Packer

[Doxtalker]

Someone told me that J.I. Packer had commented that within
Protestantism today there are really two religions today -- perhaps he
meant something like what Borg did when he wrote about the "new" and
"older" paradigms.
Does anyone know where to find Packer's comments along these lines?
Thanks.

Larry

[Willis Elliott]

Larry: 

 

Dunno about Packer, but Elliott for some years has been talking about two religions.

 

Here, liberal Protestantism parallels Reform Judaism--but the twoness in the latter is out-of-the-closet: theism is expreessedly optional (as it is in the UUA).

 

In Reform Judaism, PEOPLEHOOD is more important than theology (theism/atheism).

 

In liberal Protestantism, "JUSTICE" is more important than theology (theism).  Egalitarian ethics, in radical mode, is a religion--the religion I call egalianity--within liberal Protestantism (as, briefly, Christianity was a trojan-horse religion within Judaism: Judaism would have disappeared if the Jews had not de-synagogued the Christians).

    One of the strictures preached by this ultimate concern (this implicit religion identifying egalitarian justice with the Kingdom of God) is against anybody/thing as being superior to, better than, anybody/thing else: verticality is seen as implicitly hierarchical & unjust.  (In some atheist posts I've read against me on "On Faith," "god" is said to be implicitly--as above!--a sinful idea!)

    So, e.g., Christianity should not be claimed as superior to, better than, Judaism (though in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the claim is made 12 times ["kreisson"]).

    You are correct that Borg's two-paradigm view of Cristianity is an instance of "two religions" in one.  The OLD paradigm was full of miracles, with the ordinary mainly left out (as Alfred Hitchcok defined drama "as life with the dull parts left out").

The NEW paradigm was well expressed in Borg's words at the UCC national office (& put on the UCC site): "Nothing happened then that is not happening now."  E.g., the resurrection drama was all inside the disciples' heads, not in "history."

 

For two hours on CNN last evening, Christiane Ananpour showed activist old-paradigm Christians as "God's Warriors" (after the same title for Muslims Wed.pm & Jews Tue.pm).  The present polarization, as I see it, is that humanists/secularists/new-paradigmers have sidelined the old-paradigm MIND (now excluded from public education, e.g.), & that traditionalists/conservative/old-timers have sidelined the new-paradigm POWER (the new paradigm losing the battle for the U.S. Supreme Court, e.g.).

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

[Doxtalker]

Thanks, Willis, for providing Elliott's take on the "two religions.'
Interesting and helpful. I'm still captivated by N.T. Wright's closing
words in his book "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus Christ." He takes on
neo-gnosticism in that book. And he defends classic Christianity as if
it were classic Coke. His final words: "Accept no substitutes."

Of course this is something of a joke. But the message is serious.
There is Christianity and there are "Chrsitianities," he might say,
and neo-gnosticism is one of the X-brands.

For some reason, I'm on the mailing list of the Harvard Divinity
Bulletin, which is looking classier and classier. Today, I picked up a
recent copy buried under papers on my desk. And I noticed a review by
a priest, Francis Clooney, SJ, of a book called "The Serpent's Gift:
Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religon" by Jeffrey Kripal,
University of Chicago.

Here's a quote from the review: "The book's value lies in Kripal's
intention to retrieve gnosticism, sexuality, altered states, anger at
institutions, the modern privileging of the human over the divine, and
even the contemporary study of religion, for the sake of a more
integral and potent form of religious reflection no longer chained to
the traditional mainstream management of such matters ... etc. etc. "
Note: Kripal is also the author of "Esalen: America and the Religion
of No Religion."

I've got to say ... this gives pause to this old reader and relisher
of Iris Murdoch's writings. No more time to say more, but ... I've got
to say it seems to me just from reading this, that Kripal must live in
a sort of vacuum, without relationships with other people who can be
damaged by his expansive "freedom."

Larry

[Doxtalker]

Willis: I think you've hit the nail on the head with your distinction
between those who magnify God and those who magnify people. ELCA
pastor Ron Marshall (of "Deathly Evangelism" fame) has written a
critique of the new ELCA hymnal. His basic point: I think he quotes
John the Baptist as saying that he (John) must shrink and Jesus must
grow. Then he says the hymnal takes the opposite tack, making God
small and people large.

And probably in many ways churches can be contrasted by how they
pursue one or the other of these two courses.

Larry

On Aug 24, 7:17 am, "Willis Elliott" <elliot...@charter.net> wrote:

[Vince Lavieri]

Ever realizing I am out of my depth and will so reminded:

On 8/24/07, Willis Elliott <elli...@charter.net > wrote:

 

Here, liberal Protestantism parallels Reform Judaism--but the twoness in the latter is out-of-the-closet: theism is expreessedly optional (as it is in the UUA).

I am clueless as to what this means, kind of, but my experience of Reform Judaism is anything but optional theism, for the most part, although the optional theism (if it may be so defined) of the late and revered Rabbi Sherwin Wine is revelation, in my opinion.

In Reform Judaism, PEOPLEHOOD is more important than theology (theism/atheism).

Maybe, maybe not.  I love dualism! (or not, see below... it seems so ancient Mesopotamian)

In liberal Protestantism, "JUSTICE" is more important than theology (theism). 

Maybe.  Maybe not.  Perhaps true for some but not for all, many, some, none, God alone knows. 

Micah 6.8 aside, and all the prophets aside, although maybe it is good to repat, what does God require of you but to do justice...

Anyway Bonhoeffer identified Christ with reality, and I follow that.  And reality requires justice.  To discuss justice is to do theology.  I do not accept the assumed contrast or separation of justice and theology, and absent a requirement of God to do theology, why must we separate the two?  That seems to be a human invention, not God's, that separation.

Egalitarian ethics, in radical mode, is a religion--the religion I call egalianity--within liberal Protestantism (as, briefly, Christianity was a trojan-horse religion within Judaism: Judaism would have disappeared if the Jews had not de-synagogued the Christians).

Oh?  Unless I am convinced by history, scripture, or soemthing else reasonable that to me is plain reason, at this late in my life I am not convinced of this at all.

    One of the strictures preached by this ultimate concern (this implicit religion identifying egalitarian justice with the Kingdom of God) is against anybody/thing as being superior to, better than, anybody/thing else: verticality is seen as implicitly hierarchical & unjust. 

There is much here that I don't accept, including that this ultimate concern, whatever it may be, is that justice required of us necesarily equates egalitarian justice (whatever that means) with the Realm of God.  I feel that a defintion of justice, among other assumptions, is forced on me here.  

(In some atheist posts I've read against me on "On Faith," "god" is said to be implicitly--as above!--a sinful idea!)

There is a lot of wacky atheist stuff being said these days.  When Hitchens finds a new way to make money we may return to more reasoned discourse with atheism.

    So, e.g., Christianity should not be claimed as superior to, better than, Judaism (though in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the claim is made 12 times ["kreisson"]).

I was lousy at NT Greek and always wonder when someone offers their definition (as if any thing can be defined) as theological pronouncement.  I simply don't accept this.  I totally reject the idea that concept, that Christianity is superior to Judaism.  My first NT professor insisted we diagram the Greek sentences and I sometimes got lost in the Greek but I did grasp this:  Romans 12.17-18: "But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches.  If you boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you."  Fool as I am, I take that to mean that we are but the branch grafted onto the tree of faith, we are not the tree.  I feel no need to boast about my alleged superiority as a branch over the tree and take Scripture to tell me that would be wrong.  Then what becomes of boasting?  It is excluded.  By what law?  By that of works?  No, but by the law of faith.  I know God through Christ.  It is not for me to claim any superiority over the tree - Judaism.  I thank God that Christ was offered to us so that we who needed Christ (the Gospel) would have Christ (the Gospel).   My thanksgiving does not require me to feel superior to anything else.  This is not sports.  I do not have to put down the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees to proclaim my love of the Chicago White Sox, but I will... but that is sports, about as ante penultimate matter as there is.  I can proclaim my faith without trashing something else that I know is God's revelation, i.e, Judaism.

    You are correct that Borg's two-paradigm view of Cristianity is an instance of "two religions" in one.  The OLD paradigm was full of miracles, with the ordinary mainly left out (as Alfred Hitchcok defined drama "as life with the dull parts left out").

The NEW paradigm was well expressed in Borg's words at the UCC national office (& put on the UCC site): "Nothing happened then that is not happening now."  E.g., the resurrection drama was all inside the disciples' heads, not in "history."

That is one interpretation of  Borg's words there, it is not my conclusion.  That e.g. is an assumption and is not mine. 

For two hours on CNN last evening, Christiane Ananpour showed activist old-paradigm Christians as "God's Warriors" (after the same title for Muslims Wed.pm & Jews Tue.pm).  The present polarization, as I see it, is that humanists/secularists/new-paradigmers have sidelined the old-paradigm MIND (now excluded from public education, e.g.), & that traditionalists/conservative/old-timers have sidelined the new-paradigm POWER (the new paradigm losing the battle for the U.S. Supreme Court, e.g.).

I don't see the need to continually put everything in this dualistic conceptualization, nor the conclusions.  Life can be far more complex than paradigms.  One of the people who I serve told me today about her reaction to the CNN series.  There is a danger of fanaticism - accepted by most, notably disagreed with in Barry Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech, a reference I make only because this is being politicized I feel to make a point that I don't as valid coming from the material at hand - but if this is the paradigm, then I am all for the secular humanists and the new paradigmers, which sounds like a punk rock band from Princeton, since the secular humanist new paradigmers are far more finding the sacred in reason than the fanatics out there.  There are a lot better options, there is no reason or anything I perceive as sacred, in Ian Paisley, Eric Rudolph, and the orthodox murderers at Srebrenica , can't we have more options than paradigms, but if forced --- I want the Supreme Court in hands other than any options given and how did the Supreme Court get in this discussion, other agendas at work?

Again my caveats.  I am woefully unworthy of the conversation.  I am not as in tune to the conversation as it has been going on a long time but I do feel a great charity in this being an open group so that I can offer my foolish prattlengs.  And as a Lutheran disguised yet happy as a member of the UCC, I do value the conversation so that others may attempt to convince me by clear reason and the Scriptures and until that happens I have the freedom of a Christian to proclaim where I stand - not as authority, but to extend the conversation so that I may be corrected and chastened.  And I bask in the concept I have observed that Rev. Elliott charitably prefers response so we can all talk more...  gracious teacher as he is! 

Grace and peace--

And also with you!

Vince Lavieri

(you know there are people in western Michigan who think I am the most hide bound of conservatives?)

[Vince Lavieri]

Larry,

I am lost in how we quote a post in a thread with this system.  However, I want to respond to your comments, as someone ordained Lutheran, now UCC, and who has eagerly and carefully worked through much of Evangelical Lutheran Worship.  In fact, next Saturday, I am using its marriage liturgy for the first time at the wedding of my 83 year old father to the widow of a Lutheran pastor.  And I look to ELW for insight on every service I do, which are kind of a NCH with some ELW blend with much from the United/Uniting Churches of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Ron Marshall has his axes to grind, he is a polemicist in ELCA circles for certain things, certainly his right, I think the fact that the LCMS quotes him favorably implied by disagreement with much of what he says.  That aside...

His comments on Evangelical Lutheran Worship, if presented here accurately (I take it they are, I can't locate them at the moment) are simply, in my opinion, bunk.  It is political posturing by someone disposed to dislike the book because of his political battles in the ELCA. 

Evangelical Lutheran Worship does not - as I have searched in thoroughly as possible since publication - does not 'make God small and people large.'  That is political rhetoric, in my opinion, not reality.  I have criticisms of it, but that is nothing that ever occurred to me and stuns me that that criticisms was leveled.

Evangelical Lutheran Worship continues the direction of the Lutheran Book of Worship from the Service Book and Hymnal in restoring sacramental emphasis in worship - I love the Thanksgiving for Baptism as an option to confession/absolution - and the glorious expansion of eucharistic prayers all celebrate grace, God's grace, they celebrate the mighty acts of God continually revealed in Scriptural accounts, in some beautiful and wonderful language.  There is nothing about ELW that diminishes God and enlarges people, nothing.  It does increase the intimacy of Word and Sacrament in the lives of the worshippers.

I have criticisms of it - it learns nothing from the New Century Hymnal and is un-necessarily sexist when it had easy options not to be.  13 settings of communion and not one inclusive language?   They couldn't do "Blessed is the One who comes..." rather than their only option, "Blessed is he..."????? I would have issues, were I still a Lutheran pastor, with the male bias in hymns.  I also am not happy with their layout in terms of liturgical music, nor are currently serving Lutheran pastors that I have spoken with, it will require ELCAers to learn to flip pages like Episcopalians in the BCP and Lutherans won't like that.

Ron Marshall would have disliked ELW if Jesus and Luther co-wrote it all.  Other than the gender exclusive language, and some layout, it is marvelous.  It has its faults, but it does not, it does not, diminish God.  It celebrates God and God's grace in Christ and affirms the faith in rich ways.  I suggest Ron Marhall's claim against ELW is political, and false.

Vince Lavieri

[Willis Elliott]

Thanks, Vince. 

 

1    Your last sentence is so right:  I want Christian conversation far more than I want verbal victories!  The only victor I'm interest in is (to use a good Lutheranism!) Christus Victor.  "Our little systems have their days, / They have their days and cease to be, / But thou, O Lord, art more than they."

 

2    GATES OF PRAYER, Reform Judaism's official prayerbook, has optional atheist passages.  Its editor, the best Jewish friend I ever had, was theist; but the book had to be "inclusive" (in this case, not of women or gays but of atheists).

 

3    You are of course correct when you say "true for some but not for all."  But do you mean to exclude generalizations?  Do you deny my two "more important"s (in Reform Judaism in America today, peoplehood trumps theology; in liberal Protestantism, "justice" [as here I nuance it] trumps theology)?  As for your generalization--"To discuss justice is to do theology."--you & I believe it; but do you deny my assertion that in liberal Protestant practice, ethics ("justice") trumps interest in & the practice of theology?

 

4    Of my paragraph beginning "Egalitarian ethics..." you say "I am not convinced of this at all."  What are you not convinced of?  That the Jews saw Christianity in their synagogues as a Trojan horse?  That (as Kierkegaard remarked of his Danish Lutheran Church) ethics had replaced religion (in official UCC, the sacralization of "equality" fights religion (centered in the Holy Trinity)?

 

5    On my paragraph beginning "One of the strictures....":  You implicitly ask what "egalitarian justice" means; it's justice conceived of as equality.  You are right that justice does not "necessarily" = God's Realm (though it is a dimension of it).  But I'm speaking here of a two-step reductionism: (1) Justice is reduced to equality, then (2) the Realm of God is reduced to a particular conception of justice, viz. equality (which move I see as sacralization, & so devised for it the word "egalian" ["egal" replacing "Christ" in "-ianity"]).  This religious development sharpens a tool into a weapon (a ploughshare into a sword), for use--e.g.--in the fight for gay "marriage."  Old battles are part of the content of theology.  Radfem Mary Daly tried (unsuccessfully) to oust me from a meeting: to me a small matter, but she was enraged, being a ferocious egalitarian for whom radical feminism had replaced theism--journeying all the way from being a RC nun to being an atheist.  (If you knew the battles I've fought, you could more easily understand my theology....which is no more true of me than of any other theologian).

 

6    On my statement beginning "So, e.g., Christianity should not be proclaimed as superior to Judaism" (the position of atheists, secularists, humanists, & antisupersessionists): Are you accusing the NT's Epistle to the Hebrews of "trashing" Judaism in its theme--12 times stated, the very structure of the essay!--that Christianity is "better" (kreisson) than Judaism?  You say you "totally reject" the superiority idea: so, including Hebrews in the NT canon was (as I heard a UTS:NY professor say there a few years ago) a "mistake"?

 

7    How can life be "far more complex than paradigms" if a paradigm is understood (as it should be) as a life-picture/story (way of seeing, & living in, the world) that includes both simplicities & complexities?  Of course no paradigm is what it claims to be, viz. the total truth; but every paradigm intends to leave nothing out (i.e., to be comprehensive).

    We are lovers (honoring LOVE, aiming at reconciliation, eager for seeing similarities) & guardians (honoring TRUTH, aiming at excluding error, sorting out differences).  You are correct that the latter can be overdone (paradigms seen as too distant from one another).  You agree with me, do you not, that the former can be---&, in our "relaxed" culture-&-church--overdone?  Your choice: you take "the present polarization" less seriously than I do.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

---

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.6/971 - Release Date: 8/24/2007 2:59 PM

[Vince Lavieri]

On 8/25/07, Willis Elliott <elli...@charter.net> wrote:

Thanks, Vince. 

 

1    Your last sentence is so right:  I want Christian conversation far more than I want verbal victories!  The only victor I'm interest in is (to use a good Lutheranism!) Christus Victor.  "Our little systems have their days, / They have their days and cease to be, / But thou, O Lord, art more than they."

I was thinking of Gustav Aulen as I was responding - and almost said what you said, that is the only victory that means a thing to me, as well as the only dualism that I am comfortable with. 

2    GATES OF PRAYER, Reform Judaism's official prayerbook, has optional atheist passages.  Its editor, the best Jewish friend I ever had, was theist; but the book had to be "inclusive" (in this case, not of women or gays but of atheists).

A sad reality is that we have a pastor in our association who thinks that we ought not mention Christ lest we offend and that any mention of Christ states a superiority and worries about how to be inclusive of atheists in worship.  I think he is missing a lot here.  Christ is my reality.   

3    You are of course correct when you say "true for some but not for all."  But do you mean to exclude generalizations?  Do you deny my two "more important"s (in Reform Judaism in America today, peoplehood trumps theology; in liberal Protestantism, "justice" [as here I nuance it] trumps theology)?  As for your generalization--"To discuss justice is to do theology."--you & I believe it; but do you deny my assertion that in liberal Protestant practice, ethics ("justice") trumps interest in & the practice of theology?

I have two answers and it depends on my location at the time.  If I am speaking with those from without who disparage liberal protestantism, the answer is no, I do not agree that in practice (damn I wanted to use the word praxis there...) justice trumps theology and do not agree that ethics trumps interest in and practice of theology.  If I am talking within liberal protestant circles I despair for all the time that... no, I am altering that response, I despair that what you have introduced here - ethics - is not even a concept and that justice is not Biblically based (and back to my Bonhoeffer, Christ = reality, etc), since I experience the thinking at local levels to be that of what a liberal book circle at the library might consider proper, with no connection to theological concerns whatsoever.

I am at home, not at the church where my books are, but I think it was Paul N. Crusius quoting Hugo Kamphausen writing about Adreas Irion, that Christianity is about living, not about holding opinions.  As with any maxim (or theology) there are dangers and limitations, but I was always an Augustana Lutheran (it is sufficient for unity...) where people live their faith rather than a Missouri Synod Lutheran where they argue their doctrines.   I certainly experience things done in the UCC where we do the right liberal thing with no theological reflection or basis.  Yet it almost always seems to me that if a theological reflection or basis were to be supplied, that we are doing the right thing, or to be more precise, a right thing that has a grounding in reality (Bonhoefferian definition).

It drives me crazy that what I experience in local church life, association life, conference life, and a good deal of national church life, that we do not do the theological considerations.  But I am often in agreement with the decision or action.  I admit the Gerhard von Rad-ism within me that wants to begin always with methodological presuppositions and then do the theology.  

By the way, I was raised fundamentalist, not Lutheran.  I became Lutheran because a great weakness in fundamentalism (other than its often wrong-ness as I see it) is that it indeed, like (and in my experience much more more fully) your criticism of liberal protestantism, has no concept of theology, and cannot do it.  All the Bible quoting disguises that there is nothing there.  In the face of a true pietist, like the Swedish Mission Covenanter, who asked, where is it written, American fundamentalism and conservative protestantism has far greater weaknesses than liberal protestantism. 

I find it so curious that the theological vacancy of conservative protestantism is, to me, totally overlooked when the liberals get attacked, since it seem to me that the liberal protestants at least get at something at the core of the Gospel.   The conservative protestant/fundamentalist insistence that it is all about having a personal relationship with Jesus is the height of sinful self preoccupation with one's own being and denies the Gospel, which points us to others, not self.  In the great sheep and goat parable, I suggest that it will be the liberal protestants who seemingly know less who be the sheep who tended to Jesus when Jesus was naked, hungry, and in prison, and might be quite surprised that they are sheep, and it will be the conservative protestants who will say, Lord, Lord, didn't we know you who are consigned to the goats because they understood nothing and worse did nothing, other that ignore Jesus' needs.    

4    Of my paragraph beginning "Egalitarian ethics..." you say "I am not convinced of this at all."  What are you not convinced of?  That the Jews saw Christianity in their synagogues as a Trojan horse?  That (as Kierkegaard remarked of his Danish Lutheran Church) ethics had replaced religion (in official UCC, the sacralization of "equality" fights religion (centered in the Holy Trinity)?

Whether 1st century Judaism perceived emerging Christianity as a clear and present danger (I hardly think they would have used the concept of Trojan horse...) (and I think it did become very problematic at least for them) does not mean that I think that Judaism expelled the Christians or needed to in order that Judaism might continue.  That they went their separate ways indeed happened.  I also really ahve problems with what I see as a far too easy statement about the official UCC etc.  If by fighting religion we mean an Amos type I hate your sacred festivals when there is not justice, yes.  If by replacing religion we mean a loss of concepts such as the Trinity, I agree that it is happening, but not in the name of equality or justice, it is happening in the name of the willful ignorance of the clergy and laity who misconstrue what it means to be a "congregationalist" and think that their job is to continue in the manner of 19th century protestants and keep throwing out everything that they consider "catholic" or makes them think.  The Kansas City statement which speaks of the  church catholic is as foreign to these folks as the Trinity is, the faith of the Church means nothing to them, but only because they want to toss church is the conservative protestant manner and replace it with subjectavisim... not justice.

5    On my paragraph beginning "One of the strictures....":  You implicitly ask what "egalitarian justice" means; it's justice conceived of as equality.  You are right that justice does not "necessarily" = God's Realm (though it is a dimension of it).  But I'm speaking here of a two-step reductionism: (1) Justice is reduced to equality, then (2) the Realm of God is reduced to a particular conception of justice, viz. equality (which move I see as sacralization, & so devised for it the word "egalian" ["egal" replacing "Christ" in "-ianity"]).  This religious development sharpens a tool into a weapon (a ploughshare into a sword), for use--e.g.--in the fight for gay "marriage."  Old battles are part of the content of theology.  Radfem Mary Daly tried (unsuccessfully) to oust me from a meeting: to me a small matter, but she was enraged, being a ferocious egalitarian for whom radical feminism had replaced theism--journeying all the way from being a RC nun to being an atheist.  (If you knew the battles I've fought, you could more easily understand my theology....which is no more true of me than of any other theologian).

I must share a bias when a label like "radfem" is used because I do not hear it or experience it as what may ell be a shorthand used by those in the higher theological churchwide conversation, I hear and experience it in a reductionist manner as Rush Limbaugh uses the term femnaz.  That is an important thing for me to say.

It has got to be awesome to know people like Mary Daly - who I personally think went over the top a while ago, although I deeply respect why she did so given her experiences.  

And this brings us to a real difference between me and you - I do not operate on that level.  I am not a theologian.  I don't say that to artificially disparage myself.  I am not a theologian.  I am a parish pastor.  I am in my unhumble opinion one of the better parish pastor theologians there is out here... but that is also like being one of the better choir singers, it does not make me ready to sing Ramades at the Met.

I love the things that you folk at that level talk about - we need you to struggle over these things and have your contentions and fights for us to watch and learn from as it filters down to us.  And here i my complaint against the UCC - that stuff is not filtering down to us because we are so God damned congregationalist (a phrase I use intentionally, I never say "God damn" other than in theological discussions since I have a Lutheran view of the Lutheran/Catholic numbering second commandment) that we think that we don't have to listen to the great theologians, we think it is all about what we want at the local level so nothing filters down because we reject the premise that we need to listen to others - and that others might know more than we do.

Real congregationalism was always in communication with others -  Strasburg was talking to Frankfurt am Main to Geneva etc etc etc.  They did nothing but write back and forth to each other.  They did reserve a very Luther type right to freedom of conscience and took a here I stand mode in things ecclesiastic but it was never done without living in constant communication.  American congregationalism, the greatest threat to the UCC and the Gospel, is the misconception that no one can tell us what to believe - and that we don't have to listen to anyone because it is all about us anyway, we are the local church, we are the center of the universe. 

The great danger to American Christianity, protestantism included, is this go it alone wrong construed congregationalist thing.  (The fact that we still have congregations named "Congregational" 50 years after June 1957 is a real sign of the problem - the unwillingness to actually be in community.  Samuel Lutheran Church long ago ceased being the Swedish Lutheran Church - they went LCA and then ELCA, where 50 years in we have so many congregations that have never gone UCC - that clinging to the old points to the problem.) 

In the LCA - ALC - AELC now ELCA world something like BEM, the 1982 Lima Statement of the WCC, was something we were all abuzz about, something new, a new way to think and bring about ecumenicity, new insights into theology.  We actually followed the WCC general assemblies.  And now what for me is a they were able to enter into concordats with the Epsicopals and formulas of agreement with Reformed and UCC and Presbyterians because they are adept theologically and think theologically.  I don't know that most UCC clergy have a clue what BEM is.  I don't experience any concept that we ought to be listening to, alive to, and changed by, the ecumenical conversations (and contentions) of you and Mary Daly and others.  What I experience is that we are the local church and it is all about us and we aren't listening to, changed by - God knows not changed by - anything, we have our local traditions and the way we did it in 1956 is the only way to do it because if we ask the congregation to actually learn/listen/grow/change we are sinning against the congregation.

So the theological edge is being lost at the local level, but not because of liberalism, it is because of the cancer of American protestant subjectivism that worships the congregational and forsakes the Church catholic.

I second your statement that if you knew the battles I've fought, you could more easily understand my theology, which is no more true of me than of any other theologian... except I am the parish pastor and you are the theologian, so change the last word from theologian to parish pastor and that statement applies to me.   My point, I am sure poorly stated, is that the problem is we aren't listening to the theologians because we don't think we need to because of our idolatry of the local church (as misconceived), our rejection of the Church catholic, our selling our soul to American protestant conservatism/subjectavism.  So give me the liberals.  At least they seek justice, love mercy, and semi walk semi humbly with their God.

6    On my statement beginning "So, e.g., Christianity should not be proclaimed as superior to Judaism" (the position of atheists, secularists, humanists, & antisupersessionists): Are you accusing the NT's Epistle to the Hebrews of "trashing" Judaism in its theme--12 times stated, the very structure of the essay!--that Christianity is "better" (kreisson) than Judaism?  You say you "totally reject" the superiority idea: so, including Hebrews in the NT canon was (as I heard a UTS:NY professor say there a few years ago) a "mistake"?

  Real short here: I can only say what I said.  Because of what I said does not imply a thing about what I feel about the Book of Hebrews, which is also canon.  For one who confesses the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, the canon means much to me.  So that I believe that Romans teaches us that Christianity is not superior to Judaism does not imply any way about how I read Hebrews, let alone accept Hebrews, and I never like the "if you believe this you must believe this" style of conversation.   I read Hebrews through Romans' prism.  We all have our prisms. That does not disparage the canon.

7    How can life be "far more complex than paradigms" if a paradigm is understood (as it should be) as a life-picture/story (way of seeing, & living in, the world) that includes both simplicities & complexities?  Of course no paradigm is what it claims to be, viz. the total truth; but every paradigm intends to leave nothing out (i.e., to be comprehensive).

    We are lovers (honoring LOVE, aiming at reconciliation, eager for seeing similarities) & guardians (honoring TRUTH, aiming at excluding error, sorting out differences).  You are correct that the latter can be overdone (paradigms seen as too distant from one another).  You agree with me, do you not, that the former can be---&, in our "relaxed" culture-&-church--overdone?  Your choice: you take "the present polarization" less seriously than I do.

No, as I have stated here in my feeble attempts.  I live at a different level than you.  I am not engaged in your battles, I am engaged in mine, so our issues, our perceptions, our experience, is very different.  It is just that I find the threat to be located somewhere differently than you do - which may have to do with that God has given us both vision, or that I am wrong, or that we see the things in our daily realities which are different because of the difference of our lives.

So may I repeat: my point, I am sure poorly stated, is that the problem is we aren't listening to the theologians because we don't think we need to because of our idolatry of the local church (as misconceived), our rejection of the Church catholic, our selling our soul to American protestant conservatism/subjectavism.  So give me the liberals.  At least they seek justice, love mercy, and semi walk semi humbly with their God.

And in my Lutheran experience - let me affirm there are real reasons that I am UCC - but we can be more than one thing - your thoughts, and those who agree and don't agree with you - would be in the church publication that as a matter of course would come into my home by virtue of my being a member of a congregation - in other words, we'd be on the Every Member Plan of the Lutheran because everyone is.  As well, we'd be talking about your ideas, and other theologians ideas, at pastors retreats, synod assemblies, and other gatherings.  Which everyone (almost) goes to, again as a matter of course, because we all know we are part of the wider Church.  So we are in on this conversation ongoing.

Here, as UCC, I have to subscribe to a list of several hundred members to hear your voice because we have no pastors retreats, with no national church publication that regularly gets into members homes, and no one goes to association meetings or conference meetings (maybe because they are meetings, not assemblies) because we worship at the altar of the local church in our American lone ranger ways with no concept that we belong to the wider Church.  (It would help if we all stopped being "First Congregational" and started being "First UCC" and listen to some of the E&R voices raised in 1958 about why everything E&R was being tossed - and who listens to E&R insights - while everything Congregational was preserved [and deified since we love our other gods].  And then maybe we would start listening to the Church catholic.

That is a threat that I take as an extreme danger to the Church and the UCC, which is the threat that I take most seriously.  It is not what I take less seriously than you, or you than me, we just are dealing with different threats the appall us.  And we each overstate our own concerns because they are, in fact, the concerns that God has given us.

Vince