I am aware that the Atheist scene, just like the religious scene, has many different options to consider, and some of them are more healthy than other. Some foster an openness to dialogue, encourages peace with those they differ with, others tend to be militant, and cause hatred against those they differ with. As a follower of Jesus I want to help people even when choosing Atheism to find a way of living that more closely resemble that which I believe Jesus taught.

Do I therefore recommend Atheism? No. Do I believe that healthy Atheists are right? In certain things yes, but I believe that there is more to reality than they might think. I do believe that if Atheism do not conform to reality (and I believe that it doesn’t) over time the cracks in their understanding of reality would become obvious. But I can also fully understand that some people opt for Atheism because the theology (talk about God) that they recieved from their churches doesn’t seem to reflect reality either. If a time of Atheism is part of their journey, I respect their honesty (because trust me, to be an Atheist in South Africa puts in an absolute minority). But my understanding of God allows me to guide people to more healthy understandings in Atheism while on their journey of discovering God.