A New Kind of Christianity
A theological work proposing an evolution in Christian thought addressing contemporary issues and moving beyond traditional orthodoxy.
the Bible is supposed to be heard. It’s not the solitary scholar with furrowed brow sequestered in a library, bent over a book, whose approach best resonates with the Bible as library: rather, it’s a community gathering, listening to the Bible being read, then responding and interacting with it and with one another. After all, it’s only the last several generations who have lived in a world where Bibles were mass produced and literacy was the norm instead of the exception.
What if people who live in the ‘primary-school’ world of polytheism need to learn about one God as superior to others before they can handle the idea of one God as uniquely real?
‘The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.’ In
we can say that, for Christians, the Bible’s highest value is in revealing Jesus, who gives us the highest, deepest and most mature view of the character of the living God.
‘Shouldn’t you read Paul in light of Jesus, instead of reading Jesus in light of Paul?’
Practitioners of the constitutional approach have gone through a similar four-stage pattern regarding several appearances that turned out to be reality: the discovery of fossils indicating an ancient earth, Darwin’s theory of evolution, slavery and segregation and apartheid, and the rights of women to vote and lead in state and Church. First they oppose, condemn and reject. Then they modify and make small concessions. Then they go silent for a while. Finally, they tolerate and accept.
If the purpose of the gospel is to solve the problem of original sin so souls won’t go to hell, and if homosexuality is seen as a heinous symptom of original sin and therefore a hell-qualifying offence, then homosexuality is indeed a problem that must be solved. But if we discern the purpose of the gospel through Exodus, Genesis and Isaiah, we discover the dynamic story of God as liberator, creator and reconciler. From this vantage point, homosexual and heterosexual stand equally in need of liberation, because God is equally the Creator of both, and God’s kingdom has room for both, calling both to repentance and reconciliation with God and one another. The question is developed from ‘Is homosexuality right or wrong?’ to ‘How should gay and straight people understand and treat one another in God’s kingdom?’
Blaise Pascal said, ‘Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?’
An ubuntu or violet faith will require us to stop seeing the earlier ranges as inferior, wrong or bad. Rather, we must see them as necessary. Each is an essential part of the process – an essential band of full-spectrum light. And, contrary to honest indigo thinking, the ideas and beliefs of the other ranges in the spectrum aren’t actually dishonest for the people who hold them: they are simply the way reality honestly looks from that vantage point. From red, the world honestly looks red; from orange it looks orange, and so on. Theologically, we could say that people in a certain zone of a religion or denomination are seeing God in the only way they can see God, and as only they can see God.