Sabio's Charts

My blogging buddy Sabio made some pretty fancy charts. Here is my chart based on his "Christian: Declare Thyself!" 


My Denomination: United Church of Christ

God’s Nature: The Ground of Being/The sum total of Existence and more

Christology: I am taking a Christology class this semester, hope it solidifies, right now I swing between high and low.

Theology of Scripture: Inspired

Soteriology 1: Universalist

Soteriology 2: Monism

Atonement Theology: Each one provides a unique view; that being said I can't get behind the substitutionary atonement theory. Rene Girard is helpful here with his Mimetic theory.

Literal Bodily Resurrection: I interpret metaphorically, but leave room for literal. Like Christology, I still swing but not as much.

Cosmology:  Evolutionist

View on State of Israel:  Israel-Neutral

Missionology: You were saved, and thus called into service

Eschatology: No Millenialist

View on Science: Science = AWESOME

Women can be priest or minister: Yes

Homosexuality can be valid life style: Yes











LHe also made this chart for atheists under his post: Atheist: Declare Thyself!

Level of Certainty: Strong Theist

Openness: Open, but cautious

Degree of Outreach:  Evangelical

Present Religious Participation: Often

Stance toward Categorically Rejecting Religion: Sympathetic

Degree of Enchantment  Enchanted

Mystical Perceptions: Partially Mystical

Theory of Religion: inherent in human genetic and neurological paths, excellent for building up community and self and locating both community and self in history and connecting to it.

Non-theistic Leanings: there is an awful lot of chaos in the world. not sure how providential my thinking is.

Secular Superstitious or Irrational Habits: can't think of any.

View of Reason: Reason is helpful but humans aren't rational creatures, just rational in hindsight.

Faith Items: Theist!

Past Belief History: Christian: from literal to progressive in a few denominations.

Past Orthopraxy History: I am a fan of the Lectio Divina, the Book of Hours, Labrythn walking, keeping the Sabbath: life long.

Past Sect History: Roman Catholic -> United Methodist -> "Christian Buddhist" -> United Church of Christ.

And he also has one for Philosophy with Philosopher: Declare Thyself!... now if he just adds one for Politics, we'll be set!

School of Philosophy:	Continental
Ontology:	unsure
Science:	has limits
Theory of Time:	B-Theory
Theology:	Panentheist
Politics:	Egalitarianism
Language:	unsure
Mind:	Anti-physicalism
Mental Content:	unsure
Abstract Objects:	unsure
Knowledge:	Relational
Personal Identity:	Psychological View
Free Will:	Compatibilism
Normative Ethics:	Deontology
Meta-Ethics:	unsure

Feel free to fill out your own! Check Sabio's site for links to the definitions and categories.

What I Learned in CPE Part III

I find it hard to evaluate the program. It is like viewing a dinosaur up close... I can tell you a little bit of what I see, but not the whole beast. It will require some distance before I can articulate the full extent of what I have seen and experienced. Odds are it will take the rest of my life to figure out all the wonderful things i've experienced. i am VERY enthusiastic and positive about the whole experience. I wish everyone at seminary was required to take CPE. I feel that the team here at LGH is top notch in the development of the program and are honest about the pluses and minuses of the process. This honesty is hard to find as most institutions

I’ve encountered want to claim their system is flawless and thus it is something wrong with the individual who doesn't think this way. I find that this openness is the most helpful thing in my learning process as it helped me fully step in and learn and risk.

At this point in time, I feel completely affirmed in my call as it has been affirmed in group and supervision. Knowing that I am outside of the Deutero-Pauline-Augustinian tradition, I felt heard and affirmed in the group and on the floor during visits. I contributed my own interpretation of what it means to be a Christian and how I interpret the Bible and yet learned other ways of being Christian and other interpretations and awareness of stories. The philosopher Žižek speaks to this as he asks us to resist judging the other for a moment and allow the other to judge us and that has happened more times than i care to think about.

My theology stands as one of unity, incarnation, and grace of God given by and present through the life of Jesus Christ. This theology is ecumenical, pragmatic, and post-modern and recognizes the reason for religion isn't reason. It is an embodied, empowerment model that can only come from my denomination and the cross-pollination between the Congregationalists and Reformed.

A Theological Review of Yours Truly

I have to write my ordination paper soon. This is hard because I tend to take a Taoist stance and roll with what comes along. Deal with existence as it presents itself, not through a rigid system of absolutes found through theoretical case studies. Real life is much more fluid than that so therefore so must my thinking. That isn't to say I don't have some absolutes or that i'm totally ungrounded. I am open to being wrong and to be transformed either through reason, experience, or scripture. I can't tell you how often i've been changed by one or the other.. or all of the above!

My doctrine prof, Dr Peter Schmiechen wrote a great letter to me when my daughter was born. Dr Schmiechen is a genius theologian as well as a kind and gentle soul. he is an artisan who works with wood and i have a small Iona community cross that he made that i pray with often. anyway.. here is what he wrote as reference for those out there who are trying hard to understand where i'm coming from. it's also written as a reminder of who i'm percieved to be as i attempt to put on paper my fluid theology.

(this was written to my daughter just days after her birth, he dropped off slippers his wife knitted. the book came in May, after the Doctrine class was over.)

Dear Eve,

We met when you were but a few days old: sleeping calmly under the watchful eyes of your parents. Perhaps I will come to know you better but for now I wish to speak of your father. He is a good man. His life is made of many conflicting experiences, held in tension, waiting to be resolved. Some of that resolution appears to be taking place.

His family life was divided, his religious experience fractured several times, his interests were and still are quite varied. As you will discover, he is very bright and good with words, able to fire the imagination. He says he does not like duality or division, but he is constantly thinking in terms of either/or. He claims the inclusive tradition of medieval theology, where everything finds its proper place in an ordered universe, but he thinks about things more in terms of storm and stress, with bold images tied to tradition only by thin lines. But those lines make all the difference in the world.

He wants a church set free from dogma, absolutism, moralism, and arrogance, free to proclaim Christ the word of grace. He makes it sound like he is starting all over again but then drops hints of incarnation, cross, resurrection and real presence. He likes writers who ridicule abstract theories because Christ is a real word of grace, but leaves us wondering how this grace actually appears. The record shows it has be co-opted, controlled, abused and misused by nearly everyone, and that it would be helpful (Paul's helpful) to have some guidelines, but not a Sears' Manuel. At times he sounds like those who want to get back to the simples teachings of Jesus (which few have actually agreed on), only to surprise us that he really does think, believe and experience the mystery of grace incarnate in person and presence. He likes to set things at odds and in tension, but then the day is saved by simple affirmations of grace.

Maybe experience does triumph over dogma, tensions softened by love, old conflicts resolved by grace. Without knowing it, you were born into all of this: the child of your parents named for the mother of us all. Your father once recoiled at the thought of that mysterious story of Adam and Eve, but it appears he has mellowed, no doubt through the influence of your mother and now you.

It is fitting that he should be in the process of finding a faith home at the moment he and your mother are creating a home for you. So begins a process of mutual care among the three of you, an image of a larger grace.

Talk about a once in a life time letter... because Peter is a once in a lifetime guy. Check out his books on amazon: like Saving Power and esp.  Christ the Reconciler: A Theology of Opposites, Differences, and Enemies which this letter came with. If you want to understand where i'm coming from.. if i do as well... this book is part of it. always looking for the third way.. the transcendent way.. not really always compromising.. sometimes this way pisses everyone off.. sometimes this way gets you killed.

hope this letter was some light.. as it was for me. peace!