Prof Tiger & Sardis "All Things Considered" Theology Hut

[hedge]

In that case, the future looks bright...

[Jungle Rat]

::: watches hedge get hit by a bus :::

[Professor Tiger]

T.J. Altizer used to teach a class at Methodist Emory Seminary called "God Is Dead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._J._Altizer

hedge, you and he should have lunch some time. You'd probably hit it off.

[The Gray Ghost]

what a moran.

[Professor Tiger]

While you're at at, you might want to play a round of golf with Episcopal Bishop John Spong.

These "Twelve Points for Reform" come from Spong's book A New Christianity for a New World:

Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong

Ghost is an Episcopalian, so maybe he can use his insider status to set it up the tee time for you and the Right Reverend.

[hedge]

It's all the same babble...

[The Gray Ghost]

Spong is so 1990's - there are much loonier heretics today that make him look orthodox.

[Professor Tiger]

Which Episcopal/UCC/Evangelical Lutheran seminaries do they teach at?

[The Gray Ghost]

GTS and EDS are the wackiest (from what I hear) and Sewanee isn't that far behind.

[hedge]

It's all wacky...

[bluetick]

Prof laying down the denomination smack. Whee eeeeeeee

[Professor Tiger]

Tick, you are a "moran."

[Johnette's Daddy]

GTS and EDS are the wackiest (from what I hear) and Sewanee isn't that far behind.

Officials at Claremont School of Theology are considering removing the cross from the seminary’s chapel for the sake of making the space more appropriate for Jain, Buddhist, and Islamic religious services.

Claremont is one of the United Methodist Church’s 13 official seminaries, which receive generous financial support from the denomination’s Ministerial Education Fund (MEF), which is in turn funded by the undesignated gifts to United Methodist offering plates around the United States. In 2012, Claremont received over $344,000 from The United Methodist church through MEF. In 2011, it received over $524,000. This decline likely reflects a new 2008 policy linking church funding to numbers of United Methodist students at a seminary.

After recently facing some financial challenges, the seminary decided to more or less literally sell itself for $50 million to a large donor who helped transform it from a Christian seminary into Claremont Lincoln University, devoted to jointly training Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Jain clergy. In celebrating the move, Claremont President Jerry Campbell bizarrely declared that Christians who seek to obey Christ’s command to evangelize non-Christians have “an incorrect perception of what it means to follow Jesus.”

Defenders of this controversial move have claimed that the new institution will operate as a consortium of distinct training institutions, one faithful to each of these religions, with the part that is the UMC-affiliated Christian seminary staying fully Christian, and somehow becoming clearer about its Christian commitment.

But last month in Las Vegas, at the “Lead” conference for young-adult ministry leaders, it was revealed that the old Christian seminary is effectively supporting the institutions dedicated to the propagation of non-Christian religions. Meagan Harris, an admissions official at Claremont School of Theology (which was supposed to have remained the Christian part of the university), confessed that her school has opened up its property for use by the other religious groups, effectively devoting the resources of the Christian part of the consortium to propping up the others, rather than simply leaving it up to each non-Christian institution to be entirely built and funded by supporters from its own religious constituency. As part of this “hospitality,” Claremont has chosen to share its own chapel with the Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims.

But it is challenging for leaders in these non-Christian religions to conduct their services in a space prominently featuring a cross, which represents a gospel which they reject. So the seminary is now considering ostensibly how to accommodate non-Christian sensitivities. The Claremont official claimed that perhaps “the best way to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and take up our cross may be to take down the cross” from the seminary chapel, lest it violate Claremont’s bedrock commitment to religious pluralism.

Harris lamented that “[t]he cross has been wielded in ways that have been violent” as well as “exclusionary.” The Claremont representative admitted, “I do have some issues with the cross,” which appeared to run deeper than only lament over the history of people mistreating others in the name of Christianity. Perhaps Harris has been influenced by radical feminist theology professor Rosemary Radford Ruether, who argues against the divinity and uniqueness of Jesus Christ but still teaches at the supposedly Christian part of the Claremont-Lincoln consortium.

https://juicyecumenism.com/2013/03/02/f ... ts-chapel/

CST also has close ties to UCC/DoC, ELCAm Episcopal Church, et. al.

[Professor Tiger]

JD, at which seminary did you get demythologized?

[sardis]

"In celebrating the move, Claremont President Jerry Campbell bizarrely declared that Christians who seek to obey Christ’s command to evangelize non-Christians have “an incorrect perception of what it means to follow Jesus.”

Wow, just wow.

[Johnette's Daddy]

JD, at which seminary did you get demythologized?

Fuller Theological Seminary - in the 70s & 80s, they had a professor on staff who taught that the slave trade arose because Africans loved rum & trinkets.

Founded by the great radio preacher Charles E. Fuller. Solidly evangelical, The Wages of Sin is Death, There is a Hell and it is filled with drinkers, gamblers, homosexuals, race mixers, harlots, whoremongerers, feminists and communists.

[youtube]DQYOjlMmKJU[/youtube]

[Professor Tiger]

My cousin - a life long Angeleno BTW - went to Fuller in the 70's. You may have classmates.

Dallas Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary here.

With all that dispensationalism and 5 point Calvinism, it's a wonder I'm still here.

[The Gray Ghost]

We had a rector who went to Fuller - he lasted about 3 years and eventually left the priesthood. Our current guy went to San Francisco TS and remained pretty firmly anglo-catholic, go figger.

[hedge]

"they had a professor on staff who taught that the slave trade arose because Africans loved rum & trinkets."

Who doesn't??

[Professor Tiger]

We had a rector who went to Fuller - he lasted about 3 years and eventually left the priesthood. Our current guy went to San Francisco TS and remained pretty firmly anglo-catholic, go figger.

SFTS? Anglo-Catholic? He doesn't like girls.

Not there's anything wrong with that.