A Great Post

I recently returned from a week long mission trip with my Jr. Highers, which i hope to post on soon.  For the time being, check out this fantastic post from one of my friends here.

Fundamentalism and a Hardware Store

Now i know that most people think that Kansans are hardcore fundamentalists with no hope of changing, but i think that the above photo disproves that.  It appears that a hardware store in Hugoton (which incidentally is about a half hour from where i grew up) has cleverly chosen a name that points out the nature of their store while simultaneously honoring one of the 20th centuries’ greatest NT scholars, who definitely wasn’t a fundamentalist in today’s vernacular. 

If this is what Kansas hardware store owners are reading, then imagine how liberal their pastors are!

(HT: FM)

Deep Thoughts from Simone Weil

I recently found this great quote courtesy of F & T.  It is worth chewing on for awhile.

“Denial of St Peter. To say to Christ: ‘I will never deny you’ was to deny him already, for it was to suppose the source of faithfulness to be in himself and not in grace…. Peter did not deny Christ when he broke his promise, but when he made it.”

The KJV and an Awkward Sermon

Sorry, no deep thoughts tonight.  I leave you instead with this, which has to be 4:30 of the most awkward and humorous sermon ever.  Enjoy!

Placher on Trinitarian Analogies Part 3

Tonight i thought that i would wrap up my analysis of William Placher’s article in First things on Trinitarian Analogies (Part 1, Part 2).  To sum up his view succintly, he believes that the two dominant western analogies (the psychological & the social) used to understand the Trinity are both inadequate.  However, when held in tension together they keep us on the straight and narrow, helping us avoid falling into the ditches of tritheism and modalism.  What follows are what i see as the weaknesses and strengths of his position.

The main strength i see in Placher’s approach is in His sincere effort to have a balanced approach to thinking through the Trinitarian nature of God.  Placher’s analysis of the issues in both the dominant conceptions of the Trinity is well-noted, and to a large degree i sympathize with the concerns he raises for both conceptions. 

Similarly, i appreciate the almost dialectical approach he takes in seeking to explicate the doctrine.  I agree that no analogy is perfect, and holding both models in tension with each other seems to protect one from error.  In dealing with the nature of God, it is often good to avoid being too “cavalier,” and i think that Placher works hard to avoid this danger in his approach.

However, what concerns me isn’t necessarily his concern for balance, or caution when speaking of God, but how Placher doesn’t really wrestle with the deeper issues regarding formulating a biblically faithful and relevant understanding of the Triune God.

To begin, while Placher does a fine job of explaining the dominant models in the discussion today, he doesn’t see the need to define crucial terms.  For example, in Placher’s article there is no exploration of how we should understand the term “person.”  Obviously, any meaningful speech about God will either explicitly use this term or will have an a priori understanding of what a “person” is standing behind their doctrine of God.  There are some clear ramifications for one’s understanding of God depending on which understanding of person we use today.

Going deeper, as Ted Peters has argued in God as Trinity (1993), this key issue over the ever changing meaning of personhood only follows from the larger scholarly war between classical substantialist metaphysics and more recent relational and process understandings of reality (pgs 35-36).  This is a key issue, if not the main issue, in how we understand Trinitarian doctrine today.  I wish that Placher had addressed it.  The fact that He views the social analogy as leading to tritheism if unchecked seems to reveal his hand that relationality isn’t a major component of his understanding of personhood.

As with most Reformed thinkers (as i understand Placher to be), this reluctance to allow the self-revelation of God as Father-Son-Spirit to be constitutive of the Ontological Trinity seems to stem more from holding to a more substantialist metaphysical understanding of God than a more holistic and relational understanding of God.  It seems to me that the reason for Placher’s reticence to equate the divine action and being lies in his fear of equating the action with the “more real” being behind such appearances.  This can be read between the lines of Placher’s article throughout, where there is a strong separation between who God is in Himself (in which the verbage of the mystery of God is almost always employed), and who he shows Himself to be in the economy of salvation.   

Thus, while Placher wants to avoid speaking to freely of God, He ends up in inconsistencies.  He wants to affirm that Jesus shows us who God is like, that there is no “unknown God behind the back of Jesus,” while simultaneously stating that the function of the dominant analogies isn’t to help us understand God (know who He really is), but to rather “preserve the mystery of a God we cannot understand (pg 30).”  I cannot see how Placher reconciles these two statements.

As i close, let me point out that i do realize that Placher is writing a short article, and probably doesn’t delve more deeply into these issues due to space constraints imposed on him.  In addition, while i do not mean to denigrate First Things, it does have to be pointed out that it isn’t necessarily a forum for such extended developments like i’m asking Placher for here.  I’m sure that he hasn’t revealed his full hand yet.  So clearly i can’t pull this one article out and say that i have debunked his ideas, nor will I.  Nonetheless, i think a mention of the myriad of issues would have been helpful, and until i see him address these concerns in some format, i cannot in good conscience accept his mutual corrective proposal. 

Any thoughts?

A Call for Papers

I have the honor of planning and leading this year’s Western Fellowship of Scholars and Professors conference.  My former professor, who founded the conference, is on sabbatical, and he graciously asked me to step in.  Here is some info on the general flavor of the conference:

• The purpose of the Western Fellowship of Professors and Scholars is to promote the renewal of evangelical faith and life through scholarly research, reflection, and discussion.
• Papers should deal with issues of interest to Christian scholarship.  They may be in one of the traditional fields of theology, Bible, Christian history, practical theology, world religions, etc., or they may be interdisciplinary, showing the contribution of other areas of learning to Christian concerns.
• Papers that are exploratory, experimental or provisional are welcome.  This forum may be used to present papers that will be revised later for other publication or presentation.
• It is preferred that papers conform to the topic (see below), but since the goal of WFPS is to promote research, papers outside the topic are welcome.
• It is recommended that papers dealing with biblical or theological topics conform to the SBL Style Guide.  Papers in other fields may follow the style guidelines appropriate to those fields.
• One’s paper will be put on the WFPS site, unless the author prefers otherwise.  All rights to the paper will still be the author’s.

This year’s topic is: “The Globalization of Christianity and its Implications for the Church.”  The conference is October 3rd-4th in Manhattan Ks, at Manhattan Christian College.  The cost for attending is $30 (hotel not included).  If you have any interest in attending, please comment and i will send you the necessary registration materials.  Also, if you merely want more info, let me know.  Hope to see you there!