Lauren Meets North Park

These, I think are great thoughts. The last sentence indicates the importance of community. I missed this by a mile most of my Christian life, though often the heart takes you where the head unfortunately did not.

I too love the idea that prayer is entering into the ongoing conversation of the Trinity. We tend to make everything rather cut and dried and predictable. But this thought throws a wrench into that.

To have a heart at rest in this relational ongoing dynamic, or better dynamic ongoing relationship. I need that!

I think "inhabiting Trinity" will transform an individualistic, task-centered spirituality (I will read my Bible; I will say my prayers; I will write in my journal, etc.) into a relational, community-centered spirituality so that how I relate to God and others will be primary.

Diane,

"Inhabit" was a word Lauren used but did not develop -- the idea is how do we let trinitarian thought shape our perception of spirituality?

How did was "Real Sex" treated and excepted at North Park?

Well, this is more related to the second issue--how do we avoid being deists--which I think is profoundly important in America, but it backs into the first pretty strongly. Here are a few thoughts that I think are related to each other and to both of the questions Lauren raised:

- If Mammon is a (the?) rival god to the Father, its main attraction is in its perceived ability to "get things done" in this world. The difference between Theism and Deism is precisely about who or what has this ability and willingness to act. Power to provide what's perceived as necessary gets loyalty. Our faith in Money feeds our Deism and vice-versa.

- Our tradition in the Western Church of rationalism, dispensationalism and distrust of the supernatural hasn't done much good for our pneumotology (practiced or theoretical). We want to be Deists on many levels, which creates the power vaccuum for Mammon to step into control. Even though there's been a lot of relational progress in the western Church (not as much of either side calling the other the devil anymore) we're a long way from leaving effective ignorance of the aggressiveness that all three members of the Trinity have toward acting in this world. (Do the gospels give us any basis for pinning all the miraculous and forceful demonstrations of God's power on the Holy Spirit alone? Weren't they all in on that? Aren't they still?) Which is related to my last thought:

- Our gospel has only recently begun, if at all, to be a gospel of the kingdom, of God's functional leadership, of his rightful and desired role in the world, of his currently working power and agendas. (Which is a threat to our money attachments and our excessive rationalism and all our idols.) But we're just coming out of (and still largely in) a gospel paradigm that has little or nothing to do with this life which works way too well with Deism.

I'm sure there are other big issues raised by her questions, but those few (controversial) things seem significant to me.

Scot, is this lecture going to be available for us to hear? This has tweaked my interest.

Thanks,
Andie

I don't know if community is participation in the Trinity, but it certainly is a reflection of God. Communion is the essential nature of God so I can kind of understand it from that perspective, but I'm not quite sure what participation in the Trinity means. Is *any* community participation in the Trinity?

I'm not sure that the Trinity means there is no subornation...not even voluntary submission? Not My will but Thine be done???

I have trouble seeing authentic connections between detailed theology and lived experience. Buddhists, for example, do fine with peace and love without having to lassoo 'em and then wrastle 'em to the ground to hogtie 'em with a trilogistic conceptual apparatus.

In the interests of full disclosure, I spent a year of my life sleeping six hours a night and holed up in a tiny dorm room overdosing on theology to get my Masters at the U of Chicago divinity school. I read so many people who purported to have it all figured out - and I do mean ALL - that in the end it rendered me skeptical of both the truthfulness and usefulness of explanations rendered in great theological detail.

The worst was Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician turned theologian, who seemed to really think he'd literally explained everything from the smallest subatomic particle to the Mind of God in, I don't know, 700 or so pages. I can't believe anyone was really convinced other than (perhaps) A. N. Whitehead.