"We Buuuuurn Them!"

This blog title is the answer to a question posed in Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail.  "What do we do with witches?"  Maybe the more appropriate question this morning is:  "What do we do with heretics?"  I found out yesterday that I made an unfortunate list - a list of three people deemed to be "heretical" by a certain group of people who shall remain nameless.  I guess "they" have been reading my blog...(Shhh... they might be reading right now!) ... it goes without saying they didn't like what they read.  That's fair - blogs are public and if I was really worried about what people thought I shouldn't risk putting it on the internet.

What gets me are the reasons I'm a heretic.  I guess if you appreciate certain parts of a theologian's thought you have to buy the whole thing.  Does that mean that if I appreciate Luther's theology at certain points I'm an anti-Semite?  Or... if I think Calvin is spot on about some things I'm a platonic dualist?  Or... if I very much appreciate Kuyper's insights I'm a racist?  I guess so.  I have two links on my blog - one to N.T. Wright and one to Karl Barth.  N.T. Wright has taken some heat lately on the issue of justification.  Frankly, I'm not even sure the people in question have read Wright's three main academic works - (the big ones...) - they seem content to take other people's words for it.  Yes - Wright wants us to see Paul in the context of 1st century Judaism and not in the context of medieval Roman Catholicism.  Makes sense to me... of course this doesn't mean Luther and Calvin are wrong... it just means they were fighting a different, albeit related, fight.  Sigh....

As for Barth - what can I say... guilty.  I guess we are not allowed to develop in our theological thought.  I guess the way we speak about God and how he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ should not address the world in which we live.  I guess the cultural and philosophical developments of the last 400 years don't matter - they must somehow lie outside the reach of Christ's Lordship and therefore the gospel cannot engage them.  (Wait... isn't Luther's penal / substitutionary view of the atonement indebted to Anselm's "satisfaction atonement theory" which is very much connected to the structures of feudal society?)  What I appreciate about Barth is that his perspective engages the cultural world in which we live - the philosophical, linguistic, and social developments of the last century.  This doesn't mean I agree with him on everything. Sigh...

I was under the impression that the focus of the reformation was not to establish some static system of thought that would exist for all time, but to be "always reforming" - always engaging the world in which we live with the gospel.  This is why I believe we need to engage contemporary theological and philosophical thought as we wrestle with the contemporary issues facing the church and the world.  Just so you know... I still very much appreciate the profound theological insights of Calvin and Kuyper.

For those who are "interested"... I'm currently engaging the work of philosopher Slovoj Zizek - specifically his book with John Milbank entitled The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?  Check it out... but you might feel some heat.  To quote my father - in law... "It's hot in these Rhinos."