"Is Jesus God?"
Summer 2003 Bible Study

Chapter 2

"St. Joan of Arc Bible Study is an open and growing group that meets for fellowship and to discuss the Bible and other faith-centered literature. Our informal study group draws from biblical scholarship, historical perspectives, current events and personal reflections. We welcome honor and respect the personal ideas and spiritual journeys of all who join us."

Bob Beutel is a 20+ year "Joanie", a member St. Paul Saints Small Christian Community, the Scripture Study group, and the SJA Bookstore assistant manager. Bob says he is married to a very spiritual spouse whose challenges keep him active at SJA. They have three daughters and two granddaughters. Bob claims to be blessed beyond belief.
Greetings from Bob B while Rik is out of town

The opening prayer was a reading from Matthew Fox describing the New Story Morwood is telling us about: "In the beginning was the Gift, and the Gift was with God..."

 Two new interesting and articulate members joined us tonight -welcome Marge and Jim.  Other old members not seen for a bit rejoined us - we're so glad to see Mary.  

We had difficulty breaking away from stimulating and vigorous discussion, but a recess was called so we could enjoy a perfect summer evening treat - hot fudge sundaes - yumm!

Here is the Overview...

Preliminaries and old business:

Elaine Pagels has written a new book, Beyond Belief, The Secret Gospel of Thomas.  See the book review from the New York Times, June 15, 2003.  What is notable for our study is that "orthodoxy" did not exist until imposed by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.  Before that there were all kinds of competing ideas re: the nature of God, the nature of Jesus, who were Christians, etc.  Can, and should "orthodoxy" be re-opened?  Does this orthodoxy reflect more a view of the nature of the Roman Empire than a view of the nature of Jesus of the Gospels?  How do we sort them out? 

The Eucharist:  on page 21 in chapter 1, Morwood says some Catholics "contrary to Roman Catholic sacramental theology, believe the consecrated bread at Eucharist is actually a physical, bodily presence of Jesus."  A separate extract from McBrien's Catholicism, a middle of the road text on Catholic teachings, covers the history of the doctrine and concludes with the Second Vatican Council's doctrine that Christ is present in the Eucharist first through the assembled worship community, second in the person of the presider, third in the scriptural word proclaimed at the Eucharistic celebration, and fourth in the sacred species of the bread and wine.   This is not exactly responsive to Morwood's assertion, but whole libraries are devoted to sacramental theology, not susceptible to 30 minutes of quick research.  Anybody challenged to earn a doctorate in sacred theology based on this thesis?

Chapter 2 - A New Story for Theology and Spirituality.

Michael Morwood at SJA in 2001
Morwood summarizes our childhood theology as:

But our knowledge of the world has changed geometrically since the 4th century, particularly physical science (isn't Morwood being a little too narrow himself in emphasizing natural science? Even Peter Russell, who is a physicist, showed us how it was the study of science which revealed to him the mysteries of consciousness;  how we know is more important in theology than what we know). 

Morwood outlines the New Story as:

Why use the New Story as our framework of inquiry, rather than the Old Story?
It makes the experience of God revealed in Jesus more relevant to our world today.  We need to translate the story of Jesus, the perfect human expression of God, who "put flesh on" the Unseen and Unknowable God.   We must engage in as much dispute and argumentation as the church of the first 3 centuries to come up with ways of engaging the lived experience and the contemporary worldview of many adult Christians.  This will not give us "new absolute truth" to replace the 'old absolute truth"  from the 4th century, and we will not "convert" the fundamentalists of our tradition  with overwhelming logic and brilliant argument. 

This is one of the biggest shifts on the history of Christianity, and it raises two concerns:

  1. What do we believe now?  Read page 38, 4th paragraph.
  2. Can we still call ourselves Roman Catholic or Christian if our new articulation of the faith is radically different from  the way "our church has taught us to think?" (Michael, Michael, Michael!  We are the church; those who demand unquestioning adherence to their orthodoxy are the hierarchy; Michael, it is wrong to help them hijack the label "church").
Rejecting an outmoded framework is not a rejection of tradition. Tradition is, according to Morwood, handing down "the story of how a particular age kept alive and preached the  story of Jesus to the world it encountered." P. 39

Tradition is a long line of struggles to find words and images to proclaim the good news:  Paul translated "Jerusalem think" to non-Jewish Greeks;  the Greeks influenced the fathers  of the church; Augustine used neo-Platonishm; Thomas Aquinas relied on Aristotle.  Why can't we use post-modernist thought (well, we'd have to know what that is, first of all), or feminist thinking and an awareness of social and economic situations (as does liberation theology) to bring the good news to more people?

Discussion issues:

Thank you very much!  

For next week, Tuesday, July 8,  Chapter 3   Re-forming our Imagination

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Rik Murray
(612) 872-8694
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