New Blog

I wanted to give my blog a new look. So this blog will be no more. See my new blog at

www.jrickard.wordpress.com

Karl Barth and Election

I wrote a research paper on Karl Barth's Doctrine of Election for Theology class this Fall. Barth's doctrine of election is significant because he understood election to be essential to who God is. Election is not about a predetermined number of individuals who will be saved, but rather it is about the God who has eternally elected to be God in Jesus and therefore God has eternally identified God's self with all of humanity in this election. Election is the free and gracious movement of God to make room within the Godhead for humanity. Here is a snippet of my paper for your reading pleasure:

For Barth, the existence of Jesus, God in flesh, demonstrates God’s eternal election of humanity.

In the person of His eternal Son he has united Himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and in Him and through Him with this people. He is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is not only the Father of the eternal Son, but as such He is the eternal Father of the temporal man.*

God wills to be God in relation to Jesus; therefore election is central to the doctrine of God because God has eternally willed to be God in Christ.* This predestination of God and of humanity fundamentally orients the ontological status of God and humanity. Election “determines the being of God and of humanity.”* This is because in election God has determined to be an electing God and God has determined humanity to be the elect.* This is known in Jesus: the electing God and the elected human.

Everything that is, is because of God’s election. Because God chose to be God in Jesus, God who was divine and human; God who was God and not God, God decided to bind God’s self to everything that was not God. Barth writes,

In the beginning, before time and space as we know them…God anticipated and determined within Himself that the goal and meaning of all His dealings with the as yet non-existent universe should be the fact that in His Son He would be gracious towards man, uniting Himself with him.*

This would ultimately result in the Son offering himself in sacrifice for humanity in order that God’s covenant with humanity would be a reality.

Jesus is the electing God and the elected human. Jesus is God’s electing movement towards humanity and humanity’s subsequent movement towards God.* “For it is God’s free grace that in Him He elects to be man and to have dealings with man and to join Himself to man.”* What Barth is doing is reorienting the doctrine of election so that it is not an afterthought. It is not an improvisation that occurred due to the fall of the created order. Rather, “God, as essentially the electing God, makes the universe in order that it may be the arena on which his gracious purposes may come to pass. It is therefore the presupposition of all God’s works.”* In Barth’s own words, he writes, “This decree is really the first of all things…It is the decision which is the basis of all that follows.”*



References

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1957).

Eberhard Jungel, God's Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001).

Colin E. Gunton, "Karl Barth's doctrine of election as part of his doctrine of God", Journal of Theological Studies 25.2 (1974): 381-392.

Why Episcopal?

As many of you know Kate and I have been attending an Episcopal Church since we arrived in Seattle. Many people have asked me "What drew you there?" This is a normal question considering I grew up in the Evangelical church, spending time in its many different streams: holiness, methodist, pentecostal, and independent. The easy answer to the question is, the church was right up the street and our friends were going there. But as I have reflected upon my time at the church and as I have looked back on where I have come from, in many ways it makes sense to me why I, at this moment in time, find myself in an Episcopal Church.

I plan to share a few of these reasons with you in a series of blog posts beginning with this one. Keep in mind that due to the nature of a blog these descriptions are brief, often poorly nuanced, and do not do justice to the complexity of the story I am sharing. One other disclaimer, I am not speaking of my brief experience in the Episcopal Church in order to say that I have finally arrived and here is where I will stay. But rather to simply reflect on where I find myself now. Furthermore, I not an expert on anything Episcopalian, so my interpretation of things Episcopal, may be simply that.

1. Encounter with the Holy. The ecclesial settings that I have found myself in have been places where I have encountered God. Due to particularities of my own story and aspects of the Evangelical tradition that gave form to my spiritual makeup, early on in my journey I sought intense intimate union with God. This happened through scripture reading, prayer (private and corporate) and worship experiences, at times these were highly emotional and charismatic in nature. I believed that God was near to me and able to guide every aspect of my life. However, this nearness was conditioned by my diligence to maintain it. This required an incredible amount of expended energy on scripture reading, prayer and worship. The payoff was the presence of God in my life who filled the deep holes of my wounded heart.

To make a long story short(i.e. Africa), my body and soul eventually caved under the pressure of maintaining a relationship with God. Church became to me a place of disappointment and isolation. Singing praise to God was laborious and painful. Prayer was confusing and accompanied with silence. Scripture became nothing but dead letters. Sermons were manipulative and demanding. Ultimately I was no longer able to join in with the worship experience. Too much was dependent upon me.

Needless to say I carried all of this emotion, confusion, and frustration with me as I entered St. Paul's Episcopal Church, an Anglo-Catholic parish. Being in a church still put me at unease. I continued to wonder if I would ever experience anything besides anxiety. However, after several visits I was feeling more comfortable with the liturgy. I knew the flow of the service: stand, bow, cross, sing, silence now, come forward, kneel, receive, exit here, etc... I soon began to develop the sense that I was being held and carried along by the worship experience. Not in some supernatural, otherworldly sense, but in the actions, prayers, praise, and silence of a physically gathered community.

Encounter with the Holy came in participating with a body in praise, word and sacrament. The liturgy is not sustained by my emotional output, the charisma of a worship leader, nor the verbosity of the preacher; rather it is in the mysterious encounter of the divine through the flesh and blood movement of the gathered community, culminating in the meal of Christ's flesh and blood.

Coming soon: Liturgical worship as Divine Drama.

Mars Hill Graduate School

MHGS in movie format.



Click on movie.

Hello Weekend, Goodbye Retail

Tomorrow morning I am going to wake up and go over to my friend Mark's house to watch football. That my not seem like an extradinary feat, but to those who have lived and worked in the world of retail understand that a liesurely Saturday putzing around or watching football rarely occurs.

This brings me to my next point. I have a new job! Last Friday I interviewed and was hired to be the Program Assistant for the MA-TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) department at Seattle Pacific University. I will be assisting faculty, interacting with prospective and current students, marketing, and doing some administrative tasks. Definitely not my dream job, but it feels good to be working at a university, meeting faculty, and learning about the ins and outs of the organization.

And this of course means no more Starbucks! No more waking up at 4:30 AM. No more early Saturday morning shifts. No more working holidays. No more starting Christmas the second week in November. No more dealing with customers who demand their half-caf double light ristretto double cup with a sleeve grande, two and half pump vanilla, one pump hazelnut, two third soy, one third two percent, light foam, one hundred and seventy three degrees, extra caramel, stirred, caramel machiato! Hallelujah!

Jesus died for....?

How would you end that sentence? The answer might role off your tongue or it may cause you to stumble. Whatever the case may be for you, it is a question that is being re-examined today. Why did Jesus die? And what (if anything) did his death accomplish?

I recently wrote a paper tracing the understanding of Christ's death as victory (Christus Victor) throughout church history. It is an ancient concept that has made headway in recent years. In essence the death of Jesus in the Christus Victor model is not a payment to God for the penalty of humanity's sin; rather it is the result of divine conflict with the powers of evil. Jesus assumes humanity within himself and suffers death in order to triumph over it through resurrection.

The ancients explained this phenomenon using metaphors that are not necessarily adequate today: Jesus died in order to trick the devil. He fooled the devil by offering his humanity in death; the devil took the bait and Jesus defeated him because his divinity could not be contained by death.

J. Denny Weaver, a modern Anabaptist theologian, recasts Christus Victor by describing it in a more historical/material way. He writes, Christ’s conflict took place with the evil forces here on earth. Jesus confronted the political power of Rome and the religious authority of Judaism. The kingdom that he inaugurated “establishes a new social order which stands over against – in confrontation with – the structures of this world.”*

Obviously there are many others who also utilizing the idea of Christ's death as victory. Liberation theologians recognize that in Christ, God joined in the sufferings of the oppressed and triumphed over their oppressors in resurrection. Black and Feminist theologians also recognize the importance of seeing Christ's death as victory. People who are oppressed resist the idea of passively submitting to suffering (in order to be saved or to save others) because too often it simply reinforces the tyrannical powers that be instead of critiquing them.

The crucifixion of God is too incredible, too absurd, too incomprehensible for us to completely explain. With that said, we must continue to faithfully offer our explanations of the pinnacle event in human history, knowing that we can only see dimly and that none of our theories have the monopoly on the death of God.

*J. Denny Weaver, “Atonement for the Nonconstantinian Church”, Modern Theology (6.04 July 1990) 308.

A Provoking Image

I feel like this picture captures the essence of what it is like to be a young theologian.


*Picture taken from the BBC. It is a gathering of Muslims in the Phillipines to celebrate Eid.

What if the future has not happened?

In theology class the other night we were discussing the doctrine of God. Who is God? What can we know about God? How do we know God? Where is God? How does God relate to the world?

In our discussion group during class I posed a question along these lines: What if the future has not happened yet?

Some of us who live and think within a Christian context have the idea that the story has already played itself out (at least in the mind of God). What happens tomorrow in my life, in the events of the world, God has already seen/allowed/willed/ordained/known.

But what if it has not happened yet? Rather than starting a philosophical/theological argument over this issue (What must God know, in order to be God, etc...I also find is fascinating to examine the affects of doctrines/beliefs on people and communities as opposed to simply discussing what is "true" or "untrue"), how is your imaginative/creative impulse affected by the notion that the future has not happened yet. The story has not yet been written. Anything can happen.

Furthermore what if we thought of the eschatological visions of scripture as God's redemptive trajectory. How does that affect our imaginative/creative impulse?

One of my imaginative/creative impulses: When Tolstoy wrote a novel did God read along with anticipation? When Monet painted did God gasp at the beauty of the finished project? When Mozart composed his first symphony did God listen with wonder?

Who is a Christian?

This question has been with me for some time now. Not from a place of self-righteous judgment: "I deem you Christian and you un-Christian." But rather from a place of doubt and confusion: What does it mean to be a Christian? What really constitutes Christian faith? Is Christian faith substantive or simply a delusion? If one is a Christian what do they do and what do they believe? And are their actions and beliefs prescribed by Christian faith, implying that in there absence Christian faith is null and void?

Is there anything that I can point to in my life (my actions, my beliefs, my community, my relationships) that gives me assurance of my Christian faith? Is there something I can hold up and say here this is my Christianity?

There have often been two responses to this crisis of identity: dogmatic sectarianism or uncritical assimilation. In the former identity is held up over relevance, and in the latter relevance does away with a distinct identity.

Myself and others who "grew up Evangelical" find ourselves today in this crisis. As we venture into uncharted territory attempting to move beyond our inherited "us vs. them" tradition, we go through a loss of identity. At our low points we despise our tradition and rebel against it, constructing an identity that is simply anti. On the other hand we move out and assimilate and identify with the "other", but we find that we do not quite fit in "out there" either. We also try and formulate new doctrines, or new ethical imperatives, some more successful then others. But at the end of the day we often continue to struggle for any assurance of identity or relevance to the outside world.

So how do we build an identity and develop relevance? This blog is long enough, so I will simply offer this quote by Jurgen Moltmann from his book The Crucified God. Here he is attempting to develop Christian identity from the viewpoint of the cross and the God who was crucified upon it.

"Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself" (19).

Heart Wrenching

I recently finished A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is a breathtaking and heart wrenching novel that invites the reader into the lives of two women living in Afghanistan. It powerfully captures the beautiful desires of these women and the horrific circumstances that bestow tragedy after tragedy upon them. Despite living in the horrific shadow of war and the abuse of a patriarchal society these women actively bring redemption into each other's life.

This book exposes the futility of violence, the undeniable evil of patriarchy (in whatever form it may take; our Western forms are just as destructive), and the incredible power of love and hope. I hope that you take the time to be captivated by this story.

Here we go again

The Fall semester has begun. Last week I was in Church History I (Early Church through the Reformation) Monday through Friday 9-4PM. It was a long week, but our professor was quite good and Church history is always fascinating.

One of the new thoughts that came my way was a discussion on the Reformers understanding of predestination. Why was it so important to them and what necessitated that belief? Their actions had caused the Catholic Church to excommunicate them, thus they were damned to hell. They needed some heavy duty salvific assurance to stand up to the one and only church: hence, it is only God who determines who is saved (i.e. predestination). Now I am definitely not trying to instigate a discussion on predestination nor am I implying that the Reformers simply made up doctrines to react to the Catholic Church. Rather I continue to find it intriguing to look at the contexts and circumstances that give shape to who we are, what we believe and what we do. Life is always contextual and that is the beauty of it.

This week I will start the rest of my Fall classes: Corinthians, Theology I, and Human Growth and Development. Following this Fall, I will have 7 hours in the Spring and then 4 hours next Summer and I will be done with my Masters! It feels good to be on the downhill slope.

Well hello there...long time no see.

Well this turned into quite the busy summer for me. I took 10 hours of class on top of working 30 hours a week at Starbucks; and then we decided to throw in a move. I am currently enjoying my week break (we start class again this coming Monday). So needless to say I am a bit worn out. I am looking forward to settling into a routine this fall.

The thought of writing anything at the moment of any significance feels quite burdensome to me, but I will offer one insight that came to me through my studies this summer.

Imagination is the interpretive key. One can spend incredible amounts of energy learning and studying the scriptures in order to understand what it is that they mean. But in the end it requires a profound imagination and creative freedom to envision and enact the biblical reality in our own day in age. The Biblical story paints a picture of a new world, a new way of being, a new reality that has been brought about through the creative working of God via Christ. The Biblical story though, is incredibly specific and bound to is own context. The creative imagination of Christ that radically changed the landscape of first century Palestine cannot simply be replicated on a one to one basis into our time. It requires an imaginary leap. One must be inspired and awed by the reality that God creates through the Biblical narrative, and then that inspiration must be used as raw fuel in order for us to create a new reality in our day. The key to reading scripture well, or living scripture well, is to have an imagination that runs wild.

Last Minute Camping Trip

When the mountains are only a little over an hour away, it is easy to take a quick trip. This is Kate and I camping at Lake Dorothy. It is an alpine lake in the Cascades Mountains. It was quite beautiful, but a little buggy.

*Scott, I went for a swim again. It was a little warmer this time, it actually felt pretty good. You probably would have wimped out though.

Our New Home

Here are some pics of our new place. We are loving it! We unpacked in time to throw a 4th of July party. Grilling meat in my own backyard on the 4th of July with good friends was pure bliss.

Years of marraige: 3. Moving trucks: 4

When Kate and I moved into our apartment here in Seattle we told ourselves we are not going to move for as long as possible. Well, we made it almost a year. Fortunately we are only moving .9 miles away. Now we love our apartment here in Lower Queen Anne. The hardwoods are beautiful, our little office where we type all of our papers has been good to us, and the Thai place right our back door has provided far too many of our meals. There is just one thing that is lacking: sitting outside on a porch and grilling (and numerous other outdoor/yard/porch activities).

So we are moving up to the top of Queen Anne Hill into a little house. It has a big front porch and a little backyard. Oh yeah and we will be joined in the house by our friends Shelly and Mazie (I am not sure if I spelled Mazie right? But she is a dog, so she doesn't read blogs. She doesn't read anything actually).

Ummmm I can already taste the delicious grilled meat.

Regret

This past weekend I partook in a three day intensive class on leadership at MHGS. At a young age I took on leadership responsibilities. For a beginner I think that I did some things well, and I am thankful for many of the opportunities that came my way. On the other hand though I made mistakes. There were instances that my words were not very wise nor loving. There were times that I did not value the people around me. And there were times where I simply took on more than I should have. With that said, and without going into further detail about my past, I carry with me regret. Now in one sense regret has served me well. It has caused me to seek new ways of doing things. It has brought me to MHGS, where I have entered a community that seeks to re-imagine what the gospel is.

As I went through this class though this thought came to me:

Regret you have taken me this far; you cannot take me any farther.

Regret can motivate us to do many things. It can motivate us to change the way things are, often in positive ways. But ultimately it will destroy us, and it will prohibit us from living into the beautiful things that we desire.

So we must come to a place where we grieve the past. Recognize the wrong that we have done, and then embrace the beauty that we hope to create.

These are simple thoughts, but powerful if we were to live by them.


*We watched the The Mission in class as a tool to examine leadership. For a poignant example of the power of regret watch Rodrigo Mendoza, the character played by Robert De Niro in the film.

I think I like it here...

In a couple of months Kate and I will have lived in Seattle for a year now. As far as we know we will not be moving next year. A pattern that we are happy to break. As the cloudy Spring dragged on here, and the vast majority of time was spent confined to the concrete of the city, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic and somewhat resentful of city life in the midst of a cloudy and dreary March, April and some of May.

But all of my unhappy feelings are quickly being burnt away by the beautiful blue skies that have arrived. The wonderful secret of Seattle is June, July and August, where the sun comes to stay and it rarely gets above 90. So to get to the point of my post, I have taken advantage of the beautiful weather and have ventured into the great outdoors.

I work early mornings so I am off usually by noon. This has allowed me to spend my afternoons lying on the beach,reading for school and attempting quick immersions into the ice cold Puget Sound.

Furthermore, I have made my way out into the nearby Cascade Mountains for some beautiful hikes. Here are some pics from my most recent excursion. My friend Mark and I hiked up to Lake Serene. The Lake sits below Mt. Index (6000 ft) at 2500 ft. It was 3.5 miles up to the lake, with 2 miles of considerable elevation gain. It was a beautiful day. And yes, I think I like it here.







I don't think I will be able to do any homework this Summer.

Good Times

A trip to Mexico with my wife and a visit from my best friend; life has been good as of late.

We were really too lazy to try and take pictures; so here is a picture I took of some palm trees on our last morning.


Scott thought the glacier water was really cold; what a baby.


I tried five times to take this picture, but guess who kept messing it up?!


So I made Scott go to timeout.


My favorite people.

Help start a business in the developing world

So my friend Josh here in Seattle told me about this organization. Check it out.

Waiting for Messiah

As many of you have heard, Kate and I are headed to Mexico in the coming days for some much needed rest and relaxation. I do not think I have ever so greatly anticipated a vacation. We have been married for almost three years now. And in one sense it feels like we have been on the move since we said our vows. Three moves, several different jobs, three different schools for me, and many miles traveled in between. And as my second trimester at MHGS has come to an end, I find myself weary. Thus I am looking forward to long days spent basking under the Mexican sun with nothing to do.

We all have things that we look forward to: Reunions, homecomings, trips, quiet walks in the woods, a home cooked meal, a good cup of coffee in the morning, a lovers embrace before falling asleep. These longings, desires, anticipations, sometimes even groanings, have caused me to think on a greater scale of late.

Our lives, our homes, our communities, our churches, our jobs, our countries, our economies, our world, are continually touched with disappointments, mistakes, abuse, violence, anguish, and futility. Nothing is ever stable, nothing is immutable. Our laughter can turn to anguish in the time it takes to read an email, or chat on the phone, or read the news.

In response to this, we strive incessantly for security and stability. We fill our minds with ideologies and structure our lives into foolproof patterns, so that we might escape unharmed by the tragedy that lurks around every corner. Our beliefs and our social structures so often turn into illusions in the end. They fail us.

So we find ourselves waiting, groaning, longing. When will justice come? When will the wars stop? When will everyone have food? When will our brokenness be restored? When will Messiah come?

So the next time we find ourselves longing for a friend, a meal, a lover, a day of rest, let us stop, and let us dig deep into that desire; let it churn inside of us. Let us not cover it up with false security, ideological illusions, self-contempt, or shame; but rather let it help us imagine the raging desires of our God; our God the redeemer of all things. Our God who gives rest to the weary.