The Emerging Christian Way

Index	Ch. 3 - Tom Harpur	Ch. 4 - Thomas Berry.	Discussion Notes	References
Jock's Summary Notes: Ch. 3. New Creeds - Tom Harpur-
..."It is here where we stand, that we should try to make shine the light of the hidden divine life." ... Martin Buber Tom Harpur is a minister who became a reporter and writer. In his later years he observes a change in Christianity as great as any previous change before. He sees a strong reaction to the negative aspects of Christian traditional theology - focused as it is upon the essential depravity (original sin) of man. He observes the struggle of the present church in Europe and North America to come to grips with modern thinking. With many other voices, he says that Jesus' chief teaching was not on sin but on justice. He feels most modern response is "feeble". That the mainline church seems to have no "good news" to proclaim. That the fundamentalist church is worse off with their apocalyptic focus. Harpur has re-examined the creeds of the church, searching for the strength that those before have found in them. And he decides these ancient creeds cannot survive modernity and should be scrapped. New words are required. He offers these words: We believe, and put our trust in God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, from the farthest-flung galaxies to the most microscopic forms of life; God is above and around and within every one of us and yet so far beyond us in transcendence that our minds cannot fathom the mystery and our only response is wonder and worship. And we believe God sent Jesus, anointing him in the power of Spirit, to declare by word and deed the gospel of personal and social liberation from the power of fear and all injustice and oppression. Though he was cruelly and unjustly murdered, God raised him from death and God's seal is set forever on Jesus' message and ministry. In him we know that God is love, and that forgiveness and acceptance are our always. In him we are called to realize God's kingdom in our own lives and in the lives of others. In him we are called to join with God in making all things new. We believe God has granted to us and to all humanity the same Spirit that was in Jesus, creating community and empowering us to be like him. We believe in a dimension of existence yet to come. We seek to build God's kindom here, but we also look beyond to a day when wars will end and God's New Jerusalem will be revelaed. We believe. God help our unbelief. Dr. Jaroslave Pelikan taught 4 decades at Yale. Krista Tippett interviewed him on American Public Radio in 2003 shortly before he died, on the theme of The Need for Creeds. Here is the link to that interview. In response to the idea that today we are too "undefined in our faith", and tend not to want or need creeds, he pointed out that "...in the darkest hours of life, you've got to believe something specific, and that specification is the task of the creed, because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another. To say yes is also to say no. And clarifying what the yes is and then finding a way to say what it is we believe and the experimentation involved...". Pelikan was a Lutheran theologian who embraced Orthodox Christianity and whose books included an exhaustive study of Christian creeds, selecting 200 from 1000 collected. Here is one he liked - a modern creed from the Maasai people of Africa - that strikes you with its simplicity and power. "We believe in one high God, who out of love created the beautiful world. We believe that God made good His promise by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left His home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, and showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by His people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch Him, and on the third day He rose from the grave." Harpur is rather overly critical of Bishop John Spong's overly critical assessments of the present church, so I'd like to play the last few minutes of a lecture by Spong at the University of California, in which he tells a story to enthusiastically summarize his own creed. Here is a link to the Burke lectures.
Wayne's Summary Notes: Ch. 4. - The Great Work - Thomas Berry
We continue to think of the new paradigms - seeing with a new lens, viewing realiity differently - that is required of us. Berry is a Roman Catholic Passionist priest who, in many ways followed a vocational path laid out earlier by priest/archeologist/anthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin. Berry calls himself a geologian - and links his training in the natural sciences with his spirituality as a theologian. All through his career, Berry has encouraged people to create new paradigms, to look at reality though new lenses, to "think outside the box" and beyond the confines of accepted wisdom. Humans tend to think essentially in terms of this world. Berry calls us to think in terms of the cosmic or, the universe, story. "The Great Work" is his magnum opus, or final testiment (Berry is in his nineties) was published half a dozen years ago and makes these four points: 1. All great societies have a Þ great work to do. 2. We need to ask: What is ours? 3. Our task is to move society with creation, rather than against it 4. How can this happen? Necessity is the mother of invention. We are at the closing of an era, the Cenozoic (which began millions of years ago). As humans started to evolve into what they are becoming, survival required that they pitted themselves against nature and created a split between the human and the natural worlds. As we enter what Berry calls the Ecozoic era - our task is to heal that split (68-69) and to help new generations begin to do this great work. We need to integrate our efforts with nature for the sake of mutual survival (64). The great work to which we are called is the relating of the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe (65). It is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the earth to a period when humans will be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner (67). The great work is a é work of all the people (74) and not just scientists and those who currently live ecologically sensitive lives. This great work calls forth the best thought and ideas from all of us - including scientists and theologians alike. In the words of one great modern scientist E.O. Wilson of Harvard we need to come to terms with biodiversity (all of life is inter- related) and see ourselves in a mutually caring place with all creation. We need to move from a user - to a caregiver - mindset and from devastating exploitation of nature to a benign presense within it (71). This gives the Christian theology of stewardship new meaning - (from a consumer to a caregiver mindset). This also implies a shift in theological focus from the confines of the past to the possibilities of the future. If we take this kind of thinking seriously, it is going to affect many of us who work in various societal institutions - be it business, political, educational, religious. Jim Taylor has written about steward éship and institutions. Recent feedback to a column said this: We (need to) repeal the greatest fiction of them all -- that Corporations are 'persons', with all the lawful rights but few of the responsibilities. Along with their control of the industrial and financial systems, they have degraded and weakened the entire life system of the planet. With their rejection -- as Thomas Berry puts it in The Great Workâ -- of 'Earth as a bio-spiritual planet where industrial efforts have worked to create a wonderworld, (they) have in fact created a wasteworld, a nonviable situation for the human mode of being'. Berry, along with Brian Swimme in The Universe Story, traces human society in its beginnings as only surviving as it fulfilled a basic role within the larger Earth community. The Industrial Age has been human-centred. We now must become Earth-centred; a 'community' of all living species in inter-dependence, for upon this rests the survival of the human species.
Summary of Discussion Notes after Small Groups

	Clicking the icon left will activate the e-mail on your machine and direct your comments to us. Comments are welcome and will be posted with usual editorial courtesies.
EMAIL