Buddhist Prayer @ Lifeway's M-fuge

I also should mention that Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating are also important contributors to the modern concept of Centering prayer.

Your criticism of CP and LD seems to be from an association fallacy with Tony Jones. And even that association has little value in criticism at least for someone like myself who values the emerging church.

Your interpretation is incorrect. The second statement does not reject absolute truth.

Postmodernism isn't open to truth from anywhere. You have interpreted this sentence incorrectly.

 

Read this sentence again. Relativism is the abandonment of meaning and authority.

Postmodernists will not abandon meaning and authority but are open it coming from unexpected places, often coming from the discourse itself.

I would like to know where the phrase, "absolute truth" is found in the bible. If it is not a biblical concept, where does it come from?

 

Amen. The Emergent church would agree with you.

Amen. God's words to mankind are inspired, trustworthy and authoritative. Emergent churches would have not problem agreeing with that.

My church is a Baptist church with a typical conservative evangelical theology.

 

I do believe in absolute truth and I don't believe in relative truth. You have assumed incorrectly about my beliefs.

Hopefully you can see that the verses you supplied do not mention absolute truth. They are about the gospels and the scriptures.

 

What would lead you to believe that the emergent church doesn't believe in absolute truth?

This question is a great example of "the simple binary oppositions that are predominant in Western metaphyics" that the Wikipedia definition discusses.

The answer is no.

The bible is definitely a pivotal source of authority for emergent church folks. Some may even say the "final authority" which would be a phrase you would probably find comforting.

 

I thought you'd never ask.

Part of understanding about being open to meaning and authority is understanding what being closed to meaning and authority is.

A key reason for the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment came from the success of science to describe our world using the 5 senses to create what appeared to be objective descriptions of our universe. Theology and biblical hermeneutics was also similarly affected by this paradigm shift towards seemingly "objective" and "scientific" approaches in their respective fields, culminating in systematic theologies and the historical-grammatical hermeneutic. These became our "authorities" for truth and we drew comfort in being able to encapsulate "absolute truth" in simple propositional statements.

However, I believe that within this pursuit of truth through the last century in all aspects of life (philosophy, theology, science, etc), we have been discovering that our authorities can never be truly separated from ourselves or our contexts to be truly objective in their statements. That what we percieve to be "objective absolute truth" is always clouded by our contexts.

To the ears of the modernist who has built up his/her worldview on the modernist paradigm, this is an attack on the foundation of everything they understand to be true.

But to those who I believe are honestly seeking that absolute truth, the apparently shaky foundation of postmodern truth is firmer than the false foundation of modernist truth.

So finally I get to your question. What does this apparently shaky foundation of postmodern truth look like?

I believe it is a much more biblical truth that trusts in God rather than our own wisdom and knowledge, while recognizing that the bible and history is a narrative or story of God's interaction and desire for relationship with mankind, culminating in the person of Jesus Christ. That the bible isn't simply a series of propositional scientific statements and churches aren't simply a list of dogmatic propositional theological statements. And that truth isn't chosing between two apparently binary opposites created by logical human constructs limited by our tiny human perspectives.

I would say I am a staunch modernist, wanting to understand, grasp and hold the absolute truth of our wonderful Creator and Designer. I love the sciences, systematic theologies and the historical grammatical hermeneutic. But I am also embracing postmodernist truth which recognizes human limitations to our searches for and understanding of truth and being open to God's absolute truth expressed non-scientifically, non-propositionally, non-systematically and non-hermeneutically that is "beyond the scope" or "post-" all those things.

 

Gold Dragon, perhaps I'm just "ignorant," but I feel like I'm lacking the proper education to understand your last post. So many "big" words!

I want to understand what you're saying, but I don't just yet...let me read it again.

 

Sorry. I try to use simple language in my posts but sometimes get carried away.

Let me know if anything needs to be clarified. Here are some Wikipedia articles that may help give some context.

Rationalism
Age of Enlightenment
Systematic Theology
Hermeneutics
Modernism
Postmodernism
Worldview
Foundationalism
Proposition
Paradigm shift
Narrative

I can't seem to find a clean definition of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic. But its basic idea is using our abilities to discover the grammatical, linguistic, historical and cultural context of a text and its author to discover the author's meaning of a text and giving primacy to that meaning.

 

Postmodernism: Taste and See that the Lord Is Good by Bruce Bishop.

I think the above article does an excellent job of explaining postmodernism and Christianity in a postmodern world in simple language. Here are some excerpts.

 

This is not lectio divina. I've read dozens of examples and teachings on it and other such practices and this is not it. The example you gave is asking questions about the content of scripture. Below is lectio divina, from sources that promote it:

 

Continued...

Listening for the "still small voice of God" is a total incorrect teaching. They take this from the passage where Elijah was on the mountaint. But what he heard after the earthquake and all that was a slight breeze or whispering and then God spoke to him. It doesn't say God spoke in a "still, small voice" yet this is used over and over to promote these practices where you sit and listen for God's "still, small voice."

 

The most common structure I've seen for Lectio Divina includes the following four parts:

1. Lectio - repeated reading of the text
2. Mediatio - meditating on key words and phrases in the text
3. Oratio - praying about the text
4. Contemplatio - contemplate on the text and listen to God

Wikipedia : Lectio Divina

 

GD, we don't have to be all of the above to accept that being rational is normal and fine for the Christian. Logic and reason flow from the character of God. After all, the Bible is in words. It takes the mind and reason to write words and to read them. This is not making rationality an idol.

The areas where we cannot use logic or reason to totally understand -- such as the trinity or the act of salvation -- do not mean that we must be mystical. It also does not mean that things like the Trinity are not logical -- they are just beyond our logic and understanding.

Mysticism is not the opposite of being rational (though it denigrates the mind) --it's another category altogether. It's the use of techniques to evoke experiences. It's man initiated. Mysticism cuts across all relgious lines because traditionally the purpose has been to use techniques (primarily certain forms of meditation) to have a union with God. I have several books I've been reading on these practices -- written by those who advocate them. One books is edited by 2 New Agers and has essays by New Agers, Mind Science people, Christians, and others. Christ is rarely mentioned - what counts is having a transcendent experience so you can "feel" the presence of God. The descriptions by New Agers and the Christians are the same.

Whenever you have teachings that put down the use of the mind or of reason, big red flags should go up. It is the mystics who are making idols, and the idol is having experiences.

 

Yes, but what they usually mean by "repeating" and "meditating" and "praying" is not the meditation and prayer of the Bible. It is usually turning off the mind, and getting a subjective take on what God might be saying. It's not reading the text for what it says but using the text as a tool to get into a state they call contemplation, which is not contemplation at all.

Meditation in scripture means to think on and even to memorize.

 

I strongly encourage rationality, logic and reason. Fearing everything mystical makes rationality an idol.

No one suggests that we must be mystical.

There is nothing wrong with both techniques or experiences. Christ gave us a "technique" for prayer in the Lord's prayer. God continually drew on the experiences of the Israelites to illustrate his truth in both the Old and the New testaments.

I'm glad some men take initiative in developing their relationship with God.

I would hope all of us seek union with God.

The lost are also trying to seek the truth of God.

Not for me. I think the idolatry of the mind and reason is a major problem in Christianity today. And that is entirely biblical in the many passages about the prideful men in their wisdom and knowledge being humbled.

There is nothing wrong with having experiences and I hope we are all seeking to experience God in some way, whether that includes some technique or not.