New Exodus, New Life: Implications for Humanity, the Church and Me
“Instead of viewing a life with God as a journey towards perfection and holiness, I would argue that it is much more a journey deep into our own humanness (towards a new humanity). This journey we do not traverse alone, but always in (newly) covenanted relationship with God. We see in Israel the progressive cycle of birth (intimacy in youth), death (infidelity, wanderlust), and rebirth (renewed and deepened fidelity). This is both my narrative, in its own very unique variation, with God, and the cosmic, eschatological meta-narrative of God with his beloved, creation.”
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Attachment Theory Conceptualized for God and the Believer
“This paper explores the connection between the style of attachment in childhood and the perceived relationship with God in adulthood. Four anecdotes of a Christian’s experience of God are cited within the paper, each meant to represent an adult with one of the four styles of attachment in childhood (secure, insecure avoidant, insecure anxious/ambivalent, disorganized/fearful). Included with each anecdote is a discussion of how a faith community may hold or share with the believer in their experience of God.”
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Women’s Journey of Personhood and Faith
“Because we are contextually situated beings and because there are differences between the experience of men and women, the path of salvation will look different for a woman than a man. The manifestation of sin and grace will, thence, occur differently in women than in men. For this to penetrate the infallible, all-knowing authoritative God, Christian tradition, and Scripture, human experience must be seen as a necessary collaborator in theological construction. This starts with acknowledging that the Christian tradition and text are accounts of male experiences narrated from a male voice. Because of the bias towards men, the experiences of women must be called out, affirmed and consulted as co-constructors in theology. However, women have, as I experienced, a substantial amount of oppression to overcome before their experiences can even be spoken.”
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Western Philosophical Tradition and our Platonic Inheritance
“The legacy of Plato leaves its traces throughout the major works in philosophy through history. His dialectic approach to philosophy is visible in the work of Aquinas, Descartes and Kant. Plato’s hierarchical organizing of the world and its meaning through story and Form is adopted and built upon in Augustine’s systematic theology. The paradoxes of life, the struggle between reason and faith, the question of authority and objectivity are all issues that Plato wrestled through in his philosophic pursuit of truth. These resonate throughout Western philosophical tradition as paradoxes of life that humanity will, until the Christian redemption of both body and soul, find perpetually elusive.”
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Postmodern Philosophy and Faith: Enemies or Dialogical Partners?
“Modern philosophy, prizing reason and logic over faith, science over sensuality, created philosophical problems as much as it boasted philosophical solutions. The solution, not in its particularity, but in its status as “solution”—final and meant to be accepted, applied and, over time, assumed—was unconvincing to some philosophers. The postmodern era has taken on the persona of a rebellious teenager, refusing the “sureties” of our parents’ lives. Consequently, postmodernism is criticized as a movement that has dislodged us from all that is true, reason-able, and value-able…I argue that it is in returning to postmodern writings and being honest about the current state of Western Christianity (and culture) that we may then begin to see postmodern philosophy as a moment of redemption for the Christian world, the Christian-self and the God-self.”
