As many of you have recently learned, this is the 21^st Century. Plato has died. Aristotle has died. St. Augustine has died. Our ideas have changed and truth no longer exists in any useful sense, so we must re-think, re-imagine, re-guess and re-suppose a lot of fairly important things.

This should be done, if at all possible, on couches in a building that used to be a church. If you don't have a couch or a church or if you are a wizard of (post)modern technology, you do it on the internet. Here is a little piece of this great work in progress. This is Doug, Sven and ChumChum doing theology with the tools of pre-industrial society, the pick and shovel.

(Bear with the "conversation". This is only the sixth week of Doug's ACWB book club and some of the technical problems need to be ironed out. The philosophical problems seem to be, how shall we say, somewhat intractable.)

ChumChum:

"Ok, so here's what I'm proposing: the idea of God being in us, God being with us, God being involved intimately with the creation sustaining it does not exclude for him to be outside of the creation at the same time...here's the thing, here's how I look at it; I think the biblical view from the creation, from the story of Eden, we have a God that is here involved, you know, with us, not removed. And I think what happened is that somehow we came up with this idea of a God that is out there because from a philosophical perspective we cannot make sense that you know God can create the universe, create all this thing if he is part of it in the sense that of being intimately involved. So for me it is very clear that this is something we came up with on I don't know coming to grips with something that I don't know God is the creator. In other words I think this is just our own way of making sense of the idea that God is the one that created everything and this and that.

"So but that's an addition, it's a later kind of a thought that comes to the equation. But the reality is that throughout the Bible, the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that God is here very, very intimately involved with the creation, with you know with creation as far as human beings so what I am saying is for us to accept this idea that it is a must, that it is an idea of a God that is transcendent and then so forth. It's more of a philosophical category, not so much of a biblical theology that comes from just what how we know God through the Bible."

Pagitt:

"Yah, I think you've really hit it there."

He's no doubt hit something; my first guess is that it was a gas main.

It seems there may be some grounds for the fear that theology cannot be understood by the present generation.

The session ended with the appropriate seasonal wishes, and it was upon hearing "Happy Halloween" that it struck me that this was all a Halloween prank. This discussion was a way to soap the Reformers' windows, as it were. I also think Doug and Sven and ChumChum wanted some candy.

If you would like to send some candy to the ACWB Book Club, please address all parcels to:

ACWB Book Club
c/o Solomon's Porch
100 W. 46th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55419