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In a World in Peril
From the series: Religion and the Human Story
Isaiah
43:1-‐3;
Matthew
14:22-‐32
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
February
9,
2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is very good to be back here in this place with you. While the time away is
important and was wonderful, it is always good to come back home. I received
some comments as I do annually about coming back after the winter vacation
where I do serious reading and a lot of thinking and reflection. The expectation is
for all of that to result in some stimulating sermons and that puts tremendous
pressures on one. I know that I cannot live up to that expectation.
I was raised and nurtured in a tradition where the sermon is the word of God.
That comes from John Calvin, and Karl Barth made it explicit. The center of it all
is the word made flesh, of course, Jesus Christ, and the word written witnesses to
Christ, and from the text, the spoken sermon is every bit as much the word of
God in the tradition from which I stem. It pains me a bit at this point to have to
admit that I think that is presumptuous. Maybe it is the accumulated years.
Maybe it is a weakening of some facilities, I don't know. But, I recognize that this
moment is a sacred trust and that it is also a human impossibility, if I am, indeed,
to speak the word of God.
I cannot live up to that expectation. And I am acutely aware of the expectations
that drive you out of bed on a cold Sunday morning and get you here to this place.
But, if I cannot live up to that expectation, at least there is this that I can do and
that is simply take this familiar stool and sit in your midst and invite you to think
with me. That is an interactive experience, really. It is a two-way street. I hope
just the fact that I am here on this stool speaks volumes, and your presence in the
pew speaks volumes to me. And so, we launch out once again together in
thoughtful conversation before the face of God.
As I thought about these pre-Lenten weeks, I determined that we would think
together about religion and the human story. We have thought a lot about
religion here for some time. I suppose that is because I select the themes and that
has been very much on my mind. I think about it all the time consciously or
unconsciously, and all the time I am gone, I think about this appointment, this
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
moment. The thing that seems imperative to me is that we gain an increasing
understanding of religion, the phenomenon of religion, the religious experience,
our faith and our observance, our practice of religion, because it is such a potent
power in life. I have increasingly over the years recognized its power. But, more
recently recognized not only its power for good, but its power for evil. It is a
universal human phenomenon. That is understandable, because we are of all
creatures those who are aware, are conscious. We can reflect upon ourselves. We
are the only animals that know that we will die and we know that those whom we
love will die, and we wonder why and we have the gift of consciousness that
enables us to reflect back upon ourselves and to ask, "What is this human
experience? What does it all mean? From whence has it all issued, and what will
be the issue of it all?" Those are fundamental human questions, if one lives at all
thoughtfully, and hardly anyone escapes being called up short now and again to
say what is it all about. The phenomenon of religion is this universal human
experience of wonder and of sacred worship and ritual and prayer and of
observance in one way or another, and so, caught up in that, its nature and the
human story. That is what I would invite you to reflect with me about a bit today
and in the subsequent weeks.
I crossed a Rubicon not so many years ago. I have crossed a number of Rubicons,
but one of the most significant Rubicons that I crossed was to come to
understand religion as a human construct. That was big for me. That religion, my
religion particularly, didn't fall out of heaven ready-made, that it was not the
consequence of some supernatural revelation that put it all in order, but rather,
that my religion and all religions were this universal human quest for meaning,
for understanding, this universal groping after that mystery which is at the heart
of everything, this yearning for some sense of that abyss of being that fountains
forth and has been concretized in this amazing cosmic journey. When I came to
see that my religion was not the only one, but was one among many, that we are
asking the same questions, looking for the same comfort and security and
understanding, that was a marvelously liberating moment for me.
Don't you remember just a few short years ago when we were called into question
for taking that stand publically? It seemed like it was a radical position at that
time and now it seems like everyone believes it. Isn't it interesting that after the
tragedy of the Columbia that one of the most sensitive follow- ups is the discovery
and the handling of the human remains, because on this particular space shuttle
there were Christians, Protestant and Catholic, there was a Jewish man, there
was a Hindu woman, and perhaps you have read how the various religions have
responded as to how to handle human remains and the respective rituals of
death. Because we are in this together, really. We are trying to understand the
meaning of our life and the meaning of death and then what? Is that all there is,
and how do we respect and reverence human life? So, to come to a point of being
able to look at religion somewhat objectively has for me been one of the most
liberating and illuminating aspects of my whole ministry, not having to be
defensive, not having to prove anyone wrong or to prove myself right.
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Someone clipped an interview out of the New York Times for me. It came to me
all the way from Texas, an interview with David Sloane Wilson, a biologist who
has written a book, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution. Religion and the Nature of
Society. The little note said, "I thought you'd be interested in this," and indeed I
am. Wilson writing as a biologist is putting the evolutionary, empirical method to
an analysis of religion. He was asked at the end of the interview: "Do you believe
in God?"
He said, "I'm a communitarian. No, I suppose I'm an atheist, but I'm a nice
atheist."
Wilson suggests that religion began very early in the history of what could be
called human because religion enabled the clan or the tribe to become cohesive
and to cooperate together and that was a plus, that was of value for their
continuing existence and self-propagation.
The interviewer said, "Well, then, all of the trouble of religion and all of the
divisiveness and the hatred in religion as we see it today, that is an aberration
then, that is just a blip on the radar screen," and Wilson said, "Oh, no. Because
religion that made the 'in' group cohesive also had a tendency to demonize the
other and, therefore, religion has not only had that value of bringing people
together, but it has also a shadow side where it has built barriers between people
and even been a source of violence in the world, which in our world today
certainly we understand."
So, religion is so terribly important and I think it is important for us to think
about our own religious commitment, our own religious faith, our own religious
practice as we try to find orientation in this contemporary scene of which we are a
part. So, I invite you to think with me about religion and the human story, and
today, religion and the human story in a world in peril. That is an
understatement - a world in peril, where there is threat and fear on every side.
Last Thursday evening the evening news was a 30-minute segment. There were
five minutes of news and 25 minutes of commercials, I think, but in that segment
there was the iteration of all of the threats and the trouble in the world. I think
that was the point at which the terror alert had been heightened and the color
changed, notched up. There was the Iraqi situation, and talk of biological warfare
and chemical warfare and nuclear warfare, and there were pictures of police and
military people with machine guns outside of national monuments, and they were
putting barriers around monuments and speaking about the threat to places
where people gather in hotels and hospitals, and so forth. At the end of that news
segment, I was aware of the fact that I had a moment of awareness, and I was
afraid, and I thought to myself, "Dear God, there is something not good about
this."
I felt fear and I don't like to feel fear, and I began to think about what was going
on, and I recognized that we are in a period of time, or we are in a situation where
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
we are so bombarded and pummeled with all of the news of the world that we
have no ability at all to have a sense of perspective, that we are constantly
brought up to an intensity which disallows us to keep our feet on the ground. As I
experienced that, I thought to myself we have to deal with that. We have to think
together about what all of that is doing to us. As I thought about this moment, I
thought about the religious community generally, and I realized that there is the
road most taken and that is for the religious community to affirm old cliches and
to let these cliches trip off our tongues, thereby reassuring ourselves that God is
in heaven and all is right with the world, finally.
A week ago Saturday in the Grand Rapids Press there was a large feature in the
Religion section on a contemporary megachurch that is growing by leaps and
bounds in Grandville. It is called Mars Hill, and they have 9,000 to 10,000
people on Sunday morning. They were only founded in 1999, about 800 people
coming out of Calvary undenominational church with their blessing and financial
support. They have this outstanding young preacher who is a great communicator
who came into ministry through a rock band and who is able, not only now with
his preaching, but also with a very professional-sounding rock band to really
make that place rock. This tremendous growth and dynamism of the Mars Hill
Church is in itself a phenomenon which many people are talking about. In the
news article there are a couple of paragraphs of analysis. I mention all of this
because if we are going to use our religion as a resource in such a time as this,
there are various ways to do that, and I am using this as an example of the way
most religious communities will respond to it in a rather traditional fashion.
In the article, it said that Mars Hill is among a recent breed of evangelical
churches serving younger people in post-modern America. Having grown up in
an age of relativism, shaken by the trauma of terrorism, many younger Christians
are looking for authenticity, community and spiritual discipline. And how could
they look for anything better than that? But, I continued to read, because I knew
there was another dimension that had to come out, and I read on: "They are eager
to commit to Christian absolutes."
Robert Weber who is an expert on some of these things and has a new book out
about the evangelical church, says that in a few years, churches like this will burst
forth with a new visibility in leadership that will mark the 21st century with a new
kind of evangelical, missional church. I mention this again because I want to say
that is one possible road, and that works. At times like these, there will be many
people who will be fleeing to religion and will be seeking that comfort and
assurance and some antidote against the fear that is so easy to be overwhelmed
with in our day. I mention the Mars Hill phenomenon not at all to be critical, and
certainly not to be envious. I hope God doesn't bless us that much. I'm too old for
that. But, I mention it because of that yearning for absolutes.
At the end of April, we have Charles Kimball coming from Wake Forest
University. He has written a book that is much spoken of these days, When
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Religion Becomes Evil. Charles Kimball gives us five warning signs of when a
religion may be getting into trouble, and the first warning sign is absolute truth
claims. That is the road most traveled by the religious community in response to
a world in peril. I cannot take that road. I cannot lead you that way, because I
believe it is the very nature of our historical existence, it is the very nature of
being human that those absolutes are denied us. We are a part of a cosmic drama,
an unfolding drama that reaches back into time that cannot even be conceived,
and is continuing to unfold and develop in ways of which we have not yet
dreamed. In such a situation, the only religious resource that I can offer you is a
reasoned and reflective understanding of what is going on in the world.
I would not deny anyone the emotional high or the emotional support of what a
Mars Hill can offer. But, it is my deep conviction that that is religion as escape
rather than religion as solution. And if religion is to be a solution, then I think we
have to think very carefully together to understand our time and to understand
the resource that our religion provides for us.
Let me suggest two things. Let me suggest, first of all, that we need perspective.
As I said a moment ago, the media drowns us. The media overwhelms us, and
because the media is a corporate venture, because they need advertising dollars,
they need audience, and to get audience, they have to be the first there. They have
to scoop, they have to have the latest analysis, they have to have the most
insightful talking heads, and there is this constant drone, this constant chatter
asking experts to speculate about that which cannot possibly be spoken of
reasonably and responsibly. The moment after the tragedy, we want to know all
about it and we are exposed to that, we are overwhelmed with that, and I think it
is important for us not to let happen to us what happened to me on Thursday
evening, where a 30-minute evening news gripped me with fear. I don't mean for
us to hide our head in the sand. I don't mean for us to be uninformed, but we
have to know that the way we get our information today is like this, it is the blitz
of the media. There is not time for reading, for reflection, for thoughtful
contemplation. We need to step back. We need to take some time. We have to
shut the tube off and go for a walk.
And then, again in terms of perspective, we have to ask ourselves, "Why did 9/11
so disturb us?" Was it not really because we have lived so long in the illusion that
we are impregnable? Scott Peck begins his book, The Road Less Traveled, with
the words "Life is difficult," and I would say that life is perilous and life has
always been perilous. I'm so old, I remember when we were building bomb
shelters and filling them with jars of water and non-perishables. Life is
dangerous. Human existence is perilous. That is not to say that there are not
some new twists and it is not to say that the hatred and the violence today has not
greater potential for disaster because of the means that are at hand. But, I think
one needs a bit of perspective, to recognize that to be human is to be constantly at
peril. And in terms of perspective, I would suggest that we keep in focus the
miracle, and the wonder and the glory and the joy of life.
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Last Friday evening when I returned home there was that gap between the clouds
and the lake, the sun threatening to come through, and it came through in all of
the golden radiance that illumined the landscape, illumined the icebergs, and
then slipped into the sea and sent its glorious gold up into the clouds. At such
times, one knows that one is a part of something that is so much bigger than any
terrorist threat. Then, Nancy and I made our way to Old Boys Brewery for one of
Bob Kleinheksel's gatherings, and there we gathered with Christ Community
types from 80 to 8, and we ate and we drank and our Robin sang like a bird, and I
looked over that crowd and I said, "This is my people. Yes! Yes! This is my
people." I almost think a Friday night in the brewery and a Sunday morning in
the sanctuary would be enough. And then yesterday I saw a beautiful red cardinal
on an evergreen branch tufted with snow, and I knew there was something,
something operative which transcends all of those things that threaten us. A bit of
perspective.
Then, too, one needs a sense of presence. Isaiah 43, "When you go through the
flood, you'll not be overwhelmed. When you go through the fire, you will not be
burned." A beautiful image. Through, not around, not over, not spared the fire,
not spared the flood, but you will go through.
Another image - Jesus walking on the water to the disciples whose little boat is
tossed in the storm. Peter impetuously plunging into the sea in faith, only to sink
in doubt, then to find the extended hand of his Lord. Images. Metaphors.
Metaphors and images that come out of an ancient time when God was in heaven
and in control, when God intervened here and again and rescued here and there.
We know it doesn't work that way. God does not keep towers from tumbling nor
space ships from disintegrating. And yet, those old images point us to that which
is ultimate and infinite which continues to come to expression, and here we are,
human beings who are the emergence of that process, who have learned that love
is stronger than hate, who have learned the possibility of deep joy, who have
experienced the wonder of grace, who know the possibility of forgiveness, and
who find in community that, when we are together, God is in the midst, and when
we have each other, it is enough. And so, dear friends, in light of it all, in a world
in peril, I choose to trust and not be afraid.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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Event
Epiphany V
Series
Religion and the Human Story
Scripture Text
Isaiah 43:1-3, Matthew 14:22-32
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2003-02-09
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In a World in Peril
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 9, 2003 entitled "In a World in Peril", as part of the series "Religion and the Human Story", on the occasion of Epiphany V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 43:1-3, Matthew 14:22-32.
Nature of Religion
Quest for Meaning
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Text
Honestly Human
From the series: Religion and the Human Story
Romans 7:14-25; Mark 2:18-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 2, 2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Religion has damaged as many people throughout the centuries as it has healed. I
say that not as a shocking opening statement, I say that not to be provocative, I
say that because I really believe that. Religion has had a tendency to become
oppressive and to lead people into depression rather than into liberation,
freedom, and joy.
I met a person, in this case a woman, this past week whom I had not seen for over
forty years, and over forty years ago she was what one would call a deeply
spiritual person, and I say that positively, a woman of prayer, prayer circles,
missionary activity, great piety and devotion. When I saw her this week after forty
years, I was surprised at her face. Someone has said you could tell a great deal
about a person from his or her face. Her face did not reflect to me joy, pleasure,
delight, or a certain lightness of being. Her face, her visage communicated to me
a certain heaviness, even grumpiness. I thought to myself that all of the intense,
sincere and serious cultivation of the spiritual life, for all of that, she did not
strike me as being very happy.
Not so long ago I took a book down from the shelf that I hadn't touched in a long
time, blew the dust off and it flopped open to a spot where there was a small
brochure. It was produced in the early 60s when I was here the first time. We
weren't called Christ Community at that time; the other name will not be
mentioned. There I was with my picture on it, of course, just fresh out of
seminary, and my visage communicated in that picture, a serious, moral,
completely dedicated, young man, young old man, and in that little brochure we
had a number of affirmations, all very orthodox which we surely believed. I was
embarrassed and amused as I looked at it. So, I took it to Duba's on Tuesday to
the luncheon and gave it to Duncan Littlefair just so he would know the kind of
persons he, was hanging out with. The next week he came to the table and said to
the table, "I want to show you a story of salvation," and he held up that brochure
with my picture and he said, "This man was lost." And then he pointed at me and
he said, "Look at his face. He has been saved." That's a true story and I know
existentially that it is true.
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
To be human is to be a creature in conflict. It is to be a creature living with a
constant tension. The Apostle Paul knew that and that famous seventh chapter of
Romans I can never read without feeling the intensity of Paul's own inward
struggle. There is a long history of interpretation of that passage. It is amazing
what people get out of that passage. I am not going to bore you with all of that
interpretation all over the map. I think it is enough to read it and to say Paul
knew the excruciating pain of being a creature living in tension.
W. H. Auden, in the little quote in your liturgy, says, "There are times when
wouldn't we like to be unreflective animals? Or disembodied spirits?" because
either way, no problem. Don't we know in the depths of our being that about
which Paul was writing? Of course we do. Krister Stendahl says that for Paul this
was a midrash on the Genesis story of the fall, because Paul was trying to
understand how he could affirm the Torah, the way of life, the law of God, how he
could affirm that in his inward being and do such a miserable job of fulfilling it.
How could he will to do one thing and do another?
Have you ever been there? Don't we know? Is not there that within us that would
soar and love and grace and bless and affirm, and that within us which is dark,
mean, and that which makes us blush? That is the human situation. St. Paul
would say it is because we are fallen creatures. I don't happen to agree with Paul
on that one. I don't think it is because we are fallen creatures, I think it is because
we are human creatures. Here we are, after eons and eons and eons of time, of
evolutionary process that has brought about creatures like us who carry with us
all of the animality of our background rooted in the dust of the earth, and
creatures who have become aware, conscious, susceptible to the lure of love, able
at times to soar into transcendent realms and ecstatic joy. We are not fallen. We
are just human, and to be honestly human is to recognize that conflict within
which is a given, with being human beings such as we are.
In the wisdom of the ancient church, it was that tension within that gave rise to
Mardi Gras. I became aware of that rather late in life, too. It was the covering of
the parade in New Orleans, I suppose some few years ago, when the commentator
spoke about the wisdom of the ancient church in giving people an opportunity to
cut loose, to blow off steam and get it all out of their system before they entered
into the darkness and the solemnity of that season of Lent when they were called
to self-denial and contemplation. It immediately made sense to me that the
church jn its best wisdom has understood the nature of the human which it is
explained as a term of being fallen or whether it is understood, as we do today,
with psychological insight and behavioral sciences, etc., that it is simply the given
with being what we are. Nonetheless, in the wisdom of the church, the whole
being needs to be recognized and ownership taken.
Some years ago when Gertrud Mueller Nelson was here and we were introduced
to her wonderful book on the celebration of the seasons, Dance With God. I was
struck with her description of Carnival, and the purpose of Carnival and the
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
acknowledgment of that shadow side that is within all of us and that need for
ownership thereof and release of, but release of in some measured and controlled
manner.
Martin Marty says that the church is afraid to allow us ecstasy, because ecstasy
actually from the Greek sfotis, out of that state in which one is, or to be out of
oneself; or to be beside oneself, to be crazy. The suggestion is that now and again
we should be given permission simply to be crazy. In the rituals of the church, to
the extent that they are healthy and human-enhancing, they will provide those
channels whereby we can tap our feet and be ushered into delight and know the
taste of sheer joy.
I love to watch the children when the jazz ensemble or the musicians are singing
on a day like this. I saw Greg Martin's little daughter doing her thing. She's got
the rhythm, Greg, she was replicating you right there in the pew, and when I see
that happen, I know there is something right about that. In contrast to the little
child who, sitting next to her mother, was turning around and making eye contact
and smiling with all those around until her mother reined her in, gave her a
squeeze and said, "Remember you're in church."
Gordon Cosby, who is the founder of that well-publicized and marvelous ministry
in Washington D.C., the Church of the Saviour, tells about a time when he was
invited by a New England congregation to come up and preach at a midweek
Lenten service, and he said the service was so dull and uninspiring, the only thing
that moved in the whole service were the offering plates. He and his wife left
rather down and dispirited and the congregation had secured for them a room in
the village, and it happened to be over the tavern, and he and his wife retired to
their room and beneath them were emanating the sounds of music and laughter
and joy, and he looked at his wife and said, "You know, if Jesus came to this
village tonight, I think he'd join the crowd at the tavern rather than the crowd at
the church."
And I know that existentially also, because that young man who was in the pulpit
here for those early years of 1960s, oh, it is painful to remember. But, I went to
Williamsburg, Virginia not so long after that and, in a tour of the colonial
buildings, there was this lovely hall on a second floor in the middle of that little
village restored, and the guide spoke about the fact that in this room – which was
light with windows and chair stacked and here and there great barrels of wine
vats, nice hardwood floor – the guide said here the social life of the community
took place. There were often Saturday evening dances, he said, and then the
chairs would be set up for divine worship on Sunday morning. I thought, "Bingo!
The only part of that story I know is Sunday morning, because I've never danced
a step, let alone a two-step, and wine never touched my lips apart from the
Eucharist." I know I am not preaching to many of you. There are a few dinosaurs
like me out there, but just let me get this off my chest. You can just go out of here
and thank God that you didn't know that kind of repressive religious experience,
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
and yet I know I also speak for a good measure of religion which is in control and
which, as Martin Marty says, is afraid to let us experience something of the divine
madness which honors that part of our humanity which is also authentically
human.
Jesus, it seems to me, had the balance right. He was accosted by the religious
guardians of tradition for the fact that his disciples didn't carry on the fast. Maybe
they didn't keep Lent. He said to them, "Look, you can't fast when the
bridegroom is here." And then he was trying to say something new is a-birthing
and you simply cannot take that which is new and cram it into old containers
because it bursts the containers. And then they were going through the grain
fields and the disciples picked the grain for their own need on the Sabbath, which
again brought that conflict situation: why do they do that which is not lawful on
the Sabbath? Jesus said there is precedent for that. The meeting of human need
transcends the ritual prescription for the keeping of the Sabbath. And then he
said, "Look, the Sabbath, this marvelous gift of God, has been for humankind, not
humankind for the Sabbath."
It is so easy in our religious observances, it is so easy for those of us who are in
charge, it is so easy for us to forget that it is all for the enrichment and the
enhancement of your humanity lived before the face of God. With Jesus, there
was that ability to discriminate between the authentic observance and the
honoring of that which was even deeper, which was authentic human need. The
church doesn't live very easily with that kind of freedom because Luke and
Matthew we are told followed Mark a decade or two later. Mark's gospel, that we
read this morning, has that statement of Jesus, the Sabbath was made for the
human, not the human for the Sabbath. When Matthew and Luke picked up that
particular story, in both Matthew and Luke that statement was deleted. I think
the elders got together and said, "You know what? That is just too dangerous. You
can't trust the people to make that decision, and so we had better delete it."
It is a beautiful thing, really, when one can celebrate the full spectrum of being, to
come in here this morning to the sounds of joy. I caught you smiling and tapping
your feet because something deep down in you was being tapped, because there is
something marvelous about the experience of sheer joy and delight. And then, it
will be also a goose-bump experience on Wednesday evening at the opening of
Lent when you will come here to a dimmed sanctuary and kneel and I will place
the ashes on your forehead in the sign of the cross reminding you that dust you
are and to dust you will return.
So, you see, to be honestly human is to be able on Tuesday night to have pancakes
dripping with butter and sloshing with syrup, bacon deep in grease and sausage
that won't quit, raise a glass and party a while, and then come here to identify
with the lamb of God who loved us and gave himself for us. It is not either/or. It
is both/and. That is to be honestly human. That is to be all that God intends us to
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
be, and when we live that way, then I suspect that increasingly with age, with
wrinkles and creases, our visage will reflect joy.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Epiphany VIII
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Religion and the Human Story
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Romans 7:14-25, Mark 2:18-28
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Honestly Human
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Richard A. Rhem
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Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 2, 2003 entitled "Honestly Human", as part of the series "Religion and the Human Story", on the occasion of Epiphany VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 7:14-25, Mark 2:18-28.
Celebration of Life
Nature of Religion
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc9fb5ec87656c25a44f374a24718fea.pdf
5e804818a1b0ad975f077a7946500f15
PDF Text
Text
The Nature and Function of Religion
From the 1999 Summer Lecture Series
How My Mind Has Changed
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 13, 1999
Transcribed from the handwritten document
As I have been brooding over the ways in which my mind has changed over the
course of the last three decades, and especially in the decade of the 90s, I am
aware that there has been a major shift in my understanding of the nature and
function of religion - the subject of this second lecture. When I determined the
four themes to be treated in this series, I was thinking in the broadest of
categories that constitute my present understanding, this lecture being the
broadest, leading then to how I understand the manifestation or revelation of the
Sacred, the Holy, the Mystery we call God which has been articulated and
expressed in the tradition in creedal formula, liturgical forms, progress, rituals
and music, all of which has been institutionalized in ecclesiastical structures.
That is the flow of my thinking as I have attempted to map out how my mind has
changed and thereby to express where I find myself as a Christian, as a religious
person.
But, as I begin to articulate how I understand the nature and function of religion,
I become aware that where I find myself is the consequence of several small steps
taken as a consequence of a growing awareness that was emerging on the basis of
ongoing study, reflection and experience. And that makes me aware that I might
have structured this mind change series quite differently. I might have thought
through the specific doctrinal formulations that came into conflict with my
ongoing experience of being human and of dealing with others in the ambiguity
of their lives, as well as simply living in the world with its social, economic,
political and religious realities. I could then have dealt with those small steps, one
by one, building the cumulative result into a new framework of understanding of
religion and specifically, Christian faith.
Such an approach would take a great deal of reflection, of reconstruction of how a
doctrinal claim of the tradition began to be questioned or how some new insight
that proved compelling conflicted with a traditional doctrinal formulation. What
were the triggers of the smaller changes that eventuated in a wholesale
revisioning of the tradition?
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Doctrinal systems are just that - systems. We speak thus of systematic theology
that gathers biblical data and doctrinal statements into a coherent whole. One
will usually begin the re-thinking process with specific questions to the tradition
and there is certainly room for some adjustment within a systematic theology, but
eventually, if the process of calling in question and reformulation continues, the
system itself is broken and a revisioning occurs.
I have chosen, for better or worse, to begin with the big picture – how my mind
has changed on the nature and function of religion. But, in setting that revision
forth, I will obviously make reference to those significant points of conflict and
shifts in understanding that eventuated in my present perspective.
The Nature of Religion
The word religion derives from the Latin: religio from refigare, “to bind back;” re
and tigare, “to bind, to bind together.” Among the dictionary’s several
definitions, I find “a state of mind or way of life expressing love for and trust in
God, and one’s will and effort to act according to the will of God ...,” and also,
“any object of conscientious regard and pursuit.”
In his classic study, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
acknowledged a certain arbitrariness in the manner in which he would treat
religion, defining it for his purposes as “The feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in
relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” Hendrikus Berkhof in his
Christian Faith, described religion as “The relationship to the Absolute,” and
amidst all the diversity of religious expression and content, Berkhof noted that
nearly all religions have three elements: “The element of myth, teaching, or
proclamation; a sacred rite or cult; and rules for moral conduct.” He goes on,
The first concerns the manner in which the Absolute opens up, the second
man’s immediate response, and the third the consequences of such
knowledge and salvation for his everyday life. (p. 8)
Some add a fourth element, Berkhof notes, “That of inner experience, the
mystical component of religion.”
William James was not interested in the established institutional forms and
observances of the respective world religions, but rather, the immediate
experience of the Holy, the Sacred, of God in personal experience. In making this
point he describes, in contrast, the ordinary religious believer who follows the
conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian or
Moslem. Of such a person, he writes,
His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by
tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.
(Varieties, p. 24)
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Such conventional observance James calls “second-hand religious life.”
That is a critical distinction which becomes obvious when we think about it, but
still it is seldom recognized; the great world religions are institutionalized and
regularized. There is a teaching, an observance, a way of life and the adherents of
the respective religions receive all of this second-hand. It may or may not become
the means by which and through which one has a first-hand religious experience.
But, it is also obvious that the great religious traditions each had a beginning in
some founding, first-hand experience, which then eventuated in the tradition,
regularized and routinized.
Where does the religious experience arise, an experience that is universally
human? In his study, Enduring Issues in Religion, John Lyden writes,
... human experience seems to contain a religious dimension, however we
may define that dimension. We cannot ignore the human desire to
question our origins and our goals, the meaning and purpose of our
existence, the reason for our lives. We strive for something more, even
when we are unsure what it is. A mystery pervades our existence - a
mystery we can approach through means such as faith, hope and courage.
Some have said that no answer can be found to the mystery, for humans
have created it and no suprahuman or supranatural answer exists. Perhaps
we long for a purpose to our existence, hidden in some other plan of reality
and flinch at the idea that there may be no such transcendent purpose.
But, even if one chooses to see no purpose, one still acknowledges that the
desire to find a purpose is part of human life. For better or worse, we
almost instinctively seek meaning, and this is when we enter the religious
realm. (p. 12f)
Lyden points to what has been perhaps the critical issue regarding the
phenomenon of religion:
Is it the consequence of God, or the Sacred, or the Holy impressing
itself upon the human consciousness, or is it a humanly created,
humanly generated phenomenon having no counterpoint, no
objective reality beyond the human who would then be simply
projecting outward from inward consciousness a Being or Reality of
its own creation?
This question will need to be faced more in depth in the following lectures
when we deal with the idea of revelation or manifestation. I point to it
here, however, because this critical issue was raised by the German
philosopher/theologian Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) who published in
1841 his The Essence of Christianity, in which he claimed religion was the
result of human projection of an infinite, transcendent Being on the screen
of reality. In an introductory essay to the Harper Torchbook edition
(1957), Karl Barth wrote,
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
He [Feuerbach] only wants the honest confession that the alleged
mystery of religion is of man: that man is dreaming when he
imagines that a Something Other, objectively confronting him, is
that ground, that whence, that necessity and that law; is the source
from which his wishes and ideals flow, and is the sea of fulfillment
toward which they tend. Man is dreaming instead of recognizing
that it is his own being, his desire and duty to live as a man, which
he, as a religious man, quite rightly equates with God. (p.xvi)
Barth quotes Feuerbach thus:
In religion man frees himself from the limitations of life; here he throws
off what oppresses, impedes, or adversely affects him; God is man’s selfawareness, emancipated from all actuality; man feels himself free, happy,
blessed only in his religion, because here only does he live in his true
genius, here he celebrates his Sunday.
In the opening chapter, “The Essential Nature of Man,” Feuerbach writes,
Religion, being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then
identical with self-consciousness - with the consciousness which man has
of his nature. But religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the
infinite, thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which
man has of his own - not finite and limited, but infinite nature. (p. 2)
Under a section entitled “The Essence of Religion Considered Generally,”
Feuerbach claims without qualification,
Consciousness of God is self-consciousness; knowledge of God is selfknowledge. (p. 12)
And further:
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in this: that what by an
earlier religion was regarded as objective, is now recognized as subjective;
that is, what was formerly contemplated and worshiped as God is now
perceived to be something human. (p. 13)
One readily recognizes that these claims will have to be dealt with in the following
lecture theme on revelation, scripture and tradition, but I set Feuerbach’s claims
here in the discussion of the nature and function of religion because we are
focusing on this human phenomenon and no one has pointed as clearly or
described so acutely the human element in religion as Feuerbach. In his Does
God Exist? (1978), Hans Küng gave extensive treatment to Feuerbach from whom
he traced the whole development of modern atheism through Marx, Freud, and
finally the nihilism of Nietzsche. He writes.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Even today - it is scarcely necessary to stress the fact - Feuerbach is
anything but passé. From that time onward there has been no form of
atheism that did not draw on Feuerbach’s arguments. Even today, then, we
must ask seriously if Feuerbach’s critique of religion is not really justified.
(p. 204)
Feuerbach’s claim must be taken seriously, but Küng’s critique is certainly valid.
Even if we grant that there is a good deal of projection in the practice of religion
and if we grant that religion is a human phenomenon, that does not establish the
non-existence of God. Küng grants the possibility of Feuerbach’s contention:
For why should it not be possible for our consciousness, knowledge,
aspiration to be oriented to nothing, to a sham and not to a real infinite?
Certainly the intention and infinity of our consciousness is still no proof of
the existence of an infinite reality independent of our consciousness?
(p. 205)
However, Küng continues, though this was Feuerbach’s claim, he never proved it.
The question must in fact remain open. The only conclusion that logically
follows from Feuerbach’s argument is that the orientation of human
consciousness toward an infinite does not provide any evidence of the
existence or non-existence of an infinite reality independent of our
consciousness. (p. 206)
I find it fascinating to trace the course of this question from Feuerbach through
Karl Barth to the present represented in the work of Gordon Kaufman, recently
retired from Harvard.
Barth claimed the roots of Feuerbach can be traced to Friedrich Schleiermacher
(1768-1834), who published in 1799 his famous lectures On Religion- Speeches to
Its Cultured Despisers. In the Forward to a 1994 edition, Jack Forstman wrote of
this work that, in it, Schleiermacher had
…presented an utterly fresh understanding of religion. It was, of course,
not without points of contact in the past, but Schleiermacher’s
presentation stood in bold contrast with the views that were prevalent in
that time (dogmatic orthodoxy, speculative neology, enlightened “natural
religion,” and Pietism). Second, he set forth a view of religion that was in
principle free from reliance on authority. Third, he described religion as
belonging essentially to the human sphere and thus as essentially limited.
Truly religious people are never able to claim that they possess the truth as
such, and in its entirety. Fourth, his approach to religion was descriptive
and analytical... he tried to “display” what actually constitutes religion.
Finally, he tried to show that religion is inevitably social and thus always
has a definite form... (p. ix,f)
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
In the highly educated, highly cultured Berlin society, Schleiermacher was
attempting to make the case for the reality and authenticity of religion and
religious observance. The “climate of opinion” disallowed appeal to an
authoritarian base or dogmatic formulations of the past. His only alternative in
that context was to find a new foundation for religion and he found that new
foundation in human nature itself in the “feeling of absolute dependence.”
The common element in all howsoever diverse expressions of piety, by
which there are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in
other words, the self-identical essence of piety, is this: The consciousness
of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in
relation with God.
In attributing religion to the feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher was
rooting religious life in the human subject, although he was in no sense denying
the reality of God. It was God who created the feeling within the human that
pointed him or her to such dependence. In placing the root of religion in the
human, however, Barth claimed Schleiermacher transformed theology into
anthropology. Küng following Barth raised the question:
Was Feuerbach not right to see his philosophy as the end phase of a
Protestant theology that -as he thought- long before his time had become
an anthropology so that he needed only to understand and appropriate its
real intentions? Does not the danger become apparent at this point of a
theology in Schleiermacher’s style which makes the reality of God
dependent on the religious experience and emotional needs of the devout
human subject? But is not the danger also evident of a contemporary
“political theology” which reduces theology to a “critical theory of history”
or of “society”? Is it not clear at this point how close we are to atheism if
we do not distinguish between theological and anthropological
propositions, if we identify man’s interest with God’s, if we one-sidedly
stress God’s nonobjectivity, almost see God as absorbed in our neighbor
and the mystery of being, simply as the mystery of love? (p. 214)
Küng quotes Feuerbach as declaring unambiguously,
My atheism [is] merely the unconscious and actual atheism of modern
humanity and science, made conscious, untwisted and openly declared.
(p. 211)
Karl Barth had respect for Feuerbach, for his passion, his clarity of understanding
what he was doing. Barth saw him and his views as the inevitable end to which
beginning to talk of God by talking about humanity must lead. Barth’s great
reversal of 19th century liberalism, which had been fathered by Schleiermacher
and had developed throughout the 19th century in Continental theology,
especially in Germany, was the total rejection of beginning with the human
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
subject. Barth begins with God, the “Wholly Other” who encounters the human in
the Word, a word of judgment and grace.
I cannot go into this further except to say that Barth’s strong emphasis on God’s
revelation - the word that came “vertically from above” and contradicts humanity
was the needed proclamation in post-World War I Europe as the demonic
National Socialism was on the rise in Germany. Eventually, however, even his
younger admirer and colleague, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, criticized Barth’s theology
as marked by “the positivism of revelation.”
References:
Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Religion. Prometheus Books, 2004.
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human
Nature. (First published 1902) Create Space Indep. Publishers, 2009.
Hans Küng. Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today. (Originally published 1978)
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006.
John Lyden. Enduring Issues in Religion: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven
Press, 1994.
Friedrich Schleiermacher. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.
(originally published 1797); Nabu Press, 2010.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/df8c8cc109f896d4156fa63c08482cd4.pdf
da03f1427b93014baedcbb583fe82d24
PDF Text
Text
The Nature and Function of Religion
From the Summer 1999 Lecture Series
How My Mind Has Changed
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 13, 1999
Prepared Text
As I have been brooding over the ways in which my mind has changed over the
course of the last three decades, and especially in the decade of the 90s, I am
aware that there has been a major shift in my understanding of the nature and
function of religion - the subject of this second lecture. When I determined the
four themes to be treated in this series, I was thinking in the broadest of
categories that constitute my present understanding, this lecture being the
broadest, leading then to how I understand the manifestation or revelation of the
Sacred, the Holy, the Mystery we call God which has been articulated and
expressed in the tradition in creedal formula, liturgical forms, progress, rituals
and music, all of which has been institutionalized in ecclesiastical structures.
That is the flow of my thinking as I have attempted to map out how my mind has
changed and thereby to express where I find myself as a Christian, as a religious
person.
But, as I begin to articulate how I understand the nature and function of religion,
I become aware that where I find myself is the consequence of several small steps
taken as a consequence of a growing awareness that was emerging on the basis of
ongoing study, reflection and experience. And that makes me aware that I might
have structured this mind change series quite differently. I might have thought
through the specific doctrinal formulations that came into conflict with my
ongoing experience of being human and of dealing with others in the ambiguity
of their lives, as well as simply living in the world with its social, economic,
political and religious realities. I could then have dealt with those small steps, one
by one, building the cumulative result into a new framework of understanding of
religion and specifically, Christian faith.
Such an approach would take a great deal of reflection, of reconstruction of how a
doctrinal claim of the tradition began to be questioned or how some new insight
that proved compelling conflicted with a traditional doctrinal formulation. What
were the triggers of the smaller changes that eventuated in a wholesale
revisioning of the tradition?
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Doctrinal systems are just that - systems. We speak thus of systematic theology
that gathers biblical data and doctrinal statements into a coherent whole. One
will usually begin the re-thinking process with specific questions to the tradition
and there is certainly room for some adjustment within a systematic theology, but
eventually, if the process of calling in question and reformulation continues, the
system itself is broken and a revisioning occurs.
I have chosen, for better or worse, to begin with the big picture – how my mind
has changed on the nature and function of religion. But, in setting that revision
forth, I will obviously make reference to those significant points of conflict and
shifts in understanding that eventuated in my present perspective.
The Nature of Religion
The word religion derives from the Latin: religio from refigare, “to bind back;” re
and tigare, “to bind, to bind together.” Among the dictionary’s several
definitions, I find “a state of mind or way of life expressing love for and trust in
God, and one’s will and effort to act according to the will of God ...,” and also,
“any object of conscientious regard and pursuit.”
In his classic study, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
acknowledged a certain arbitrariness in the manner in which he would treat
religion, defining it for his purposes as “The feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in
relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” Hendrikus Berkhof in his
Christian Faith, described religion as “The relationship to the Absolute,” and
amidst all the diversity of religious expression and content, Berkhof noted that
nearly all religions have three elements: “The element of myth, teaching, or
proclamation; a sacred rite or cult; and rules for moral conduct.” He goes on,
The first concerns the manner in which the Absolute opens up, the second
man’s immediate response, and the third the consequences of such
knowledge and salvation for his everyday life. (p. 8)
Some add a fourth element, Berkhof notes, “That of inner experience, the
mystical component of religion.”
William James was not interested in the established institutional forms and
observances of the respective world religions, but rather, the immediate
experience of the Holy, the Sacred, of God in personal experience. In making this
point he describes, in contrast, the ordinary religious believer who follows the
conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian or
Moslem. Of such a person, he writes,
His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by
tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.
(Varieties, p. 24)
© Grand Valley State University
�The Nature and Function of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Such conventional observance James calls “second-hand religious life.”
That is a critical distinction which becomes obvious when we think about it, but
still it is seldom recognized; the great world religions are institutionalized and
regularized. There is a teaching, an observance, a way of life and the adherents of
the respective religions receive all of this second-hand. It may or may not become
the means by which and through which one has a first-hand religious experience.
But, it is also obvious that the great religious traditions each had a beginning in
some founding, first-hand experience, which then eventuated in the tradition,
regularized and routinized.
Where does the religious experience arise, an experience that is universally
human? In his study, Enduring Issues in Religion, John Lyden writes,
... human experience seems to contain a religious dimension, however we
may define that dimension. We cannot ignore the human desire to
question our origins and our goals, the meaning and purpose of our
existence, the reason for our lives. We strive for something more, even
when we are unsure what it is. A mystery pervades our existence - a
mystery we can approach through means such as faith, hope and courage.
Some have said that no answer can be found to the mystery, for humans
have created it and no suprahuman or supranatural answer exists. Perhaps
we long for a purpose to our existence, hidden in some other plan of reality
and flinch at the idea that there may be no such transcendent purpose.
But, even if one chooses to see no purpose, one still acknowledges that the
desire to find a purpose is part of human life. For better or worse, we
almost instinctively seek meaning, and this is when we enter the religious
realm. (p. 12f)
Lyden points to what has been perhaps the critical issue regarding the
phenomenon of religion:
Is it the consequence of God, or the Sacred, or the Holy impressing
itself upon the human consciousness, or is it a humanly created,
humanly generated phenomenon having no counterpoint, no
objective reality beyond the human who would then be simply
projecting outward from inward consciousness a Being or Reality of
its own creation?
This question will need to be faced more in depth in the following lectures
when we deal with the idea of revelation or manifestation. I point to it
here, however, because this critical issue was raised by the German
philosopher/theologian Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) who published in
1841 his The Essence of Christianity, in which he claimed religion was the
result of human projection of an infinite, transcendent Being on the screen
of reality. In an introductory essay to the Harper Torchbook edition
(1957), Karl Barth wrote,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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He [Feuerbach] only wants the honest confession that the alleged
mystery of religion is of man: that man is dreaming when he
imagines that a Something Other, objectively confronting him, is
that ground, that whence, that necessity and that law; is the source
from which his wishes and ideals flow, and is the sea of fulfillment
toward which they tend. Man is dreaming instead of recognizing
that it is his own being, his desire and duty to live as a man, which
he, as a religious man, quite rightly equates with God. (p.xvi)
Barth quotes Feuerbach thus:
In religion man frees himself from the limitations of life; here he throws
off what oppresses, impedes, or adversely affects him; God is man’s selfawareness, emancipated from all actuality; man feels himself free, happy,
blessed only in his religion, because here only does he live in his true
genius, here he celebrates his Sunday.
In the opening chapter, “The Essential Nature of Man,” Feuerbach writes,
Religion, being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then
identical with self-consciousness - with the consciousness which man has
of his nature. But religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the
infinite, thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which
man has of his own - not finite and limited, but infinite nature. (p. 2)
Under a section entitled “The Essence of Religion Considered Generally,”
Feuerbach claims without qualification,
Consciousness of God is self-consciousness; knowledge of God is selfknowledge. (p. 12)
And further:
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in this: that what by an
earlier religion was regarded as objective, is now recognized as subjective;
that is, what was formerly contemplated and worshiped as God is now
perceived to be something human. (p. 13)
One readily recognizes that these claims will have to be dealt with in the following
lecture theme on revelation, scripture and tradition, but I set Feuerbach’s claims
here in the discussion of the nature and function of religion because we are
focusing on this human phenomenon and no one has pointed as clearly or
described so acutely the human element in religion as Feuerbach. In his Does
God Exist? (1978), Hans Küng gave extensive treatment to Feuerbach from whom
he traced the whole development of modern atheism through Marx, Freud, and
finally the nihilism of Nietzsche. He writes.
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Richard A. Rhem
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Even today - it is scarcely necessary to stress the fact - Feuerbach is
anything but passé. From that time onward there has been no form of
atheism that did not draw on Feuerbach’s arguments. Even today, then, we
must ask seriously if Feuerbach’s critique of religion is not really justified.
(p. 204)
Feuerbach’s claim must be taken seriously, but Küng’s critique is certainly valid.
Even if we grant that there is a good deal of projection in the practice of religion
and if we grant that religion is a human phenomenon, that does not establish the
non-existence of God. Küng grants the possibility of Feuerbach’s contention:
For why should it not be possible for our consciousness, knowledge,
aspiration to be oriented to nothing, to a sham and not to a real infinite?
Certainly the intention and infinity of our consciousness is still no proof of
the existence of an infinite reality independent of our consciousness?
(p. 205)
However, Küng continues, though this was Feuerbach’s claim, he never proved it.
The question must in fact remain open. The only conclusion that logically
follows from Feuerbach’s argument is that the orientation of human
consciousness toward an infinite does not provide any evidence of the
existence or non-existence of an infinite reality independent of our
consciousness. (p. 206)
I find it fascinating to trace the course of this question from Feuerbach through
Karl Barth to the present represented in the work of Gordon Kaufman, recently
retired from Harvard.
Barth claimed the roots of Feuerbach can be traced to Friedrich Schleiermacher
(1768-1834), who published in 1799 his famous lectures On Religion- Speeches to
Its Cultured Despisers. In the Forward to a 1994 edition, Jack Forstman wrote of
this work that, in it, Schleiermacher had
…presented an utterly fresh understanding of religion. It was, of course,
not without points of contact in the past, but Schleiermacher’s
presentation stood in bold contrast with the views that were prevalent in
that time (dogmatic orthodoxy, speculative neology, enlightened “natural
religion,” and Pietism). Second, he set forth a view of religion that was in
principle free from reliance on authority. Third, he described religion as
belonging essentially to the human sphere and thus as essentially limited.
Truly religious people are never able to claim that they possess the truth as
such, and in its entirety. Fourth, his approach to religion was descriptive
and analytical... he tried to “display” what actually constitutes religion.
Finally, he tried to show that religion is inevitably social and thus always
has a definite form... (p. ix,f)
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In the highly educated, highly cultured Berlin society, Schleiermacher was
attempting to make the case for the reality and authenticity of religion and
religious observance. The “climate of opinion” disallowed appeal to an
authoritarian base or dogmatic formulations of the past. His only alternative in
that context was to find a new foundation for religion and he found that new
foundation in human nature itself in the “feeling of absolute dependence.”
The common element in all howsoever diverse expressions of piety, by
which there are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in
other words, the self-identical essence of piety, is this: The consciousness
of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in
relation with God.
In attributing religion to the feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher was
rooting religious life in the human subject, although he was in no sense denying
the reality of God. It was God who created the feeling within the human that
pointed him or her to such dependence. In placing the root of religion in the
human, however, Barth claimed Schleiermacher transformed theology into
anthropology. Küng following Barth raised the question:
Was Feuerbach not right to see his philosophy as the end phase of a
Protestant theology that -as he thought- long before his time had become
an anthropology so that he needed only to understand and appropriate its
real intentions? Does not the danger become apparent at this point of a
theology in Schleiermacher’s style which makes the reality of God
dependent on the religious experience and emotional needs of the devout
human subject? But is not the danger also evident of a contemporary
“political theology” which reduces theology to a “critical theory of history”
or of “society”? Is it not clear at this point how close we are to atheism if
we do not distinguish between theological and anthropological
propositions, if we identify man’s interest with God’s, if we one-sidedly
stress God’s nonobjectivity, almost see God as absorbed in our neighbor
and the mystery of being, simply as the mystery of love? (p. 214)
Küng quotes Feuerbach as declaring unambiguously,
My atheism [is] merely the unconscious and actual atheism of modern
humanity and science, made conscious, untwisted and openly declared.
(p. 211)
Karl Barth had respect for Feuerbach, for his passion, his clarity of understanding
what he was doing. Barth saw him and his views as the inevitable end to which
beginning to talk of God by talking about humanity must lead. Barth’s great
reversal of 19th century liberalism, which had been fathered by Schleiermacher
and had developed throughout the 19th century in Continental theology,
especially in Germany, was the total rejection of beginning with the human
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subject. Barth begins with God, the “Wholly Other” who encounters the human in
the Word, a word of judgment and grace.
I cannot go into this further except to say that Barth’s strong emphasis on God’s
revelation - the word that came “vertically from above” and contradicts humanity
was the needed proclamation in post-World War I Europe as the demonic
National Socialism was on the rise in Germany. Eventually, however, even his
younger admirer and colleague, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, criticized Barth’s theology
as marked by “the positivism of revelation.”
References:
Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Religion. Prometheus Books, 2004.
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human
Nature. (First published 1902) Create Space Indep. Publishers, 2009.
Hans Küng. Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today. (Originally published 1978)
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006.
John Lyden. Enduring Issues in Religion: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven
Press, 1994.
Friedrich Schleiermacher. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.
(originally published 1797); Nabu Press, 2010.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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b5c128296a32aba34019c52cfadcc852
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Summer Lecture Series: How My Mind Has Changed, #2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, 2009, Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Religion, 2004, Hans Hans Küng. Does God Exist?, 1978,2006, John Lyden. Enduring Issues in Religion,1994
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The Nature and Function of Religion
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 13, 1999 entitled "The Nature and Function of Religion", as part of the series "Summer Lecture Series: How My Mind Has Changed, #2", at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Nature of Religion, Reimagining the Faith, Spiritual Quest. Scripture references: William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, 2009, Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Religion, 2004, Hans Hans Küng. Does God Exist?, 1978,2006, John Lyden. Enduring Issues in Religion,1994
Nature of Religion
Reimagining the Faith
Spiritual Quest
-
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PDF Text
Text
Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 30, 1989
Transcription of the spoken lecture
I am giving you the first of three introductory looks at the proposed fall seminar
with Ira Progoff. I wanted to begin now because I want to give you a bit of my
rather slight understanding of Progoff and also to let you know why I was
interested in Progoff in the beginning and why I believe that to bring the Journal
Workshop to this community is the kind of thing that I would like Christ
Community Church to do as a service to the broader community. I am going to
try to stick somewhat to my area and not get into an area which is not at all my
own, namely, the whole field of psychology and specifically depth psychology,
because I know very little about it. But I see in the work of Progoff, in the
knowledge I’ve had of it and of the persons with whom I’ve spoken, the kind of
resource that would be valuable for persons, for many kinds of persons, a broad
spectrum of persons, and therefore I have been rather excited about the
possibility of getting him here.
Getting him here is no small feat, and I guess he does only 4 or 5 Journal
Workshops a year across the country. But, wonder of wonders, the man himself
has agreed to come here this fall. I think to have the presence of someone like Ira
Progoff in itself is significant and very meaningful.
I have divided up what I want to say to you tonight into a few sections. The first
thing I want to say is just a word about who I am, because some of you are from
Christ Community, and some of you are from parts beyond. I want to say that I
understand myself and I understand Christ Community as a kind of purveyor of
this experience. Probably after tonight these kinds of things won't need to be said,
but I want to say them at the outset. I want you to know that I am, first of all, a
Christian person. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and I have found God through
Christ and the grace of God experienced in Jesus Christ. I'm just a simple
believer.
Beyond that, my vocation, my profession, is that of a theologian and a pastor. I
didn't know whether to put pastor first or theologian first, but I learned a little
about my self-understanding because I put theologian first. And that means that I
am a Christian who, in his vocational and professional life, is constantly trying to
understand Christian faith and tradition and Christian existence in the larger
context of the human experience. I'm always trying to do that. I am a pastor; I
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Richard A. Rhem
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have pastoral responsibilities for this community of faith, but I think this
community of faith, as we have postured ourselves, is concerned about the larger
community, the total community beyond our bounds. And so, that's who I am.
You have to know that I am a bridge person, or a boundary person. I always live
"on the edge." I live on the edge of the Church. I almost can't stand to live in the
Church. It's restricting; I get disappointed with it; I get frustrated with it. What
little hair I have left I could tear out at the behavior of the Church, which, I think,
in its institutional form has become rather rigid, has become very defensive, and
has lost the sense of movement with which, of course, it began in the aftermath of
Jesus Christ. It has become an institution with a lot of vested interest and a lot of
structure and harness and all that kind of “stuff” to preserve. I think most of its
posture is characterized by defensiveness and conserving and preserving, rather
than stretching and probing and pushing. So I always live with uneasy
relationship with the Church. I am a boundary person or a bridge person, and, as
I understand myself, I feel it my calling to try to understand the whole spectrum
of human knowledge in the light of the Gospel, and the larger Christian tradition,
but then to attempt to translate that Gospel in the light of that context. So, it's
always a two-way back and forth with me.
I believe that in the scriptures I have a history of Israel and the event of Jesus
Christ which is a given for me. But then the other pole is the present horizon, the
world in which we live. It seems to me that the task of the theologian is to
constantly be living between those two poles: trying to understand that which is
given in the revelation in Israel and in Jesus; and to understand as much as
possible the larger cultural context with its various human disciplines; and then
seeking from that understanding of the larger culture to have questions
addressed to the Gospel, which I believe bring new insights out of the Gospel; but
also bringing the Gospel to bear on our culture so that culture is not absolute but
is always under judgment of the Gospel. So, one must live in that kind of tension.
I think the systematic theologian has the largest task of any thinker, frankly. We
live in a world of great specialization. More and more people know more and
more about less and less. And we know that the academic world is characterized
by a lack of communication, a breakdown of communication and deep
specialization where there is no longer the ability to communicate across
disciplines. But the theologian is the one who claims to speak of God and, if God
is the source and the ground of truth, then to speak of God is to speak of that
whole spectrum, and therefore to be responsible to provide that umbrella that
can bring some kind of unity and coherence to the respective human disciplines.
Now, that's how I understand what I'm about and I love it and am fascinated by
it, and I think that it is important to me as a rooted and committed Christian to
be in that kind of dialogue and conversation with the broader spectrum of human
learning. And then, let me say a word about this particular community of faith.
One of the models by which we have shaped ourselves over the past couple of
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Richard A. Rhem
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decades – one which I enunciated back in 1971, which had come to me in my own
studies and kind of existential quest – was that this community should always
seek to combine intellectual integrity with evangelical passion. The uniting of
head and heart. Intellectual integrity, searching honestly for truth, wherever that
may lead, in the confidence that the source of truth is in God and that God's
revelation in Jesus Christ is an expression of that ultimate truth, and that
therefore any genuine quest for truth cannot be something that will lead away
from but, rather, to God, to the extent that it is an authentic quest. But also with
evangelical passion, for we are not finally on a head trip, but we are engaged in
seeking to bring good news to persons. And we are about human transformation
here. We are about the transformation of the human person, which is more than
communicating a system of doctrines or structure of belief. That is a means;
that's all part of the mix. But, what we really are concerned to do is to see a
human person transformed, moving toward wholeness.
The best model that I can give you for that which we have had some experience
with here, is the AA model, where various steps are set forth which are simply a
borrowing of the Gospel without the names attached, but which lead to the
transformation of persons. And I believe that what we see in the movement of AA
is really what should be happening and happens all too little in the Christian
Church. Through that genuine encounter, that community of support, that total
acceptance and openness, which allows genuine confession and self-exposure in a
healing environment, there does occur the transformation and the healing of the
person. And the healing of the person is to say about the individual what we hope
for the larger picture, and that is the humanization of society. Now, that may
sound very humanistic. But, I happen to think that God is about a very
humanistic thing. I think that God is about gracing persons in order to release
their full potential and to recreate them into the image of Jesus Christ who, I
believe, is the human person par excellence, and that the Kingdom of God is the
rule of God or the reign of God and, where the reign of God is recognized, there
will be a very human society. So, I could speak about the Kingdom of God, but
just to keep it kind of down to earth, let me say once again, the transformation of
the person and the humanization of society - that, I think, is what we must be
about.
And of course, our resources are dynamic; our power, our vision comes out of our
understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and we do believe, as Scott
Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, that this is a graced universe, and that
there is a grace operative in the world at large which is a healing and positive
movement of God toward this world and toward persons.
So, that's kind of in a nutshell the way we operate here. That's what this
community of faith, this particular congregation, is all about. To the extent that
people have come and the church has prospered, to that extent, anybody that has
come in has kind of bought that vision, and I suppose that I'm guilty of shaping it
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in large measure, but that always happens when you get to stand up front once a
week, front and center.
So, we are a Christian congregation, and yet we see, I believe, a broader world out
there. We are not content to live a kind of parochial life of a Christian
congregation, within a Christian tradition, but would seek to understand
ourselves and to relate in a positive way to the broader cultural spectrum, and to
the world of spirit in whatever form that manifests itself.
I happen to believe that we are on the threshold of a new inter-dialogue among
the religions, and I think it is inevitable. The earth has shrunk to the size of a
grapefruit, and we really are members of a global community. It is no longer such
that we have a largely Protestant religion in America, and that you go East to find
Buddhism, and you go to the Middle East to find Islam or whatever. It's all over.
The crosscurrents of religious expression are everywhere, whether you go to Ann
Arbor or Chicago or New York, Los Angeles, you can find it all. Not only can you
find it all, but also you can find all kinds of offbeat brands more and more. The
religious resurgence in our day is one of the remarkable phenomena of this last
quarter of the 20th century. It seems to be incumbent upon us to be in dialogue
with that larger religious scene.
I brought along this little study of Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker. Martin
Buber is very deeply knowledgeable of Christian faith, thinks very highly of Jesus,
does not understand Jesus as I understand him, but nonetheless really sees a
kind of movement of Messianism as he, as a Jew, understands it coming to
expression in Jesus. But he says, speaking to Christians,
It behooves both you and us to hold inviably fast to our own true faith, that
is, to our own deepest relationship to truth. It behooves both of us to show
a religious respect for the true faith of the other. That is not what is called
tolerance. Our task is not to tolerate each other's waywardness, but to
acknowledge the real relationship in which both stand to the truth.
Whenever we both, Christian and Jew, care more for God Himself than for
images of God, we are united in the feeling that our Father's house is
differently constructed than our human models take it to be.
Now that is a much broader understanding than has been true of Orthodox
Christianity, which would see other religions as expressions of error. It is the
understanding of my mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, who says that, since the split of
the Jewish and the Christian religions, God has had two peoples, and Berkhof
bases that on his own biblical understanding of the irrevocable covenant that God
has entered into with the Jewish people. That question is debated among
Christian theologians and there is difference of opinion on it.
The point is I think we need to be deeply rooted. Let me say, personally (I don't
want to take you in on this), I need to be deeply rooted in my tradition. I need to
be deeply rooted, deeply committed, and I must bring to the discussion my
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Richard A. Rhem
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deepest and best understanding of Christian faith, and not try to just jot that
down and remove the sharp contours of that in order to make it fit, but only as I
do that as genuinely as I can can I engage in genuine dialogue with someone like
a Martin Buber who will be genuinely Jewish.
Harvey Cox is a theologian who has written a number of books, one of which is
Many Mansions. He's been involved in much of this dialogue among the religions
and it's his feeling that what we need in this inter-religious dialogue is not so
much seeking to find the lowest common denominator, as bringing into the
discussion the sharpest focus of each understanding, so that there can be genuine
meeting and encounter.
Well, let me say that that kind of dialogue I affirm. I'm not afraid of it. I don't
think that our faith is so fragile that we will be tainted. I don't think that. I used to
think that I had to protect my people. I used to think that one of my tasks as a
pastor was to protect my people from error. Now I find that my people are well
able to handle themselves in such areas, and that more often I don't generally
really have to protect them. More often, I have to push them. I don't know if it's
true in most congregations, but it's true in this congregation that I'm always
pushing. I'm always trying to push people into risking and into scary places,
because I believe that is faith-building. I don't think that you need to be
sheltered. And, as a matter of fact, I wonder how long in the world in which we
live anybody can be sheltered anymore. I think it could be less and less possible.
All right. That's a little bit about the posture with which we approach this thing.
Let me say a word about what I see in the horizon of our world. You maybe
didn't ask for all of this, but give me an inch and I'll take an hour. I think we're in
a very interesting period in the world's history. I think that the period in which
we find ourselves is toward the end of a period of tremendous revolution and
transformation in human understanding. And I think that we have moved out of
the settled past of maybe eighteen centuries of unquestioned tradition. And we
are at the end of a couple of centuries of thrashing about, experimentation, of
overthrowing old forms and shaking foundations, but we are not yet at a time in
which new contours are clearly set.
Just, for example, the social-political context. If you would read Hans Küng's
Does God Exist?, you would find him tracing the roots of modern atheism. He
would take you back to the Socialist Revolution in Russia, for example. But,
behind that, you would go to the philosophical writings of the German
philosopher, a Protestant pastor's son, Ludwig Feuerbach, who was the first to
speak of religion as a human product, that religion arises out of the human
person, and that God is the projection of our needs. We have these needs; we
create God; we project God onto the screen of reality; we bow down and worship.
The God we worship is the God we need. We created God. Religion is a human
business.
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Richard A. Rhem
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It was on the heels of Feuerbach that you have Karl Marx in the social-economic
realm. You have Sigmund Freud in the psychoanalytical field, and you have
finally Nietzsche with his nihilism, where he came to the conviction that nothing
is nothing and that there is ultimately nothingness, the abyss. I do think that
nihilism is really the logical conclusion of atheism. If God is not, then finally
nothing is. And you can turn everything upside down and there's no reason
for saying that good is evil or evil is good. You have no norms. It's over.
But, if you see that development, you will also see that those people were dealing
with very real issues in history and society which were manifesting themselves,
and the reaction of the Church was, again, one of fear and defensiveness and
refusal to engage in genuine dialogue with the realities of history that were right
there.
The Marxist theory was constructed on the background of a class society in
Europe and the church leadership was very insensitive and not at all in genuine
dialogue. If you take the actual political-social revolution, the Russian Revolution
particularly, you see that it took on this atheistic form because the Church and
the State were joined together; throne and altar were one. To throw over the
government, to throw over the political and economic system was also to throw
over the Church, because the two were joined where the Church ought never to be
joined. Then the whole social revolution that took place took an atheistic bent,
not because the economic theory demanded it, but because the social situation
meant that those two were wedded and when one went, the other went. And if
you come down to our present day and you see how that revolution has kind of
spent itself, it has not brought in Utopia. In fact, Gorbachev would tell us that the
whole thing is a failure and we can well pray that Gorbachev is successful in what
he is about because he has by economic necessity been forced to see that it is
either change and transform that old giant, or it's not viable.
I think that you put all those things together and it is not just business as usual,
but there are some very long-term movements and forces and tides within history
which have created a kind of openness and possibility today, which just haven't
been here in a long time. I think that this is a rather interesting time and it has
peril and it has opportunity. And it's not just some result of an immediate
situation, but I think the gathering of long-term things that have been going on
for a couple of hundred years. The Enlightenment on the European continent, the
Age of Reason which was the continuation of the Renaissance (the Reformation
period was kind of an interruption of that flow), but the whole coming to the
devotion of the human person, of the human mind, of reason, and of throwing off
of authorities of all sorts: Church, Bible, whatever. The authoritarian day is past.
We haven't learned that much in the Church yet. But Authoritarianism is over. In
the world at large I really believe Authoritarianism is over. So that is the socialpolitical context.
Take the scientific world. If you read Steven Hawking, this brilliant English
Quantum physicist, in A Brief History of Time and Space, you find that we live
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on what is the threshold of that discovery of what they call the Theory of
Everything, the theory for which Einstein was questing – that little formula that
would reveal the ultimate core of reality and develop it. In the Christian Science
Monitor of some time ago there was a series, Making the Quantum Leap: A FivePart Series, a fantastic series written in newspaper format, Christian Science
newspaper format, so it's still a little hefty. But even I can almost understand
some of it and it is amazing. I, in my next incarnation, hope to be either a
conductor of a symphony or a physicist. I've always been fascinated by the close
tie between physics and theology. Now, I regret to say that generally the
breakthroughs in physics have been registered in theology rather than the other
way. I'd like to get that reversed some day, but that probably won't ever happen.
But Newton was a Christian thinker, a physicist. And he did his best to maintain
his Christian faith alongside his understanding of the physical universe. But his
system, his understanding of the cosmos actually left no room for God. No, Sir
Isaac never gave up on God, and I'm sure that God never gave up on Sir Isaac.
But, as a matter of fact, the ordered universe of Newtonian physics had no room
for God; it had no room for prayer; it had no room for miracle or any of that.
Now, the amazing thing is that Newtonian physics has been blown sky high.
And Quantum Physics, the understanding of the structure of reality, whether in
its cosmological expanse or in the understanding of the tiniest little molecule and
atom, neuron and electron, speaks of eruption, of the eruption of the new, the
possibility of randomness. It's an open ball game. Einstein hated it. Einstein
hated it! He fought the Quantum Physicist Neils Bohr. Einstein said, "God doesn't
play dice with the universe." He didn't want any randomness. But, nonetheless,
that's where we are today, and it's impressive when you do see a person on the
moon or when a satellite brings a picture from around the world, or your
computer chip does everything you ever wanted done.
The world of religion, the resurgence of fundamentalism in various forms. I read
a statement by Charles Colson the other day. In his new book, Kingdoms in
Conflict, he says, "Not since the Crusades have religious passions and prejudices
posed such a worldwide threat." That's the world we live in today. I think he's
right. Not since the Crusades. If not through a religious zealot or confused idealist
whose finger is on the nuclear trigger, then certainly by destroying the tolerance
and trust essential for maintaining peace and concord among people.
Martin Marty, in a discussion of the aggressiveness and the orneriness of religion
in the world in its manifestation, raised the question, "Is it not possible to be both
civil and committed?" Is it not possible to be both civil and committed? Now, you
see, that is kind of a trick, to be both civil and committed. But too often
commitment has resulted in fanaticism and has wrought all kinds of havoc in the
history of the world. And too often civility has been the result of lack of any real
commitment or passion. To hold those two together is so important.
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Well, that's the world we live in and it is a wonderful fascinating world in which
to be alive. I think that it is a world that has openings for those of us who are
concerned about spiritual reality and human transformation like never before.
Now, let me get more specific with Progoff. Why? What has all this to do with Ira
Progoff? Well, I don't know a great deal about Ira Progoff. But I have heard him
on tape, I've read some of his works and I was first put on to him by a couple of
very respected friends in ministry some years ago, and I know that he has had
wide acceptance in the Catholic church, more so than in the Protestant Church.
But a couple of my friends in the Reformed Church have been part of some of his
activity and have spoken very highly of him.
Ira Progoff is of Jewish origin. He is perhaps best characterized as a JudeoChristian-Buddho spiritual sage. He has milked all of these traditions for
insights, which he has put together with his understanding of depth psychology.
Now, I really am not going to say very much about depth psychology because,
well, I'm going to say everything I know, but that's not very much. I know that
Progoff – having been a student of Carl Jung, Jung having been a student of
Freud but breaking away from Freud – is one who created in his understanding
room again for God, but not a God "out there," which incidentally isn't even in
vogue in the best theology today, but a God in the depths of the unconscious
where there is a kind of meeting of all kinds of consciousness down in some deep
reservoir in the depth of reality.
A depth psychologist believes that the consciousness of the person is the tip of the
iceberg. And I think that that has been rather well documented in terms of the
tremendous structure of the unconscious. And I think images do evolve out of an
unconscious depth. But I don't know much about that. Anyway, that is Progoff's
orientation. He is a spiritual person. He's a deeply spiritual person. He's a
mystical person, in the line of the mystics, I would say. If you want to label him in
terms of Protestant or Jewish theology, he's probably closest to Paul Tillich, a
Christian theologian now dead, and to Martin Buber, whose famous I and Thou
book has made such a great impact in our century.
How Progoff speaks of religion – as I utilize Progoff's understanding of religion –
it is a functional understanding of religion. He is dealing with the function that
religion performs in human life and human society. It is more a question of
functionality than it is a question of truth. Progoff would not want to referee
between the truth claims of Eastern religions or Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
But, he would see in them all a kind of commonality of function, and I believe
that it is perfectly legitimate to look at it that way. Now, that's not all I'm
concerned about, because finally I think that the truth question will obtrude
itself. It certainly will for me. And I am always struggling with the truth question
in Christian faith, in religious expression. But, nonetheless, there can be a very
positive and helpful understanding of the place of religion in the function it
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performs in the person and in society as a whole. And when Progoff speaks about
religion and the religions, he is speaking functionally.
He would see its function as enabling persons to position themselves in
relationship to the transpersonal reality in order that they may experience
guidance and structuring for their outer life. Religion ought to help me to
position myself over against reality that is beyond myself in order that in my
everyday life and living I may have guidance, orientation, to be at home with
myself and at home with the world. Now, if religion does that for a person, it has
done a great, great deal. Progoff would see the various religions as particular
forms and structures, all of which are performing that kind of common function:
to enable me to live as a human being, with other human beings, to enable me to
live as a person over against transpersonal reality.
Sometimes when he speaks, I think of the AA program where you have a Higher
Power. I have encountered, from time to time, a few Christian people who have
been uneasy with that, as though to speak of the Higher Power is to deny either
the uniqueness of Jesus Christ or the God we see in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't
bother me at all. I had an old gentleman in here one day coming off the AA
program and, so help me, a man in his 60s who had absolutely no conception of
God. I had a yellow pad like this and I had a pen, you know, and I'm generally
nervous and I was making signs and I was trying to kind of speak about God and
him down here and I put a big cross between as kind of a bridge and I made this
silly diagram and we talked together and he said, "Somebody said, well, the
Higher Power: just visualize a telephone pole." Well, I made this little thing and
we talked some more and when it was all over I was quite moved as he said to me,
rather moved himself, "May I take that with me?" And I thought to myself, what
hunger. You can call that God or you can put whatever face you want to on it and
I don't think Progoff will argue with you. He will say, "Is it helping you to live
well?"
Now, I do think it is valid for us to take whatever resources we have to help
people to live well. So, Progoff is kind of a mystic who believes that there is a huge
cosmic process that has been about, which is evolving. He reminds me somewhat
of the French Catholic thinker, Teilhard de Chardin, whose works, of course, the
Vatican banned, but then the best things that come from Catholics get banned for
a while. But, de Chardin is an original thinker who sees kind of the Omega point
off there and he sees this whole cosmic process evolving toward that point. And
Progoff believes that it is in the likes of us, in our individual spirits, that Spirit
comes to expression, and that Reality enters the world – it emerges, as it were,
out of the depths – through the individual spirit of a person. His concern is that
we enable persons to become, to be the bearers of Spirit and the expression of
Spirit, and that, as Spirit is able to flow through our spirit and come to some
kind of tangible form, Reality actually enlarges itself and the whole process
continues to go on.
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Richard A. Rhem
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He sees a crisis in the present time because he believes that traditional patterns,
beliefs, doctrines and rituals have lost their grip on people, or people have lost
their grip on traditional symbols and forms. Symbols and forms, be they doctrinal
formulation, sacramental acts, or whatever, can function to put us in touch with
the transpersonal as long as we believe in them. When we don’t believe in them,
they can't do it for us anymore. Now, when you stand in Western Michigan with
all of our churches and with a large Christian community and in a rather
conservative part of the world, it may sound a bit apocalyptic to speak about
secular culture and about people uprooted, cut off from their roots. But, we have
to keep reminding ourselves that this is not all there is, and when he speaks
perhaps with more of a world purview and he speaks out of the context of New
York City and Los Angeles, he probably feels that and senses that more than we
do. Nonetheless, we have to recognize that the world as a whole is not becoming
– now speaking as a Christian and an advocate of the Christian Gospel – the
world as a whole is not becoming more, but is becoming less Christian. We are
becoming a minority. And it is a fact that those traditional patterns and beliefs
and rituals have for large portions of the world population lost their power. But,
the need still remains for that which will put the individual and the larger society
in touch with the transperson, or with God, if you will. And so, the need in our
day is to find the way in which that can happen.
Now, being a depth psychologist, Progoff believes that we will find that truth by
going into the depth dimension, and that God (I'll say God), is perceived, the
knowledge of God is accessible, not through rational formulation, but through
intuitive perception, that it comes not by rational instruction which has been the
hallmark of Reformed tradition, but that it comes through apprehension,
through images, and symbols, that it erupts, that it is not mastered rationally
and discovered.
Now, you know, I have to say, just coming as I have through the season of
Epiphany, I have found myself wrestling with that question week after week.
When you really get some insight, when you really have a "high" experience,
when you really capture something, when there's been a breakthrough for you,
how do you express it? Isn't it, "Suddenly it dawned upon me?" Isn’t it often after
a churning and wrestling and in a moment of insight, and doesn't it often come to
us whole? As I was wrestling with this whole matter of how God reveals God's
self, I was so aware of the fact that it is one thing to say that the light's on; it's
another thing to say, "I see the light." So that we can talk all we want to in
theological and doctrinal terms about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, about
the light shining and all that, but when Progoff speaks about going into the depth
dimension, I have to say that there is something to the fact that God's unveiling of
God's self will happen within us. It must finally be a subjective apprehension, no
matter how much we may clamor for the fact that it is objective and real. You
know, we often equate objectivity with the real. Oh yes, it's certainly real. But
until I believe it, until it grasps me and I say, "Wow," it has not really come full
cycle.
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And so, Progoff’s point for a community such as ours – this is what he would
think:
In a crisis of a culture that has lost its moorings, whose symbols have
largely become empty symbols, he would say, first of all, the church should
give social support to the person, enabling that person to work on his or
her own inner life. If in our day our young people are being told, "Just say
no," Progoff says to the Church, "Just say yes." When there's someone,
some funny person in the congregation, a little odd, a little strange, doesn't
fit the stereotype, talks about the inner journey, why he says, "Just say
yes." Encourage them. Be a place that encourages people to get on with
that work on the inner life.
He says, secondly, let the Church be the social institution and the culture
where work on the inner life can take place. And I like the word he uses
here: "Let the church be a sanctuary where that can happen." You know,
we really ought to be about that, and we really ought to get on with it. I
think about that every Sunday when I see the large assemblage of people,
and then I realize how superficial is my little touch. When they leave for
the rest of the week, what's happening? Are we as a community creating a
sanctuary where people can do more than come in on Sunday morning and
at worst complete the Sunday obligation, at best get a little Sunday
morning high, and hopefully in it all, worship God?
Thirdly, he says, let the Church provide the means and the program
whereby this can be encouraged. And I guess that bringing a seminar like
this here would be a tangible, concrete means by which to expose and offer
to people ways in which to do that.
He remarks about the fact that youth, many of the younger generation, have
taken over Eastern religions lock, stock and barrel. You know, it's faddish, it's
trendy, and those waves happen. It does indicate, however, a real spiritual hunger
and a search and a quest. And he also says, "Look, our generation cannot really
successfully just go back lock, stock and barrel and pick this thing up. I mean, the
new and the different is fascinating, and we understand all that dynamic, but he
says it's not for them to go back and get ancient Buddhist meditation techniques,
but the challenge to us is to find the ways in which they can be put in touch with
God, with the transpersonal reality, in the garments of the 20th century. Find
the methodology. Find the modes, the means by which this can happen, which I
think is the same kind of thing which I said earlier tonight when I said I felt it was
incumbent upon me to translate the Gospel into today's idiom, because that
needs constant translation so that it always comes to expression in the
conceptuality and the language of the particular context in which it is being
proclaimed. Otherwise, it is simply the reiteration of formulas out of the past and
that's fundamentalism – just the literal reiteration of formulas out of the past is
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Richard A. Rhem
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fundamentalism. You don't think about that. You just give obeisance to formulas,
slogans, models, and then you're not really in touch.
So, in his book The Dynamics of Hope, Progoff deals at quite some length with
the experience of Tolstoy who went through a period of tremendous anguish in
his life after being very successful. He was on top of the world socially, culturally,
a great literary success, and he came to a time of a sense of the meaninglessness
of it all. And he tells in some detail Tolstoy's experience and he speaks in The
Dynamics of Hope, of the Utopian person, and that is the person who has this
kind of prophetic sense, who is willing to anguish and struggle, but always in
hope, and out of the anguish and the struggle eventuates the new realm of
experience and insight, which is the prelude to another struggle and anguish,
which eventuates in a new breakthrough, because he sees our human experience
as being an ongoing pilgrimage and process and, for creativity to be released,
there is a need for this constant movement between the struggle and anxiety and
always, however, with the hope undergirding it and breaking through to a new
plateau and a new discovery. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs.
"I began to understand,” Tolstoy reports, “that in the answers given by
faith was to be found the deepest source of human wisdom. That I had no
reasonable right to reject them on the ground of reason, and that these
principle answers alone solve the problems of life. I understood them, but
that did not make it any easier for me.” The fact, in other words, that his
reason was now giving assent to an act of faith of some sort, did not bring
such an act of faith any closer. It did not even make it any more possible.
All that this new intellectual realization achieved, in fact, was to intensify
the internal pressure and to build up an even greater tension around the
vacuum of meaning which he felt in himself. How could he find a faith that
he would not merely be in favor of believing? But one that he would
actually be able to feel as a reality? It would be good if he could accept
some structured body of doctrine that had been worked out in generations
past by an established church. That would not be a fact for him. He would
not feel the reality of such a faith. And so, no matter how much he might
try to convince himself rationally that he ought to place his faith there, the
persistent question about the validity of life would not be silenced.
But, he goes on and he struggles and then he tells about the dream that Tolstoy
had and the peace and the resolution that he came to. I'm not going to do more
with that, but this is a very fine introduction to Progoff’s understanding of the
journey of the individual, and it is his conviction that it is necessary for an
individual to feel his life story and to be able to have a sense of continuity
through the various stages and that in the creative unfoldment of a life there
will be those periods of dark and light.
I was thinking about his understanding of the human experience in contrast to,
for example, someone within the Reformed Church. I shouldn't even say that
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because it's not Reformed, but there is this friend of mine who I know rather well
and who probably most of you would know, as well, Bob Schuller and the Hour of
Power. Bob Schuller with his possibility thinking, which was built on Norman
Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, has done a tremendous amount
for many, many people. He has recognized the importance of self-esteem and he
has brought a positive and hopeful accent, and many people who didn't believe
that they had it in them have found that, after all, they had it in them. My
problem with Schuller is that I feel that sometimes he almost becomes shrill and I
want to say to him sometimes that success isn't always the consequence of
faithfulness or responsibility or effort, and so I always felt that there was
something lacking. There was a depth dimension in the Gospel, if you will, that I
felt never came to expression with Bob Schuller's formulations. I thought to
myself, interestingly, how much closer Progoff is to an understanding of human
personality and the experience of darkness and light, of guilt and forgiveness, of
bondage and freedom. And then, really, not just a once for all thing, although we
believe in a great once for all transformation, but as the ongoing unfoldment of
life, this constant swinging between the poles.
I can understand that in terms of my understanding – my biblical orientation.
Walter Brueggemann in an excellent study of the Psalms speaks about how you
can categorize the Psalms as Psalms of Orientation where creation is good, God's
in his heaven, all's right with the world, everything's ducky; Psalms of
Disorientation, where nothing is right and everything's unraveling; and then
there are Psalms of New Orientation. Brueggemann's point is that life is not
often lived in only orientation or disorientation. Life is generally lived moving
from orientation, disorientation and new orientation, and out of the study of the
Psalms you have that same kind of expression. Our life is a dynamic movement,
and we do move through periods of openness, joy and light; we do move through
valleys and through arid periods and dry periods; and it seems to me that is more
true to human experience as I understand it than in some of the pop psychology
and what I think is kind of a vulgarized psychology taken over by some of the
religious stuff that is on the market.
Finally, in his book The Symbolic and the Real, Progoff has, toward the end of the
book, that which really spoke to me and what turned me on in the first place to
his thinking and his whole approach to things. Let me just read you a couple of
paragraphs here. His point, again – I said this earlier and I'm going to say this
once again – his point is that to be in touch with reality or to be in touch with God
is not the consequence of coming to the end of a well-constructed syllogism. It is
the intuition that comes with the apprehension of symbol and image; it is a
moment of illumination; it's revelation. So he says:
As the symbol unfolds, reality enters the world and becomes present. A
new atmosphere is established, and this is much more than a new climate
of thought. It is reality increasing its presence among humankind by
means of symbolic events that are enacted upon the depth dimension of
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the psyche. In another style of language, this type of event is often
described as a breakthrough of spirit, into human experience. It has,
indeed, all of the traditional attributes of spirit, for it possesses power and
meaning and the healing quality of inward peace. It expresses itself,
however, not in the fixed forms of dogma, but in the living fluidity of
symbolic acts. (p. 214)
And then he speaks about revelation in the Old Testament:
One context in which this new perspective is especially important is our
attitude toward the Bible. In the biblical tradition there has been the view
that when the Old Testament was finished and was certified in its standard
version, that was the end of God's appearance to man. After that, man was
not to expect a breakthrough of spirit in the world. At least not until the
coming of the Messiah. All that was required of people then was that they
keep the formulas and the stories so that they would keep alive the
remembrance of the great moments of contact with the Divine which had
taken place in history and were now restricted to the past. The traditional
understanding was that since the voice of God stopped speaking when the
Old Testament was closed, it would be best if people stopped listening for
the voice of God in the world and concentrated on fulfilling the
commandments.
When the experiences recorded in the New Testament transpired, this
view was reconsidered and was opened anew. Then it was felt that God
had indeed made a new entry into the world. Necessarily so, since He had
needed to make a new covenant between Himself and man. With the
ending of the experiences in the New Testament, however, the same
tendency to restrain the human spirit and enclose it in fixed molds
recurred. Again, it was believed that the spirit of God would no longer
enter the world in a prophetic breakthrough. It would not because it was
no longer felt to be necessary. The Truth had been given. After that it
would be sufficient if people would imitate Christ and concentrate on
entering the dimension of the sacred by repeating the festive formulas
accrued by ecclesiastical authorities. (pp. 222-223)
And then he says,
One of the very greatest and most basic difficulties of Western history is
expressed in this fact that we have drawn from our traditions of belief that
major openings of the Spirit are not possible any longer because they
stopped when the Bible was officially sealed. We need to become capable
of reopening the Bible as a living contact side by side with other styles of
experience and sources of the spirit in the modern psyche. The two
testaments which comprise the Bible are openings. They surely were not
intended to be closings in man’s relation to the infinite. (p. 224)
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Richard A. Rhem
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I think he's right. I think a great problem with the Church is the fact that, in order
to manage the revelation given, it was historically necessary to close the canon. It
was a historical necessity. But then, to refuse to understand that the Spirit of God
continues to speak was to allow the Church to become rigid and to allow a
conception of orthodoxy. And I must say to you, this is my confession, one that I
close with, that to me the idea of orthodoxy is an arrogant presumption. That's
probably why I'm a heretic.
Now, I think from my perspective, my understanding of things, there's richness
here and that it is a great resource. I will be participating with my own labels,
with the God reflected in the face of Jesus. I will understand this in terms of my
own theological understanding. But I see the possibility of a very fruitful
instrument here which again I think holds great promise for the healing of
persons and, through the healing of persons, the humanization of society, which I
think is what we're all about.
Now, I think I've talked sufficiently long so that you should be sufficiently tired,
so you probably wouldn't even want to raise a question. But, if you would, I would
be happy to take it.
Frank: I agree you're a heretic. I think you're making heretics out of all of us, but
I think I'm beginning to enjoy it. When you sent that first letter about Ira Progoff
I immediately rose up in my traditional background and sent you a letter back
saying you probably were off base, and that we couldn't tolerate this new kind of
thinking. But, I guess it just exemplifies the fact that most of us are completely
uneducated. For forty years I have been studying anatomy and physiology and
biochemistry and medicine, pharmacology, thinking that all of medical science
depended on how much I — I suddenly realize how much an uneducated
nincompoop I am and I sure appreciate your bringing these things into the open
so that we could all learn from them and get carried along with your enthusiasm.
RAR: Well, thank you, Frank. I want to say that the questions, the concerns you
raised were very legitimate concerns. Frank. I was really comforted to find
explicitly Progoff recognizing the dangers of that kind of trendy movement, of the
sensitivity movements and groups, and those things of the 60s or 70s where
people were undressed and then left defenseless, and he definitely set himself
over against that kind of thing. And the legitimacy of his Journal Workshop has
been tested. He's kind of a quiet person; he shuns the idea of guru. Doesn't even
want to be called a sage. He's a very humble pilgrim who is sort of feeling his way
along. But, your concerns were very, very well taken, and I was almost positive
immediately that that's not where he was, but I was happy to find it confirmed,
that he also distanced himself from that kind of thing. So, I appreciate the
concerns you raised.
I read today the Seminary Times of last fall, a book by James Ashbrook, whom I
do not know. He's a seminary professor. He was at Colgate Rochester; he's moved
since then. Making Sense of God. And it is a book entitled Brain and Belief where
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Richard A. Rhem
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for a couple decades he has done serious research on the brain, as a theologian,
trying to find the relationship of the function of the brain to spiritual perception.
It is an absolutely fascinating article. And there is a rather serious critique of it, as
well, in which, you know, it's such a pioneering kind of thing that the guy says, "I
don't know how to critique it." But it's just fascinating. In fact, I'm going to give it
to you to take home with you and you can tell me about it when I get back from
vacation. But you know there are such interesting things happening today and
there is an openness today. I think across the board: to structure of reality, to
what we mean when we say God, and I do think that it is an exciting time in
which to be alive. It's a perilous time, too, because people are also falling for all
kinds of... someone accused me of being New Age. Now, I've never read anything
New Age. I don't know what New Age is. But, I know this - that anytime that
there is a genuine breakthrough and movement, there are going to be all kinds of
counterfeits and all kinds of peripheral things going on and there will be faddy,
trendy things. That's true. But, nonetheless, that shouldn't scare us.
Ira Progoff. The Dynamics of Hope: Perspectives of Process in Anxiety and
Creativity, Imagery and Dreams. Dialogue House Library, 1985.
Ira Progoff. The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach To The
Fuller Experience of Personal Existence. Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1983.
© Grand Valley State University
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Midweek Lecture
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983
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RA-3-19890130
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1989-01-30
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Text
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Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
Description
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 30, 1989 entitled "Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff", on the occasion of Midweek Lecture, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Progoff, Transformation, Hope, Spiritual Journey, Symbol, Emergence, Insight, Spirit, Interfaith, Consciousness, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith, Global Community,Revelation, Nature of Religion, Psychology . Scripture references: Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983.
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application/pdf
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Emergence
Global Community
Hope
Insight
Interfaith
Nature of Religion
Progoff
Psychology
Revelation
Spirit
Spiritual Journey
Symbol
Transformation
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2308a79f451e0b7b398aae5a37b33baf.pdf
759320894839a494b0e424d7e7761f03
PDF Text
Text
The Analogical Imagination:
Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
By David Tracy
(The Crossroads Publishing Company, 1998)
Review By
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Publication of Review Unknown
In the Preface to his study David Tracy states the task he sets out for himself:
The need is to form a new and inevitably complex theological strategy that
will avoid privatism by articulating the genuine claims of religions to truth
(p. xi).
He claims that theology, by its very nature, asks fundamental existential
questions because theology reflects on the reality of God, but it must develop
public, not private, criteria and discourse. Recognizing theology addresses three
publics: society, academy and church, each of which demands public criteria and
discourse, Tracy’s main focus is on Systematic Theology, which he understands as
fundamentally a hermeneutical enterprise and his development of that
understanding is to claim,
The issue of both the meaning and truth of religion is related to the
analogous issue of the meaning and truth of art. The central claim
advanced is a claim to both meaning and truth in our common human
experience of any classic. (p. xii).
Tracy recognizes the contemporary emergence of a sociological imagination
which he sees as analogous to the earlier rise of historical consciousness and it is
in such a social reality that the theologian must work. In such a context the
theologian makes his claim.
What is that claim? A claim to public response bearing meaning and truth
on the most serious and difficult questions, both personal and communal,
that any human being or society must face: Has existence any ultimate
meaning? Is a fundamental trust to be found amidst the fears, anxieties
and terror of existence? Is there some reality, some force, even some one,
who speaks a word of truth that can be recognized and trusted? Religions
ask and respond to such fundamental questions of the meaning and truth
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 2 of 20
of our existence as human beings in solitude, and in society, history and
the cosmos. Theologians, by definition, risk an intellectual life on the
wager that religious traditions can be studied as authentic responses to
just such questions. The nature of these fundamental questions cuts across
the spectrum of publics. Lurking beneath the surface of our everyday lives,
exploding into explicitness in the limit-situations inevitable in any life, are
questions which logically must be and historically are called religious
questions.
To formulate such questions honestly and well, to respond to them with
passion and rigor, is the work of all theology. (p. 4)
With such a vision of theology’s work, Tracy sets out to create a space in human
endeavor for such an undertaking. Claiming the common human experience of
encountering a classic in the spectrum of human culture, Tracy points specifically
to the classic in art which is universally recognized. He then claims the same
holds true for the religious experience; there have been religious expressions that
can rightfully be designated classic. As cited above,
The issue of both the meaning and truth of religion is related to the
analogous issue of the meaning and truth of art.
For Tracy, a Christian theologian, the classic religious expression is the event of
Jesus Christ. In Part I Tracy will develop his claim that a religious classic can be
portrayed through reasoning that is publicly recognized – there can be no appeal
to an external norm or private vision. This section he entitles “Publicness in
Systematic Theology.” From there he will go on to apply what he has claimed to
the event of Jesus Christ. Section Two he entitles, “Interpreting the Christian
Classic.”
The Preface announces the major question of Tracy’s The Analogical
Imagination: “In a culture of pluralism must each religious tradition finally
either dissolve into some lowest common denominator or accept a marginal
existence as one interesting but purely private option?” Tracy is not willing to
accept either option. A theological strategy must be found that can articulate the
genuine claims of religion to truth. This is the task he sets for himself: a
responsible affirmation of pluralism through the discovery of public criteria by
which truth can be affirmed.
Theology must develop public criteria of truth and discourse because it deals with
the fundamental questions of existence and because it speaks of God.
Recognizing that the theologian addresses three arenas, society, academy and
church, Tracy insists that the criteria of publicness applies in all three areas.
Theology is the generic name for three disciplines: fundamental, systematic and
practical theologies. Publicness is demanded of each. The primary focus of
fundamental theology is the academy, of systemic theology, the church and of
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 3 of 20
practical theology, society. They differ not only in their primary reference group,
but also in terms of their modes of argument, ethical stance, religious stance and
in terms of expressing claims to meaning and truth.
On the way to a responsible pluralism all conversation partners must agree to
certain basic rules for the discussion. Two constants are present: the
interpretation of a religious tradition and the interpretation of the religious
dimension of the contemporary situation from which and to which the theologian
speaks. In regard to the first, it is incumbent upon the theologian to make explicit
his or her general method of interpretation, to develop “criteria of
appropriateness” whereby specific interpretations of the tradition may be judged
by the wider theological community. In regard to the interpretation of the
contemporary situation, there must be an analysis of the “religious” questions,
the question of the meaning of human existence in the present situation.
There are major differences as well. Tracy addresses the question as to what
constitutes a public claim to truth in the three sub-disciplines of theology.
Fundamental theology’s defining characteristic is “a reasoned insistence on
employing the approach and methods of some established academic discipline to
explicate and adjudicate the truth claims of the interpreted religious tradition
and the truth claims of the contemporary situation.” (p. 62) Various models are
available but whichever model is chosen fundamental questions and answers are
articulated in such a way that any attentive, intelligent, reasonable and
responsible person can understand and judge them in keeping with fully public
criteria for argument. Personal faith may not enter the argument for the truth
claims in fundamental theology.
The systematic theologian’s major task is the reinterpretation of the
tradition for the present situation. Where the fundamental theologian will
relate the reality of God to our fundamental trust in existence (our
common faith), the confessional systematic theologian will relate that
reality to their arguments for a distinctively Christian understanding of
faith. (p. 65)
Christian theology…consists in explicating in public terms and in
accordance with the demands of it own primary confessions, the full
meaning and truth of the original “illuminating event”…which occasioned
and continues to inform its understanding of all reality. (p. 66)
Thus the task of the systematic theologian is an hermeneutical task. The
“illuminating event” Tracy calls a religious classic. As in a classic work of art, the
religious classic contains the possibility of ever new “disclosures.” Classics Tracy
defines as texts, events, images, persons, rituals and symbols which are assumed
to disclose permanent possibilities of meaning and truth. The hermeneutical
theologian seeks to articulate the truth – disclosure of the reality of God
embedded in the tradition for the contemporary situation.
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 4 of 20
There is today a strong case being made by many theologians for the necessity of
any theological theory or argument yielding to the demand of praxis.
Praxis…must be related to theory, not as theory’s application or even goal
as in all conscious and unconscious mechanical notions of practice or
technique. Rather praxis is theory’s own originating and self-correcting
foundation, since all theory is dependent, minimally, on the authentic
praxis of the theorist’s personally appropriated value of intellectual
integrity and self-transcending commitment to the imperatives of critical
rationality. (p. 69)
Tracy states his response to the theologians of praxis as follows:
The very notion of praxis is grounded in a distinction, not a separation;
truth as transformation always also involves truth as disclosure; speaking
the truth is never separable but is distinguishable from doing the truth;
cognitive claims are not simply validated through authentic praxes any
more than causes are validated through the presence of martyrs; the crises
of cognitive claims does not simply dissipate when the shift of emphasis to
the social-ethical crisis of a global humanity comes more clearly into
central focus…. (p. 79)
In sum: fundamental theology seeks metaphysical and existential adequacy to
experience; systematic theology seeks the disclosure of the original “illuminating
event” in the present situation; practical theology emphasizes the necessity of
truth as transformative. Tracy hopes for the possibility of collaboration between
these sub-disciplines and the communal recognition of the real need for all three.
Tracy moves the focus now to systematic theology asking from the perspective of
fundamental theology what one can argue on obviously public grounds for the
public status of all good systematic theology. The question is simply, “Is
systematic theology public discourse?”
It is Tracy’s contention that systematic theology is hermeneutical. This means
that systematic theology’s task is to interpret, mediate and translate the meaning
and truth of the tradition. Where this is not the case, where the notion of
authority shifts from a truth disclosed to mind and heart to an external norm for
the obedient will, theologians can no longer interpret and translate the tradition
but “only repeat the shop-worn conclusions of the tradition.” (p. 99)
Eventually, the central, classical symbols and doctrines of the tradition
become mere “fundamentals” to be externally accepted and endlessly
repeated. (p. 99)
Tracy points to the contrast of an hermeneutical theology:
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 5 of 20
The heart of any hermeneutical position is the recognition that all
interpretation is a mediation of past and present, a translation carried on
within the effective history of a tradition to retrieve its sometimes strange,
sometimes familiar meanings. (p. 99)
How is this done? Recognizing that one begins within a tradition which has
shaped one, that one is socialized, acculturated and thus without the possibility of
finding some position “above” one’s own historicity,
…the route to liberation from the negative realities of a tradition is not to
declare the existence of an autonomy that is literally unreal but to enter
into a disciplined and responsive conversation with the subject matter –
the responses and, above all, the fundamental questions – of the tradition.
(p. 100)
Tracy refers to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s model of conversation as a model for
understanding the dialogue with the tradition.
Real conversation occurs only when the participants allow the question,
the subject matter, to assume primacy. It occurs only when our usual fears
about our own self-image die….That fear dies only because we are carried
along, and sometimes away, by the subject matter itself into the rare event
or happening named “thinking” and “understanding.” For understanding
happens; it occurs not as the pure result of personal achievement but in
the back-and-forth movement of the conversation itself. (p. 101)
…The word “hermeneutical” best describes this realized experience of
understanding in conversation. For every event of understanding, in order
to produce a new interpretation, mediates between our past experience
and the understanding embodied in our linguistic tradition and the
present event of understanding occasioned by a fidelity to the logic of the
question in the back-and-forth movement of the conversation. (p. 101)
Using the model of conversation Tracy shows how one enters into the history of
the illuminating event. When interpreting a classic one recognizes its “excess of
meaning” demands constant interpretation and is at the same time timeless –
“a certain kind of timelessness –namely the timeliness of a classic
expression radically rooted in its own historical time and calling to my
own historicity. That is, the classical text is not in some timeless moment
which needs mere repetition. Rather its kind of timelessness as permanent
timeliness is the only one proper to any expression of the finite, temporal,
historical beings we are….The classic text’s fate is that only its constant
reinterpretation by later finite, historical, temporal beings who will risk
asking its questions and listening, critically and tactfully, to its responses
can actualize the event of understanding beyond its present fixation in a
text. (p. 102)
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 6 of 20
To be understood a classic cannot be repeated; it must be interpreted. Thus Tracy
claims
All contemporary systematic theology can be understood as fundamentally
hermeneutical. This position implies that systematic theologians, by
definition, will understand themselves as radically finite and historical
thinkers who have risked a trust in a particular religious tradition – They
seek, therefore, to retrieve, interpret, translate, mediate the resources –
…of the classic events of understanding of those fundamental religious
questions embedded in the classic events, images, persons, rituals, texts
and symbols of the tradition. (p. 104)
Tracy moves on to the normative role of the classics. He begins with the assertion
“classics exist.” It is true of all cultures. He claims,
We all find ourselves compelled both to recognize and on occasion to
articulate our reasons for recognition that certain expressions of the
human spirit so disclose a compelling truth about our lives that we cannot
deny them some kind of normative status. (p. 108)
Such expressions we call “classic.” Tracy defines the classic thus:
My thesis is that which we mean in naming certain texts, events, images,
rituals, symbols and persons “classics” is that here we recognize nothing
less than the disclosure of a reality we cannot but name truth….some
disclosure of reality in a moment that must be called one of “recognition”
which surprises, provokes, challenges, shocks and eventually transforms
us; an experience that upsets conventional opinion and expands the sense
of the possible; indeed a realized experience of that which is essential, that
which endures. (p. 108)
The experience of a classic work of art is used as an illustration of Tracy’s point.
Citing Gadamer, he writes,
The actual experience of the work of art can be called a realized experience
of an event of truth ....when I experience any classic work of art, I do not
experience myself as an autonomous subject aesthetically appreciating the
good qualities of an aesthetic object set over against me. Indeed, when I
reflect after the experience upon the experience itself, shorn of prior
theories of "aesthetics," I find that my subjectivity is never in control of the
experience, nor is the work of art actually experienced as an object with
certain qualities over against me. Rather the work of art encounters me
with the surprise, impact, even shock of reality itself. In experiencing art, I
recognize a truth I somehow know but know I did not really know except
through the experience of recognition of the essential compelled by the
work of art. (p. 111F)
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 7 of 20
I am transformed by the truth which I encounter. I experience self-transcendence
not as an achievement; rather it happens, it occurs. I am caught up in the
disclosure of the work.
Gadamer uses the phenomenon of the "game" to describe this encounter. In
playing a game I lose myself in the play moving into the "rules" of the game.
The game becomes not an object over against a self-conscious subject but
an experienced relational and releasing mode of being in the world distinct
from the ordinary, nonplayful one. In every game, I enter the world where
I play so fully that finally the game plays me. (p. 114)
This is what happens when one encounters a genuine work of art. One finds
oneself in the grip of an event, a happening, a disclosure, a claim to truth which
cannot be denied.
Tracy notes the process of encountering the text. The first movement is the
reception of the text. Secondly, if the text is a classic it will carry a force that will
claim attention. The third step of interpretation involves the "game" spoken of
above.
The dialogue will demand that the interpreter enter into the back-andforth movement of that disclosure in the dialectics of a self-transcending
freedom released by the text upon a finite, historical, dialogical reader and
received by the text from a now dialoguing reader. (p. 120)
The fourth step involves the larger conversation of the entire community of
inquirers.
To illustrate our claim that an encounter with a classic work of art demands our
attention and discloses truth which we cannot but recognize as an encounter with
reality, Tracy describes the production of a classic. The discussion of that creative
artistic process leads him to conclude:
In the paradigmatic expressions of the human spirit - in those texts,
events, persons, actions, images, rituals, symbols which bear within them
a classic as authoritative status, we find in our experienced recognition of
their claim to attention the presence of what we cannot but name "truth."
... That truth is at once a disclosure and a concealment of what, at our best
and most self-transcending in interpreting the classics, we cannot but
name "reality." (p. 130)
Tracy therefore argues for his contention that the systematic theologian is the
interpreter of religious classics.
Systematic theology intends to provide an interpretation, a retrieval
(including a retrieval through critique and suspicion) and always,
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 8 of 20
therefore, a new application of a particular religious tradition’s selfunderstanding for the current horizon of the community. (p. 131)
Applying this understanding of systematic theology’s task to the specific task of
the Christian thinker, Tracy declares,
In Christian systematics, that self-understanding is itself further grounded
in the particular events and persons of Jewish and Christian history:
decisively grounded, for the Christian, in God’s own self-manifestation as
my God in this classic event and person, Jesus Christ. (p. 131)
But now the crux of the matter is reached: how does the systematic theologian
address the wider public with discussion characterized by “publicness” thus
stopping the retreat of Christian faith into the sphere of privateness and yet
remain faithful to
the radical particularity of the relationship of my gift’s disclosure to the
particular events of God’s action in ancient Israel, in Jesus of Nazareth, in
the history of the Christian church? (p. 132)
Acknowledging the dilemma, Tracy believes it can be overcome. The means of
overcoming the dilemma is the recognition of the public nature of the classic:
grounded in some realized experience of a claim to attention, unfolding as
cognitive disclosures of both meaning and truth and ethically
transformative of personal, social and historical life. (p. 132)
Tracy therefore contends,
Whenever any systematic theologian produces a classic interpretation of a
particular classic religious tradition (as both Barth and Rahner have), then
that new expression should be accorded a public status in the culture…. (p.
132F)
Every classic…is a text, event, image, person or symbol which unites
particularity of origin and expression with a disclosure of meaning and
truth available, in principle, to all human beings. (p. 133)
And again:
Any person’s intensification of particularity via a struggle with the
fundamental questions of existence in a particular tradition, if that
struggle is somehow united to the logos of appropriate expression, will
yield a form of aesthetically sharable public discourse. (p. 134)
Chapter four deals with the interpretation of the religious classics. The classic,
Tracy claims, has these two marks: permanence and excess of meaning. They
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 9 of 20
demand interpretation, never mere repetition nor simplistic rejection. The
interpreter must plunge in, get caught up in the subject matter of the classic.
Engaging a major classic or being engaged by it is to be engaged by the questions
of the truth of existence. This is the task of the systematic theologian – to
interpret the religious classics of a culture.
While many in contemporary culture relegate religious questions to a primitive
state of the race’s development, Tracy raises the question,
Yet what if the authority of religion is not the authoritarianism in our
impacted memories of “religion” but the authority of those authentic,
indeed inevitable fundamental questions about the meaning of the whole
codified in the questions and responses of classical religious texts, events,
images, symbols, rituals and persons? (p. 155)
To be sure, the religions have been purveyors not only of authentic truth but
demonic destructive power. There is a great deal of conflict of interpretations on
the meaning of religion and in the modern period the claims of Feuerbach, Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud that describe religion as “projection” and “illusion” must be
faced. Arriving at one definition for the essence of religion is not possible. Yet
Tracy will not back off; he claims,
The questions which religion addresses are the fundamental existential
questions of the meaning and truth of individual, communal and historical
existence as related to, indeed as both participating in and distanced from,
what is sensed as the whole of reality. (p. 157F)
Religion, Tracy argues, is not just another cultural perspective alongside
morality, art, science, commerce and politics. In its own self-understanding,
a religious perspective claims to speak not of a part but of the whole. (p.
159)
In a very technical philosophical argument Tracy maintains
An ability to partly state – more exactly, to metaphysically state – the
abstract, general, universal and necessary features of the reality of God as
the one necessary existent which can account for the reality of a limit-of,
ground-to, horizon-to the whole disclosed in earlier phenomenological
accounts. (p. 161)
Religion has essential characteristics even apart from a single definition of its
essence and chief among them, Tracy claims, is "a limit-character." There is both
a "limit-to" dimension:
a dimension present in the "limit-questions" of scientific inquiry and
moral striving, and in those experiences (either negative, like anxiety as
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 10 of 20
distinct from fear, or positive, like fundamental trust, wonder and loyalty
as distinct from trust in and fidelity to a particular cause), disclosive of the
"limit-situation" which is the human situation. (p. 160)
and a "limit of" dimension:
The philosophical analyses of fundamental theology, therefore, free the
inquirer to study the possible meanings of such recognized "situational"
limit-experiences as finitude, contingency, mortality, alienation or
oppression and thereby to explicate, indeed to state, the character of that
reality as a limit-to our existence. In that explicit stating of a limit-to, the
inquirer may also be able to disclose or show the existence of a reality here
named a "limit-of" (alternatively horizon-to our ground-of). In its
metaphysical or transcendental form, the analysis can also partly state the
character of that reality of the limit-of. This is the case, in the Western
tradition, when the metaphysical reality of God as the one necessary
existent grounding all reality is explicated as the referent of just such
limit-experiences of a religious dimension to our lives", (p. 160)
Tracy uses Karl Rahner's work to illustrate how this philosophical analysis of
fundamental theology relates to the Christian conviction of the revelation of God
in Jesus Christ.
For Rahner, the philosopher of religion can provide persuasive
philosophical arguments for the necessary existence of an absolute
mystery as ultimate horizon to all thinking and living. If that argument
holds, then Rahner is correct to insist that the human being, now
understood as always already within that horizon of ultimate mystery, can
be redescribed, in his now famous phrase, as a hearer of a possible
revelation from this horizon, i.e., a self-manifestation by the power of
ultimate mystery itself.
In the actual experience of that self-manifestation of God in Jesus Christ,
the Christian believer now, according to Rahner, recognizes that the
concrete revelation is a pure gift or grace from the incomprehensible God
of Love. Then the believer "recognizes" that all reality is graced by that gift:
that all reality partakes in a "transcendental" revelation disclosed in the
categorical revelation of God's own self-manifestation in Jesus Christ; that
revelation, as "transcendental," is always already present in this concretely
graced world; that revelation as "categorized" is present in the gratuity of
God's self-manifestation in the events of "salvation history," decisively
present, for Rahner, in the event of the manifestation of who God is and
who we are in Jesus Christ. (p. 162)
Thus we are hearers of a possible revelation or self-manifestation of the absolute
mystery and for the Christian believer that manifestation has taken concrete
shape in Jesus Christ. In these terms the religious classic
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 11 of 20
may be viewed as an event of disclosure, expressive of the "limit-of,"
"horizon-to," "ground-to" side of "religion." ... religious classic expressions
will involve a claim to truth as the event of a disclosure – concealment of
the whole of reality by the power of the whole – as, in some sense, a
radical and finally gracious mystery. (p. 163)
An experience of such a classic religious expression will carry an authority which
will give to the religious person the conviction
that their values, their style of life, their ethos are in fact grounded in the
inherent structure of reality itself. (p. 163)
Tracy summarizes his contention in this discussion of the interpretation of the
religious classic as follows:
First, a defining characteristic of the situational "religious dimension of
common experience and language" is the "limit-to" character of the
experience itself, whatever its particular existential focus. Second, a
defining characteristic of any explicit religion – more exactly any classic
religious expression – is a “limit-of” character bearing the status of eventgift-manifestation of and from the whole, and experienced as giving the
respondent wholeness. (p. 165)
His approach in pursuing this line of argument – that the religious classic exists,
claims our attention and discloses truth which we cannot but name reality –
presumes an appropriate preunderstanding for the interpretation of religion. He
argues:
If one is guided by a sense for those fundamental questions, if guided as
well by that great modern tradition of interpretation of the sui generis
character of religion ... The interpreter is likely to find relative adequacy in
the kind of interpretations of the appropriate responses to the religious
classics described in different, sometimes conflicting ways by these great
modern phenomenologists of the sui generis character of religion. (p. 168)
... The kind of claim to attention that a religious classic, as religious,
provokes is a claim that discloses to the interpreter some realized
experience bearing some sense of recognition into the objectively awesome reality of the otherness of the whole as radical mystery. The
genuinely religious person (James' "mystics" and "saints"), it seems, do
experience that reality of mystery as the reality of the holy bearing
overwhelming and life-transformative force, (p. 168F)
The religious person speaks of revelation, the self-manifestation of an undeniable
power not one's own or at one's disposal. They cannot but acknowledge the
eruption of a power manifesting itself – a power of the whole revealing the whole.
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 12 of 20
For the whole experienced as radical mystery is experienced as giving itself
in the religious response. The whole, in manifesting itself, is also
experienced as freeing the real self of the respondent to its true freedom; a
freedom where the self's new ethos is experienced as grounded in reality
itself – a reality both disclosed and concealed as the whole by the power of
the whole. (p. 175)
Again Tracy explains the experience thus:
The same sense of radical giftedness both fascinates and frightens as it
shocks and transforms the self to believe what one dare not otherwise
believe: that reality is finally gracious, that the deepest longings of our
minds and hearts for wholeness in ourselves, with others, with history and
nature, is the case – the case granted as gift by the whole; the case
expressed with relative adequacy determined by the intrinsic inadequacy
of every classic religious expression. (p. 177)
We approach now the heart of Tracy’s argument as he discusses the religious
classic under the sub-divisions of manifestation and proclamation. Here he
makes a creative and passionate appeal for a genuinely ecumenically Christian
witness which brings together the strengths of the Catholic, Orthodox and
Protestant traditions rather than the more narrow focus of any single tradition.
Tracy's argument rests on his contention that truth becomes a realized experience
through the encounter with a religious classic. A classic expression encountered
frees oneself from the ordinary attempts to distance the self from any claims that
cannot be controlled as objects over against its own subjectivity.
... The interpreter of religious classics may admit that this classic
testimony bears a claim to truth. That claim is, more exactly, a nonviolent
appeal to the instinct of the human spirit for some relationship to the
whole. (p. 194)
The truth experienced in the classic has the character of event.
When technical rationality reigns, no recognition of the event-character of
truth can occur. Any interpreter of the religious classic must early decide
whether to impose some standards of technical rationality upon all
classical expressions or risk exposing oneself to another mode of
rationality; a mode proper to the thing itself as it discloses itself to
consciousness. We cannot, in fact, verify or disprove the claims of classical
religious expressions through empiricist methods….truth here becomes a
manifestation that lets whatever shows itself to be in its showing and its
hiddenness. (p. 195)
Neither the Enlightenment model of rationality nor traditionalist models of
heteronomy are capable of dealing thus with truth as event, occurrence. They
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 13 of 20
both interpret all claims to truth through the restrictive lenses of techniques
developed by autonomous and heteronomous interpreters. Just as one
approaches a classic in any field, so in religion one must be open to being caught
up in the "conversation," the "game," open to being transformed by the truth of
the whole which finds expression or which discloses itself through the concrete
religious expression.
Fundamental theology warrants the claims to truth of the religious
dimension to existence on ordinary public grounds; systematic theology as
interpretation warrants the claims to truth of a concrete religion on those
kinds of authentically public grounds appropriate to the kind of disclosive
publicness expressed in all classics.
This is the case, moreover, for radically experiential reasons: the realized
experience of the truth-character of the religious classic is an experience of
its purely given character, its status as an event, a happening manifested to
my experience, neither determined by nor produced by my subjectivity. (p.
198)
Tracy describes the structural similarity between the encounter with religious
classics and other classics.
Any classic will produce its meaning through the related strategies of
intensification of particularity and intensification of distanciation in
expression. The first journey of intensification into one's own particularity
will ordinarily free the person (or community) from the limitations of selfconsciousness into a sense of a real participation in, a belonging to, a
wider and deeper reality than the self or the community. That experience
of intensification, like all experience must involve some understanding
and some expression. When the struggle for expression – the second, selfdistancing journey of intensification – finds its appropriate genre, style
and form, then the self is positively distanced from the original experience
in order to express the meaning of that experience. Then a person can
communicate the disclosive meaning to others who may not now share it,
but can share its meaning through experiencing the now-rendered
expression. (p. 199F)
There is a difference between religious classics and other classics, however. It has
to do with intensity. The religious classic is an expression of the whole itself by
the power of the whole.
... The authentically religious impetus is one where the intensification
process is itself abandoned into a letting go of one's own efforts at
intensity. One lets go because one has experienced some disclosure of the
whole which cannot be denied as from the whole. (p. 201)
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 14 of 20
Finally one experiences a sense of resting in the radical and gracious mystery at
the heart of human existence. Such an experience demands expression:
a demand to express that experience and its meaning and truth in a form –
a text, an image, a gesture, above all, a style of life. The demand to express,
to render, to communicate sets in motion the distanciation process
whereby the self distances itself from its own self-consciousness and finds
the proper genre for some expression of that meaning and truth. (p. 201)
Summarizing the process, Tracy claims,
Both the expression and the experience of a religious "limit-of" disclosure
and concealment of and by the whole remains, therefore, intrinsically
dialectical throughout the entire process. The demands of the journey of
intensification into the fundamental questions of the meaning of existence
imply their opposite: a letting-go, a being-caught-up-in, a radical
belonging-to some disclosure of the whole by the whole. And the very
radicality of that belonging-to the whole posits itself by implying its
opposite: I as a self recognize that I am absolutely dependent upon the
whole, recognize myself as in actuality profoundly ambiguous in all my
experience, my understanding, my ability and willingness to live by and in
the radical mystery which envelops and empowers me. As the dialectic
intensifies, this recognition of the disclosure of radical mystery posits itself
as disclosure by implying its opposite: The mystery is also concealed from
me by and in its disclosure as mystery. The revelation is also a revelation
of hiddenness; the flooding, white light of its comprehensibility frees me to
recognize the dark impenetrable incomprehensibility of both the whole
and myself in the whole. (p. 202)
Then comes the command to communicate by incarnating that reality in a word,
a symbol, an image, a ritual, a gesture, a life.
Tracy moves now to discuss the classical forms of religious expression:
manifestation and proclamation. The dialectical process just described,
an existential intensification of particularity, expressing itself through
distanciation in a sharable form – will operate dialectically at every
moment in the process. (p. 203)
But now Tracy makes another proposal regarding religious expression.
When the dialectic of intensification of particularity releasing itself to a
radical sense of participation predominates, the religious expression will
be named "manifestation;" when the dialectic of intensification of
particularity releasing itself to a sense of radical nonparticipation
dominates, the religious expression will be named "proclamation." (p.
203)
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 15 of 20
The words "sacrament" and "word" are usually used to make this distinction, the
former being the predominate expression of the Catholic and Orthodox
traditions, while the latter has been characteristic of Protestantism. The
difference is also pointed out by the terms "mystical-priestly-metaphysicalaesthetic" and "prophetic-ethical-historical." Both types are found in the Hebrew
Scriptures and in the Christian tradition. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
contain both expressions although from the East they may appear more in the
proclamatory mode. Likewise, although the Eastern religions are thought of as
mainly in the mode of manifestation, they too must be understood in the dialectic
of manifestation or proclamation. Tracy moves away from the common
theological designation of the difference – word and sacrament – and uses
instead the terminology of Paul Ricoeur – manifestation and proclamation – in
order to see more clearly how the religious live in this dialectic and cannot be
placed on one side or the other, although, of course, they lean to one pole or the
other. He contends that the manifestation-proclamation dialectic is fruitful for
understanding the complexity and the conflicts in Christian self-understanding,
which is the focus of Tracy's work. This distinction provides the main rubric for
the thought experiment Tracy is setting forth.
Tracy argues that the very positing of manifestation or proclamation implies the
other; each needs the other. He begins his examination of these poles with a
discussion of manifestation. He uses the work of Mircea Eliade as the clearest
example of religious expression as manifestation.
... Eliade' s classic achievement ... paradoxically serves a prophetic
religious role to challenge the dominant prophetic, ethical, historical
trajectory of Western religion in favor of its grounds in the power of
manifestation.... The "archaic" ontology articulated by Eliade becomes the
focal meaning for understanding religion as an eruption of power of some
manifestation of the whole now experienced as the sacred cosmos.
…
By entering the ritual, by retelling the myth, even by creatively
reinterpreting the symbol, we escape from the "nightmare" of history and
even the "terror" of ordinary time. We finally enter true time, the time of
the repetition of the actions of the whole at origin of the cosmos. In illo
tempore, the power from the whole was first disclosed as sacred. ... only by
entering into the originally nonlinguistic manifestations of power of the
sacred in the ritual, the symbol, the festival, the myth, can we participate
in, belong to, a realm disclosed in the other side of the ordinary: a realm
which has manifested itself as sacred, which exposes the ordinary as
profane, a realm which at the same time chooses any ordinary reality –
this rock, this tree, this city, this mountain, this rite – as the medium for
the saturated power of the sacred – the "center of the world." ... (p. 205F)
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 16 of 20
Thus the realm of the sacred can be experienced by being willing to enter the
purely given, that sheer event of manifestation. Tracy maintains that Eliade has
effectively challenged the Western Augustinian assumptions through his retrieval
of the genius of Eastern Christianity:
a theology oriented to and from, not history and ethos, but the cosmos and
aesthetics; a style of religious practice oriented not so much by the word of
scripture as by the manifestations of the sacred in image, icon, ritual, logos
and cosmological theologies; a way of being Christian that both demands a
radical separation from the ordinary via the rituals and myths of the
repetition of the origins of the cosmos and allows real participation in the
manifestations of the sacred available to our "divinized" humanity. (p.
208)
But there is another pole; the pole of proclamation:
Those religious expressions where the power of a word of proclamation
from God in an address to an ambiguous self occurs as the paradigmatic
disclosure of religious reality. (p. 208)
The pole of manifestation brings to expression the sense of participation in the
whole. Yet the very sense of identity in the moment of manifestation implies the
non-identity of the individual, finite self. Therefore the estranged self may be
addressed by a word of proclamation:
A word of defamiliarizing proclamation now experienced by the self as the
transcendent, unnamable Other which has now disclosed itself in word as
like a who: the self of God. ... This God speaks a word of proclamation
whereby and wherein the whole discloses itself in a new manifestation by
the presence of a personal, gracious, acting, judging, proclaiming God.
This God acts in the word-events of ordinary history and time. (p. 209)
This word shatters our sense of participation, disconfirming any complacency in
participation.
To shatter any illusions that this culture, this priesthood, this land, this
ritual is enough, to defamiliarize us with ourselves and with nature, to
decode our encoded myths, to inflict its passionate negations upon all our
pretensions, to suspect even our nostalgic longings for the sacred cosmos,
to expose all idols of the self as projections of our selves and our mad
ambitions, to expose all culture as contingent, even arbitrary. …To make
us recognize that Judaism and Christianity disclose a radical worldaffirmation only because they have first undergone a radical, decentering
experience of world-negation in the kerygmatic, proclamatory word of
address of prophetic religion. (p. 209)
…
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 17 of 20
The self finds that the response to that proclamation by the self and the
people to whom the self belongs is that radical paradigmatic response of
trust and obedience called faith. (p. 209)
The proclaimed word will be expressed in the realm of the secular which was
formerly thought of as profane but now is recognized as the arena in which the
power of the word must be heard.
... The very power of the proclaimed word – a word addressed by God to
both a community and a self, a word of address shattering their security
and their idols – demands that the major expression of one's religious
experience now be found in fidelity through word and deed in this time
and this history to the God who gives that word as enabling command. (p.
210)
The paradigm of proclamation does not eliminate the religious expressions of
manifestation. Without them there is no place for the word to be heard and do its
work. Yet the focus has definitely shifted.
The language of radical participation in the religions of manifestation will
now seem extravagant, sometimes even idolatrous. The rejection of the
ordinary as the separated profane will now, in the proclamation of the
word about the extraordinariness of the ordinary as the central expression
of God's word and action, will now itself be rejected in favor of a classical,
paradigmatic religious ethic of the secular. (p. 211)
The affirmation of the secular in contemporary Jewish and Christian
theology, therefore, is not properly understood as some collapse of
Christianity and Judaism in the face of contemporary secularism. Rather a
secular Christianity and a secular Judaism are, in fact, faithful to the
paradigmatic eruption of a proclaimed and addressing word-event which
founds these traditions and drives them on as their religious focal
meaning. Some desacralization of the claims of participation via
manifestation must occur whenever this kind of world-shattering and
world-affirming paradigmatic religious experience of proclamation
happens. For the very proclamation which affirms time and history and
demands expression in and for ordinary time and history frees Jews and
Christians in and for the world. When the paradigmatic religious power of
that word has become a nostalgic echo, a presupposition that is no longer
an impulse, then the great danger of a merely secularist Judaism, a merely
secularist Christianity, a finally secularist culture emerges. (p. 211F)
But where the proclaimed word is remembered, the word of world-negation and
world-affirmation, the Jew and the Christian are freed for the world. This was the
case in the Reformation according to Tracy. He calls it a classic religious event.
The Reformation was a response to the graced freedom of the Christian before
God's Word in Jesus Christ.
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 18 of 20
Where the paradigmatic power of that word saturates the religious
consciousness with its power, then the negation of all over-claims to
participation, the religious negation of the focus of "magic," "superstition,"
"legalism," and "ritualism" will burst upon any complacent resting in any
religion of manifestation, any non-dialectical solace in a too easy
humanism or any hardened priestcraft. (p. 212)
The word exposes the world's real ambiguity, its possibilities for both good and
evil and it points to a new time, a time of genuine newness, not just the repetition
of the origins of the cosmos. If liberal Christianity loses its sense of the word of
proclamation it loses its religious vitality.
It loses its religious dialectic of the world and the secular and becomes
another decent, ethical vision living in, by and for a world which sets its
agenda and writes the words for its decent, ethical, but ultimately
irreligious tunes. The liberal churches are always in danger of losing their
paradigmatic religious dialectic and becoming only psychological
counseling centers or resources for societal causes. And yet the fidelity of
the liberal churches to the world empowered by their listening to the
Christian word of proclamation compels them, as it must, to aid all
authentic causes of personal wholeness and societal justice. (p. 212)
Tracy points to Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as leading examples of the
ministry of the paradigmatic word which shatters the idols of culture. Barth so
feared any claim to participation in the transcendent reality that he wanted to
admit of no point of contact; such a view sees a word-centered Christianity
devoid of all manifestation apart from the erupting power of the Word.
Commenting on the two poles, manifestation and proclamation in their recent
exponants referred to here, Eliade, Barth and Bonhoeffer, Tracy declares,
With the same kind of radicality as Eliade, Barth and Bonhoeffer will also
insist, "Only the paradigmatic is the real." Yet their paradigm of the
proclaimed word will drive them into a direct confrontation with the
equally radical "only" of Eliade through its dialectic in and for the world, in
and for time and history. For Eliade, manifestation discloses not an entry
into the secular but an escape from the terror, the nightmare, the banality,
the latent nihilism of ordinary time and history. Not the profane, not the
secular will save us; only an entry into the religion of manifestation, the
worlds of sacred space and the repetitions of sacred time can do that.
Eliade's work serves in the contemporary period as a classic expression of
the power of religion as manifestation releasing its dialectic of the sacred
and the profane and its passionately religious sense of radical participation
in the cosmos through the saturating repetitions of myth, ritual and
symbol. His is recognizably iconic consciousness. In an analogous manner
Barth and Bonhoeffer, with their distinct and sometimes conflicting
positions, represent two contemporary classic expressions of Christian
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 19 of 20
faith as a faith living by the power of the proclaimed word releasing its
dialectic of the word and the secular and its suspicion of "religious
participation" and repetition. (p. 213F)
It is Tracy's contention that we must not be forced to choose one pole or the
other. Christianity does not live by the "only" of Eliade or Barth. It is his purpose
to push beyond these oppositions to find a place where both can be embraced.
Both manifestation and proclamation are necessary to Christian religion.
The dialectic of the Christian religion is one in which the word does negate
any claim to a mode of participation which logically approaches identity or
existentially relaxes into complacency – a dialectic which, in fidelity to the
word, must radically negate all idolatries, yet a dialectic which implies,
includes and demands genuine manifestation. ... Christianity embraces
nature in and through its doctrines of creation – transformed, to be sure,
in the light of the doctrines of redemption and future eschatology. Indeed
Christianity celebrates nature in and through its doctrine of incarnation as
theophanous manifestation – understood, to be sure, only in the light of a
shattering, defamiliarizing cross and a transformative resurrection. (p.
214)
Tracy contends that a Christianity of word without real manifestation stands in
peril of becoming either fanatical or arid and cerebral and abstract. Barth
understood this dealing at length with the doctrine of creation. Manifestation,
Tracy argues, is always the enveloping presupposition of the erupting word of
proclamation.
Manifestation envelops every word from beginning to end, even as it
allows itself to be transformed by the shattering paradigmatic power of the
proclaimed word. But manifestation returns, thus transformed, to reunite
even the secular, the historical, the temporal, the self with the whole
disclosed in nature and the cosmos. A Christianity without a sense of
radical participation in the whole – that sense which Schleiermacher
named the "feeling of absolute dependence," which others name a
fundamental trust in the very worthwhileness of existence – is a
Christianity that has lost its roots in the human experience of God's
manifesting and revealing presence in all creation, in body, in nature, in
spirit, not only in history. (p. 215)
The powerful, eruptive word of proclamation that defamiliarizes us from the
world is yet itself rooted in the enveloping cosmos.
To speak Christian eschatological language is to speak a language where
the religious power of the whole has entered time and history in the
decisive proclamation of this particular word and event, where that power
has freed the "profane" to become the "secular" and has liberated the
present and the future from the exclusive hold of the sacred time of past
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 20 of 20
origin by empowering history and ethical action with religious power. (p.
216)
Tracy points to the sacramental view of Catholic Christianity:
Nature and the secular become sacrament in their transformationsublation by the word, the "prime sacrament" and decisive manifestation
or representation named Jesus Christ. There can be no negation of the
cosmos or nature. Indeed a sacrament is nothing other than a decisive
representation of both the events of proclaimed history and the
manifestations of the sacred cosmos. (p. 216)
If the kerygmatic power of the word in the sacrament is lost, the sacrament
becomes magic. But if the paradigmatic power of real manifestation is lost, the
word alone will not meet the deepest needs and satisfy the deepest longings of the
human heart. Christianity then becomes a righteous rigorism of duty and
obligation.
How can we hold on to both poles and not lose the necessary experience of either
manifestation or proclamation? Tracy believes it can be accomplished but only a
radically ecumenical Christianity can accomplish it.
By themselves, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity seem
trapped in historically hardened emphases: unable alone to restore the
power of both proclamation and manifestation in a manner that does not
seem some uneasy compromise. ... This demand for both manifestation
and proclamation is incumbent upon all Christians who recognize the
reality of Jesus Christ as the Christian classic, i.e., as the decisive representation in both word and manifestation of our God and our
humanity. Thus will Christocentric Christians recognize that the
paradigmatic Christ event discloses the religious power of both
manifestation and proclamation ... both Christian manifestation and
proclamation are ultimately rooted in that God whose radical otherness in
freedom posits itself to us as the radical immanence of an all-pervasive,
defamiliarizing, shattering, enveloping love in cosmos, in history, in the
self. (p. 218)
Part II: Interpreting the Christian Classic
Tracy applies the methodological argument of Part I to a distinctively Christian
systematic theology in Part II. He has argued that there is a distinctly religious
classic among the other classics generally recognized and he contends that that
classic status means that the religious classic too has public status. Such religious
classics are “expressions from a particular tradition that have found the right
mode of expression to become public for all intelligent, reasonable and
responsible persons.” (p. 233). He asks then what are the classic texts, events,
symbols, images and persons in a tradition. While in the Christian tradition there
© Grand Valley State University
�David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 21 of 20
are several candidates for classic status, there is one which is the norm of all
others and which provides the focus for understanding God, self, others, society,
history, nature and the whole from a Christian perspective: the event and person
of Jesus Christ. Tracy claims,
One need not be a believer in Christianity to accord it (and thereby its
central, paradigmatic, classic event) authentically religious status: a
manifestation from the whole by the power of the whole. (p. 234)
Christology is the attempt to respond through some interpretation to the event of
Jesus Christ in one’s own situation.
…The Christian interpretation of this classic event recognizes in some
present experience of the event – more precisely, in the claim disclosed in
that event (paradigmatically in experiencing that event in manifestation
and proclamation) as an event from God and by God’s power. To speak
religiously and theologically of the Christ event is ultimately to speak of an
event from God. )p. 234)
The Jesus remembered by the tradition is experienced in the present mediated
through the word, sacrament and action. Jesus remembered as the Christ is the
experience of the presence of God’s own self.
The expression “The event of Jesus Christ” means for the Christian
tradition…that we recognize Jesus in the Christ event as the person in
whom God’s own self is decisively re-presented as the gift and command of
love. The always already reality of a graced world is made present again
decisively, paradigmatically, classically as event in Jesus Christ. The event,
as re-presentative of reality always already present to us as human beings,
is present again as the decisive that it happens. The event as command is
also present as the not-yet-actualized reality internal for each person and
for all history responding to that one decisive event of God. (p. 234)
Tracy will now examine this position to see if it is a relatively adequate
interpretation of the event and, secondly, to understand how this interpretation
differs from alternative interpretations.
The key for the interpretation of the event of Jesus Christ must be the claim
exerted in the present by that event as the claim that it happens now.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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1981-2014
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References
David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, 1998
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The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
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Richard A. Rhem
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Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1998 entitled "The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism ", on the book The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism , written by David Tracy. Tags: Theology, Pluralism, Truth, Meaning, Sacred, Religious Tradition, Nature of God, Nature of Religion, Ecumenical, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mircea Eliade, David Tracy. Scripture references: David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, 1998.
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application/pdf
David Tracy
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Ecumenical
Karl Barth
Meaning
Mircea Eliade
Nature of God
Nature of Religion
Pluralism
Religious Tradition
Sacred
Theology
Truth
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/93aed9789a39f61b02a11edf6161b98a.pdf
206ce9e3f9177d7e4dccb6bfa35ace3c
PDF Text
Text
As One Without Authority
Article by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Free Spirit
A Quarterly Publication of Fountain Street Church,
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Summer 2001
During a brief stint when I taught Homiletics, I gathered a number of books on
the art of preaching, one of which had a title which struck me and has always
remained with me - As One Without Authority. It was authored by Fred
Craddock, perhaps the premier professor of preaching in the country for over
three decades. The title registered so deeply with me because it was the most
concise and profound description of the preacher I had ever encountered. First
published in 1971, the book was Craddock's response to the “crisis of preaching”
which was being widely discussed at the time. Preaching had been receiving very
negative press, the whole discipline called in question, and there was
experimentation in alternatives to the traditional sermon.
In the wake of the tumultuous sixties and the challenge to all of society's
structures and institutions, including the church, there was serious doubt as to
the viability of the church in general and especially the sermon as an effective
instrument of communication in particular. Craddock addressed the issue head
on, acknowledging the legitimacy of much of the criticism of traditional
preaching, but affirming his continuing confidence in the place and power of the
spoken word.
But the only hope for preaching in the present historical context was for the
preacher to recognize that he or she was “as one without authority.” Of course,
this had been true since the rise of the Modern age, especially in the wake of the
Enlightenment, and classical Liberalism of the nineteenth century was an
attempt to accommodate the Christian faith tradition to the knowledge of the
modern world. The Liberal movement was a recognition of the loss of all forms of
authoritarianism - of tradition in Eastern orthodoxy, of the church in Roman
Catholicism, and the Bible in Protestantism. Still, in large measure, these
respective confessional traditions managed to ward off the acids of modernity
and operate as though the traditional sources of authority remained in place.
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
That was my experience. Graduating from seminary in 1960 and assuming my
first pastorate in Spring Lake in the congregation I now serve (although after four
years I left for a period of seven years, returning in 1971), I came armed with “the
authoritative Word of God.” The Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was inerrant
and infallible. The preacher's authority lay in the faithful exposition of the biblical
text. Even though serious biblical criticism had been around since the late
eighteenth century, it was not seriously engaged in the conservative evangelical
tradition.
But, after seven years of pastoral experience and preaching, I found my
authoritarian foundation crumbling. As I became aware of a critical approach to
scripture, it was no longer possible for me simply to assert, “The Bible says ....” I
had to begin again. I needed a new foundation if I were to continue in a preaching
ministry. A European pilgrimage that lasted for four years was not simply a quest
for an academic degree, but an existential quest for a religious faith I could
believe in with intellectual integrity and preach with authenticity. My search and
research were intensive - and the quest continues, but of this I became convinced
- there is no authoritarian claim that can ground authentic religious experience,
whether the claim be grounded in tradition, church or scripture. The witness to
religious experience - in my case, the witness of the preacher, is precisely that - it
is witness. One stands within a valued tradition, the tradition is embodied in a
community, and the community has a founding story which is the font of the
tradition. One may believe the founding vision or event was the revelation, the
manifestation, of the Sacred, of the Mystery that grounds Reality, but the
expression that gives witness to the vision or that relates the event is human
expression. All of the great religious traditions are human, imaginative constructs
issuing from the founding experience. Someone has written that all of our present
religions are the ossified remains of past prophetic and ecstatic visions.
This being the case, one who preaches does so as "one without authority" - one
witnesses to that of which one is convinced is good and true and beautiful in
order to challenge, inspire, encourage, and comfort those who constitute the
community. The preacher knows the tradition through long study and experience
and seeks to understand the wisdom and insight that have come to expression in
the tradition. And one must know one's own world, as well, having a sensitivity to
present human experience, an awareness of what is playing upon one's
contemporaries. Only then is one ready to address the community gathered in
worship hoping to hear some word that will illumine the human situation.
That word must come with authority, but without authoritarian claim. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer described the difference thus:
Someone can only speak to me with authority if a word from the deepest
knowledge of my humanity encounters me here and now in all my reality;
any other word is impotent. The word of the Church to the world must
therefore encounter the world in all its present reality from the deepest
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
knowledge of the world, if it is to be authoritative. The Church must be
able to say the Word of God, the word of authority, here and now, in the
most concrete way possible, from knowledge of the situation.
One can see the distinction between authority and authoritarian claim in the
comment in the Gospel of Matthew at the conclusion of the Sermon on the
Mount:
Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were
astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes.
The scribes represented the professional religious leadership, guardians of the
tradition, whose office had authority, who operated within the established
structures of an official religious institution. They made authoritarian claims, but
something about Jesus' teaching outside the authorized system carried its own
intrinsic authority - Jesus spoke to people and the word found resonance within
them because he touched the vital nerve of their present existence. He pierced
through to their soul; though he was one without authority, the integrity and
authenticity of his word carried weight.
Religion in general and Christianity in particular have been marked by
authoritarian claims and have sought to control the people. Dostoevsky has the
Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov rail at Jesus,
Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow thee freely,... there
are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive
for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness - those
forces are miracle, mystery and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and
hast set the example for doing so.
Authority in the sense of an authoritarian claim has marked much of the story of
the Church, but its day is past and, where it still exists and even seems to thrive, it
is the shrill last gasp of a dying enterprise. What is true for the preacher who is as
one without authority is true for all areas of religious leadership if we are seeking
a spiritual religious experience, or a religion of Spirit.
After some fifteen billion years this amazing cosmic drama on whose stage we
have appeared relatively so recently has seen the emergence of Spirit. Whether
one would speak of purpose and intentionality or prefer, rather, simply to stand
in awed awareness at the creative process and revel in the mystery and miracle of
the gift of life and of consciousness that enables one to contemplate the wonder of
it all and be grateful, the fact is we know of a spiritual dimension as part of our
human existence. And where there is Spirit, there is freedom. Where there is
Spirit, there is non-coercion. Where there is Spirit, there is no authoritarian
claim.
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
For the preacher, for the religious leader, for the whole enterprise of the Spirit,
one must be as one without authority. In the Spirit, one bears witness to one's
truth and it will find resonance or not; one offers a vision or a dream and it is
embraced or not; to enforce one's word or demand adherence to one's plan can
occur only in the absence of the Spirit.
One will see it or not, understand it or not, offer allegiance or not. The Spirit's
word and way must be embraced freely, affirmation being elicited without threat
or coercion, for the Spirit has no power, is completely vulnerable - helpless unless
one sees and freely follows. The Spirit is as one without authority and all that is
spiritual is defenseless against contradiction.
Spirit needs form and too often form is the death of Spirit. The institutionalizing
of the Spirit in structures necessitates order and power and thus the dilemma and
the question whether a spiritual institution is possible. The greater the success in
terms of numbers, facilities, and staff, the greater the threat to the Spirit. The
larger the program, the greater the need for large budgets and administrative
oversight. Strategies for success seldom begin with the imperative to guard and
protect the fragile and vulnerable Spirit.
Yet, just as from matter has arisen Spirit embodied in the human, so the human
needs community as the embodiment of Spirit. There is no other way. But, let the
one who would address a word to such a community and one who would lead
such a community recognize that such a one will always be as one without
authority.
That strong and vibrant religious institutions are possible is without question.
History is replete with examples of dominating, controlling institutional religions
ascribing their prosperity and power to the blessing of God. Triumphalism and
arrogant assertion of divinely vested authoritarian rule have been ever present in
the annals of religious history. Whitehead, in his Process and Reality writes,
When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered ... The
brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly
... The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to
Caesar.
Speaking of the Galilean origin of Christianity, Whitehead claims,
It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless morality, or the
unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which
slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present
immediacy of a Kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it
unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the
future, for it finds its own reward in the immediate present. (pp. 519f)
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Surveying the religious landscape, one wonders if the fragile flower of the Spirit
can survive, whether there will be eyes to see and ears to hear that truth that
comes to expression without authority.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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References
Fred Craddock. As One Without Authority, 1971, revised edition 2001. Alfred North Whitehead.Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in Ediinburgh University1927-28), 1929, 2nd edition 1979.
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RA-4-20010705
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Text
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As One Without Authority
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The Free Spirit Journal
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) entitled "As One Without Authority", it appeared in Free Spirit, Fountain Street Church, Summer 2001. Tags: Nature of Religion, Spirit, Freedom, Community of Faith. Scripture references: Fred Craddock. As One Without Authority, 1971, revised edition 2001. Alfred North Whitehead.Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in Ediinburgh University1927-28), 1929, 2nd edition 1979.
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application/pdf
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2001-07-05
Community of Faith
Freedom
Nature of Religion
Spirit
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6d849180ee042e274227ca09da5896cc.pdf
e4ad402279d58bd9cd5f11d405cd1975
PDF Text
Text
Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 1
Re-imagining the Faith:
A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Introductory Reflections for the Articles Page
December 12, 2012
At my retirement in 2004, Christ Community Church was exceedingly gracious in so
many ways, one of which was to collect a number of my sermons and publish them
under the title Re-Imagining the Faith. I could not have named it as well; it succinctly
expressed the story of my thirty-seven years as pastor of that congregation. It was at the
First Reformed Church of Spring Lake, Michigan, that I was ordained to the Christian
ministry on June 30, 1960. From 1960, just out of seminary, to 1964 I served that Spring
Lake congregation. During those four years I was in no way seeking to re-imagine the
Christian faith; in fact, I would have been threatened by the thought. My understanding
of Christian faith was orthodox, evangelical in the Reformed tradition as conveyed by
the Dutch Reformed Church rooted in the Netherlands and brought to this country in
the nineteenth century emigration from the Netherlands.
It was, however, in those four years through pastoral experience that my orthodoxy was
being tested. That whole story is critical to my theological pilgrimage, but I won’t go into
it here, except to say that a move to a very conservative, evangelical Reformed
congregation in New Jersey [in 1964] only accentuated my struggle, which was really
about the view and authority of Scripture. I left New Jersey for the Netherlands to
pursue post-graduate studies. I was indeed fortunate to be received and accepted by
Professor Dr. Hendrikus Berkhof, Professor of Dogmatics at Leiden University. As I was
leaving his study after my first appointment with him in the early Spring of 1967, I saw a
piece of paper pinned on a drape, on which was written:
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
In those lines by Alfred Lord Tennyson I knew I had found my teacher and my task. My
little system had had its day; I longed to find the Sacred Mystery toward whom my little
system, now broken, had pointed.
Though I had earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology following my BA
from Hope College, I was about to embark for the first time in my life on an intellectual
and spiritual quest with an open mind and heart – seeking truth wherever it might lead
me. For the first time in my life I began with questions rather than answers to be proven
and confirmed. It was a liberating moment; finally I was ready to learn.
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Lest I be misunderstood, my failure to gain an education, to learn, was not the fault of
the institutions from which I attained degrees, nor the teachers who taught me. To be
sure, a denominational seminary has not the task to lead students to new visions of the
faith but rather to teach the faith system, the confessional foundation of the church that
supports it and governs it. That being said, I must confess the problem was mine. All my
energy and intellectual gifts were committed to learning and then teaching evangelical
Reformed faith. The last word had been spoken; now it was my calling to proclaim and
teach it. And I was deadly serious about it.
But no longer. After my little system began to break in those seven years of pastoral
ministry, I knew I had to begin again to see if indeed I could come to new insight and
understanding that would enable me still to be a Christian minister with a message in
which I could passionately believe and proclaim.
The fact that at my retirement a book of my sermons was published with the title ReImagining the Faith is the finest tribute I could receive, witnessing to the journey that
began in the late 60’s under the guidance of Professor Berkhof and that continued all the
years after my return to the Spring Lake congregation in 1971. Through all those years I
was about re-imagining the faith and, even in retirement, the journey continues.
As I look back over my ministry that continued in Spring Lake following my four-year
European sojourn, I realize that what I essentially gained was an ability to think
theologically, to think critically. No longer was there a set confessional system of
theological propositions to be explained and defended. I was full of wondering, of
questioning, of questing for a deeper understanding of biblical faith in the context of
contemporary culture.
My new posture found expression in preaching and teaching but it was with the birth of
the journal Perspectives, a Journal of Reformed Thought in 1986 that I began to
articulate that new posture on central theological/biblical themes.
My first article was on the theology of Robert Schuller as I will describe below. But from
then on I addressed some critical themes that reflected my own groping for a new
understanding of biblical faith.
As I was working on the thread of those pieces I received a note from Professor Dr.
Hendrik Hart who had begun reading the articles I had given him. In response to
questions he raised, I gave some background about my experience in the RCA. Our
correspondence I include here:
Email from Hendrik Hart, November 20, 2012:
... I’m reading Dick’s articles in Perspectives. I was entirely unprepared for them because
Dick keeps saying that he was a latecomer in moving beyond conservatism. But the first
piece, from 1987, digs into the God-Jesus-male cluster with a vengeance. And so it is
with most of the pieces. They are radical in choice of topic, position and approach. They
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
are not mealy-mouthed either. The language is clear, direct, and hard-hitting. I would
have thought that, early in the game, the pastoral side might emerge, knowing how upset
conservatives might be. Not so. So where’s the conservatism? The only evidence for
Dick’s pleading a late start in getting beyond conservatism is that the style of argument
has not been touched by the then rising postmodern spirit. But that took time for all of
us.
OK, if I’m near the mark with this, how would you characterize where you were in 1987,
Dick? What readings or experiences would have spawned those articles and how did you
expect they would be perceived? By your congregation, by your classis, by Perspectives
readers?
I am curious because, if I go by my own memories, I think there was a mixture of urgency
and naiveté. In 1983 I wrote “Must I Believe in God as Father?” in The Banner. It was a
soapbox piece and the editor and I had previously discussed at length how this should be
done. I think I wrote very carefully, so I was fully unprepared for the storm of invective
that broke over me, as well as for the complete silence of supporters. Only now (right
now!) does it occur to me that the problem may well not have been the piece as such (it
was about praying to God as Mother), but the heading. Why did I not see that 30 years
ago? So, if you can, tell us something about why you may have written things possibly
unaware of how they would be perceived or of how you would endanger yourself. Did you
know you were taking risks?
Reply from Richard Rhem:
Henk, great to hear from you and I am pleased you are reading the articles. It so happens
that I have spent over a week gathering my writings over the years of my ministry post
Netherlands. (I have a few more for you, especially two pieces that appeared in The
Reformed Review, Western Seminary’s journal. In 1972 I gave a lecture at Western
which was published in The Reformed Review – “A Theological Conception of Reality as
History – Some Aspects of the Thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg.” Then in 1986 I wrote
in a [tribute] for Gene Osterhaven – “Theological Method: The Search for a New
Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age” – which dealt with Küng’s paradigm change in connection
with Tracy and referring to Gadamer, etc. Those three pieces were received quite well.
Then the RCA founded Perspectives. I just found the first editorial by Rev. Dr. James
Van Hoeven – first editor and major figure behind the project. (That he was brother-inlaw to Ed Mulder, General Secretary, got the Journal underway.) Jim wanted me on the
board of editors and immediately asked that I write about Schuller’s new reformation. I
had been inspired by Bob Schuller upon my return from the Netherlands - my leadership
people felt, having been out of the country for four years, I needed such exposure. It
worked. Within four months of beginning again in Spring Lake, the First Reformed
Church became Christ Community and a second service in the morning was added (and
eventually a third). About 28 of our people attended Schuller’s Institute for Successful
Church Leadership. But Bob Schuller was under fire for his book New Reformation and
being too easy on sin!! Therefore Jim Van Hoeven thought I should do an article on
Schuller. It was quite well received. You ask about whether I wrote with awareness of
reaction from the church. I’m sure I was naive but, according to Jim’s first editorial, this
new journal’s purpose was to “engage issues that reformed Christians meet in personal,
ecclesiastical, and societal life.” It also aimed to be in conversations that “help shape the
identity and mission of the Reformed Church in America.”
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Jim continues, “If in the process, Perspectives can enable a community of scholars to be
formed – women and men from within the church who bridge race, region, and
discipline, who enjoy the give and take of thoughtful discourse, and who do not mind if
their Sundays sometimes get pretty rough [an allusion to a Mark Twain quote with which
he opened] – this enterprise will have fulfilled its expectations.”
The editorial moves to a quote from Robert Bly: “Certainty lives on either side of the
border, but truth lives on the border.” Jim continues, “The editors of Perspectives will
push themselves and the church toward that border, theologically. This means, on the
one hand, Perspectives will affirm and deepen the richness of the Reformed tradition.
Tradition tells us who we are, gives us a definition, a point from which to set our course,
and reminds us ‘we belong...to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.’ And yet truth lives on the
border. The danger of too much tradition is that it turns a good thing into idolatry. The
church’s faith and life must always be creative. …holding to the tradition, being creative,
living on the border is part of what it means to be Reformed, according to the Word of
God.”
That was January, 1986, the first issue. Perspectives was initially sent free of charge to
ministers, members of boards and agencies, elders on request. It was to engage the
leadership of the RCA in creative conversation. I really believed that, naive as I was...
It is coincidental that you raise the questions my writings raised as your brother Peter
has asked me to write an overview of the thread that runs through my articles to
introduce them on a Web site of an archive of my work. I have begun writing after
sorting through piles of files. That piece will answer some of your questions, but let me
respond to your questions regarding my being a late bloomer. Throughout my education
I was trying to reinforce the faith structure of my childhood. I never challenged or raised
a question. Yet, beneath my sturdy dogmatism, there was an insecurity: I wondered if the
faith/church would survive – not because it wasn’t God’s truth but because the darkness
arrayed against the light was formidable. A pastoral experience in Spring Lake showed
me that an inerrant, infallible Bible wasn’t enough. During my last year there, the
Covenant Life curriculum from the RCA/Presbyterians came out. I taught the foundation
papers in Spring Lake and then introduced the curriculum to the New Jersey
congregation. It created an uproar from a few who felt it was weak on Scripture [long
story]. For me – finally owning my own questions – it was very helpful. I knew I would
have to spend years bringing that congregation around or make good on my desire to go
to the Netherlands for postgrad work. Berkhof accepted me and proved a great mentor
and friend. Thus began my first real education because finally I was open to the quest.
But, Henk, I was 32! Four years in Leiden and my return to Spring Lake where I began to
preach out of the reservoir of the Leiden years.
This I knew: the orthodox view of Scripture was the bottleneck. I felt a real freedom to
explore in that marvelous community. I taught Berkhof’s Christian Faith, Küng’s On
Being a Christian and Does God Exist? Coming from a serious study of Pannenberg, I
was ready for Küng whom I came to appreciate deeply. I mentioned my writings/lectures
in The Reformed Review in 1972 and 1986. These were about the theological method.
But, as I wrote earlier, it was Perspectives that gave me the occasion to address issues
before the church. Yes, I was naive, but I was also totally free in bringing to expression
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
what I had been thinking about. Now I was 51, Henk: no youngster, but just finding my
voice. I was blessed with a congregation that allowed me to “think out loud”. That was
my preaching style and it was a safe and honest place. Thus when Perspectives came
along I expressed myself quite honestly. The “Habit of God’s Heart” piece I knew was
treading on dangerous terrain, but I tried to be careful, wondering but also being honest
about my hope that God’s grace was universal.
As time moved on I got the assignments that were controversial because I was a pastor in
a safe place. I think there was only one other pastor on the board of Perspectives. The
rest were professors at colleges or the seminaries and were reluctant to take on the
themes I tackled.
So, my conservatism in the traditional form ended when I left for Leiden in 1967. From
there I had to begin again. I consumed book after book. Berkhof would say, “You must
begin to write,” but I said, “I just found six more footnotes leading to a dozen more
books!”
Trying to answer your questions: by 1987 I had been engaged in serious theological
reading/thinking for 20 years. Perspectives gave me the opportunity to bring to
expression all I had been thinking/teaching/preaching about. I felt safe and confident
and thus put myself on the line. Perspectives was not the Church Herald, read by RCA
lay folk. The Banner was something else. You wrote in a very much more conservative
context to a well-informed readership in the bastion of Calvinist orthodoxy.
As for “the silence of supporters,” I know that well. When my Grace article appeared, I
was teaching homiletics at Western. A colleague also on the board of editors, present and
participating in the discussion about the theme, in favor of my writing...but when the
storm rose, in a faculty meeting asked, “Why did you feel you had to write that piece?”
He also, I’m told, said if I had changed six words there would have been no problem.
I must say, Henk, it never occurred to me that I would get into trouble. My congregation
was solidly supportive and I had fine collegial relationships with the RCA leadership and
I honestly felt I was being a positive influence for good in the RCA. In the end it was not
RCA leadership but young, threatened pastors in the Muskegon Classis that spelled my
demise in the RCA. It is all quite a story.
And now to return to the thread of my articles. My second Perspectives piece was
entitled “Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal.” I set forth Barth’s own
experience of preaching and the high regard he had for the preaching moment – very
inspiring.
But then, in a series of articles, I addressed contemporary issues in the Church and my
own deepening grasp of those issues.
February 1987, pp. 4-6: “An Accident of the Incarnation.” The issue was the male
domination of the church. I argued that the maleness of the Incarnation was an
“accident,” not of the essence of God’s revelation in human flesh.
In the January 1988 issue, I wrote a piece, “Purgatory Revisited.” Hans Küng at the
University of Michigan in the Fall of 1983 lectured on questions surrounding death,
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
heaven, hell and the future, subsequently published under the title Eternal Life. Küng
got me to thinking. I suspect it was a beginning step toward the hope of universal grace.
In the September 1988, issue I brought to full expression my hope and growing
conviction that God’s grace would finally bring all God’s children home. The piece,
entitled “The Habits of God’s Heart”, elicited major responses from RCA ministers and
the public readership – positive and negative, the latter predominant.
In the April 1991, issue I became even bolder. I wrote of my growing conviction that my
faith community, the community of Reformed faith issuing from Calvin’s Geneva by way
of the Netherlands had never come to terms with the Enlightenment - the place of
critical rationality and historical consciousness in the understanding of the Christian
credal tradition as espoused by the Reformed community in this country. It was
Hendrikus Berkhof’s Two Hundred Years of Theology that made me aware that the
community of which I was a part “was not even engaged in the struggle.” The article was
entitled “Sleeping Through a Revolution.”
As one can well imagine, I got some serious response, including from my beloved
theology professor, Dr. Eugene Osterhaven – who treated me gently however.
Someone challenged me on biblical grounds, on my use of Scripture. That drove me on
to my next piece, “The Book That Binds Us” in the December 1992, issue. My bold
contention was that the Bible is being misused. It is being asked to function in a way it
can no longer be expected to function, a way it was never intended to function.
In the March 1993, issue I returned to the theme of “An Accident of the Incarnation”
with a focus on God language. I wrote in collaboration with my colleague, Colette
Volkema De Nooyer, who did the major work.
In the May 1995 issue, I “completed” as it were the thread I was weaving with an article
“Interreligious Dialogue – What is Required of Us?” I had recognized long since that the
orthodox understanding of Jesus’ death as atonement blocked openness to the other in
interfaith discussion. In this piece I gave that full expression. The article concluded:
My intention is not to advocate Hick or Ogden or any other thinker who is addressing the
matter of interreligious dialogue. Rather, I wish to point to the necessity of honestly
drawing out the consequences of the recognition that human grasp of the truth develops,
evolves, and needs ongoing assessment and adjustment – and sometimes conceptions
need to be rejected. By use of historical imagination, the originating experience that gave
rise to a theological formulation needs to be recovered in order to express the same
reality differently, in order to make the experience available in a totally different cultural
context.
Rather than seeing this as a burden, a cause for fear and defensiveness, it should be seen
as an exciting challenge. Is not such a pursuit of the truth to love God with mind as well
as heart? And is not the recognition that every biblical and theological expression is
marked by the human and historical limitations that adhere to all human thought the
© Grand Valley State University
�Re-Imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
reason there is need for continual reformation? To be Reformed is not to be in
possession of a set of timeless and eternal truths but, rather, to refuse to absolutize any
human arrangement or formulation. It is not to be saddled with a set of truths that were
once new, innovative, and destabilizing of the established order of the sixteenth century,
or the first century. It is an approach, a spirit, a posture that is open to new knowledge,
fresh insight, and cumulative human experience within historical development.
The church has managed to spend the century in a state of schizophrenia, pursuing
research in the academy and sharing the results in the lecture hall, while the liturgy,
prayers, hymns, and sermons have given little evidence of the honest engagement with
insights of the modern period.
My mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, claimed the only heresy was to make the gospel boring. I
would add another – the heresy of orthodoxy, the evidence of a failure of nerve and lack
of trust in the living God. It is the heresy of an inordinate lust for certitude that seeks
premature closure, the shutting down of the quest for truth and growth of knowledge in
the magnificent and mysterious cosmos by the creatures whom the Creator calls to
consciousness and embraces in a Grace that pervades the unfolding cosmic process.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Introduction to Articles Page in Web Archive
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RA-4-20121212
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Text
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Re-imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Introduction to the Articles created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) entitled "Re-imagining the Faith: A Theological Pilgrimage", as part of the series "Introduction to Articles Page in Web Archive". Tags: Spiritual Quest, Reformed Theology, Authority of Scripture, Critical Thinking, Universal Grace, Orthodoxy, Nature of Religion, Sacred Mystery.
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application/pdf
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2012-12-12
Authority of Scripture
Critical Thinking
Nature of Religion
Orthodoxy
Reformed Theology
Sacred Mystery
Spiritual Quest
Universal Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2bea7da39419fbfb0ea6cadbcbdf1140.pdf
b3f21e76ca7eca4cd0f86f13e8794639
PDF Text
Text
The One We Proclaim
Text: II Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:16
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 30, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This is the 30th of June. On the thirtieth of June, 1960, I was ordained to the
Ministry of the Word and Sacraments in this congregation, coming here following
my graduation from Western Theological Seminary. I was ordained to the
ministry within the Reformed Church in America by the Classis of Muskegon. It
was not a Sunday in 1960, but a Thursday evening. And it was hot and the
sermon preached by the pastor of my home church in Kalamazoo was very long.
My inaugural sermon had as its text the text of this morning - II Corinthians 4:5.
It was a text a pastor I much admired had printed on his calling card. I had it
printed on my cards, too. And I chose it as the text of my first sermon as an
ordained pastor because it summed up concisely my understanding of the
pastoral office.
Now, thirty-six years later, the same Classis is about to depose me from
ordination in the Reformed Church. Since today is the anniversary of my
ordination, I thought I would re-visit my inaugural text. Part of the process of
preparation for this message was painful; I took out the file of that first sermon
and read it. I did recognize one similarity with my present preaching - the sermon
was long. But, thank God, there are some things that have changed.
I received a card a couple months ago from an old friend from a congregation I
served the summer before my ordination year - the summer of 1959. She had read
the news reports about me and was quite upset. Her question to me was, "Have
you changed?" To that question, I would have to answer, "Yes, thank God. Thirtysix years of serious engagement with the word of God, with human experience,
with my own maturation, with history's changing landscape has changed me." To
be alive is to change, is it not?
Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, the greatest of the 20th century, in an
introduction to one of his volumes of Dogmatics, addresses the charge that he
has changed his theological position. To that he responded, "If it appears I have
changed my thinking, it is because I am a pilgrim and I keep moving and as I
move, the landscape through which I move changes."
© Grand Valley State University
�The One We Proclaim
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Yes, on this anniversary of my ordination thirty-six years ago, I acknowledge I
have changed. And if I had taken along the sermon I preached on the text of the
morning thirty-six years ago, you would be very happy indeed that I've changed.
Not that I should be too hard on myself. I had worked at the sermon responsibly.
There was an honest exposition of the text and the application was not
inappropriate for one beginning ministry in a congregation. But, as I re-read the
sermon yesterday, I reflected on what it was that was missing. And I suppose, not
surprisingly, I concluded that there was nothing in the message that really came
to grips with the human situation of the congregation; there was no vital
connection to human experience.
I think I understand that.
I would have been typed as a very conservative Christian minister. I had been
richly nurtured in the Christian faith and I had applied myself to the study of
Scripture and Reformed theology. But I had little knowledge of the human person
and very little human experience. That is not a criticism; I was young. One so
young has not a very large store of experience from which to speak.
I will make a criticism however; it is this: one so young with so little human
experience ought not to be so certain he had the answer to the multiple human
dilemmas simply because he preached Jesus Christ. I've admitted this fault many
times - I had the answers; I simply had not yet learned the questions. And the
right answer to the wrong question is always wrong.
As I said, I had learned and I preached Reformed theology and I now see that that
was why my preaching failed to reach to the heart of the human situation - I was
preaching Reformed theology.
The problem with that struck me this week when I read a letter from the
Muskegon Classis Minister, Rick Veenstra, to the Christian members of the
Jewish Christian Dialogue Committee who had written Classis on my behalf. It
was not a very gracious letter and lacked class. In it, Veenstra said, "The
Reformation tradition is reformed according to the Word of God." The words
jumped out at me; I recognized the misunderstanding he expressed. It was the
same problem with my early preaching, indeed, with my first sermon to this
congregation. Reformed has become a noun or an adjective, as in "Reformed
theology." But in its origin in the 16th century, when it is operating according to
the originating vision, it is a verb. The genius of the 16th century Reformation of
the Church was that the Church was re-formed according to the word of God and
always being re-formed. As soon as one claims a Reformed theology, the renewal
is over. The burst of spiritual vision and energy has again been mastered and
managed and packaged. Now there is a new system rather than a biblical faith
that is being redefined, newly translated and bringing illumination to the ongoing
human story.
© Grand Valley State University
�The One We Proclaim
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
In a word, I came here thirty-six years ago with a packaged theology to preach
and teach. I had a system of doctrine to inculcate into this congregation quite
apart from the fact that it was 1960 or quite apart from the particular people who
made up this congregation.
Have I changed? Yes, indeed; thank God! Changed in my understanding of the
place of theological formulation - seeing it now, not as a closed system of truths, a
set of propositions to be assented to, but as a living, moving interpretation of
human experience from the perspective of faith in the God revealed in Scripture.
But, in another sense, I've not changed. I take my text of thirty-six years ago and
set it before you this morning - Paul's words which I appropriate still for a
statement of my ministry.
For we proclaim not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves
your servants for Jesus' sake. (II Corinthians 4:5)
Christ Jesus or Messiah Jesus - that is, Jesus the one anointed with Spirit, is the
One I proclaim. How much more I believe in him now than then. Then he was
Savior; my almost total concentration was on his death for sin, removing our
guilt, opening up the possibility of heaven for those who professed his name.
But now I stand in awe of his life. Now I see in him such openness to people, so
full of grace. Now I see him as the window into the heart of God. His life
challenges me. I sense his claim on my life - how I live here and now. Then I
thought he came to die; now I believe he came to live and to call his people to
such living. Then I saw him as God/human - other than I; now I see him as my
flesh and blood brother who calls me and inspires me to follow in his steps.
I love him more. He moves me more. I believe in him and I believe God brought
him out of death into God's Presence.
Christ Jesus is Lord, says Paul. Lord - as opposed to Caesar as Lord. Jesus is Lord
- relativizing all my allegiances, political, economic, social. Jesus is Lord.
He is the one I proclaim because I believe, as Paul went on to say, that God, the
Creator, the one who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In
other words, I believe Jesus was the embodiment of God in human flesh.
Why did Paul make this clear declaration? Because some had come into this
Corinthian congregation which he had founded and criticized him and accused
him of unfaithful proclamation of the Gospel. The Second Letter to the
Corinthians is probably an amalgam of several letters, but it is obvious Paul's
apostleship was under fire. Note how chapter 3 begins:
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again: Surely we do not need, as
some do, letters of recommendation ...
© Grand Valley State University
�The One We Proclaim
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
And in 2:17, he writes,
For we are not peddlers of God's word like so many; but in Christ we speak
as persons sent from God and standing in God's presence.
In 4:2, he asserts,
We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to
practice cunning or falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the
truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of
God.
What was going on?
It is difficult to determine exactly the circumstances, but it may well have been
that Paul's breakthrough vision - that God was embracing the Gentiles by grace
through faith, not requiring that they follow the Mosaic ritual law - was seen by
his opponents as heretical. Therefore, they came into the congregation and
stirred up trouble creating tension between Paul and some of the people.
That brings me back to the weakness of my inaugural sermon on this text - I had
a theological understanding of Jesus Christ but I had no sense of the question
Bonhoeffer asked in his Letters and Papers from Prison:
The thing that keeps coming back to me is, what is Christianity, and
indeed what is Christ, for us today?
It is that question that drives my ministry after all these years. I proclaim not
another - the one I proclaim is Jesus Christ - The word made flesh in whose face
we see into the heart of God.
But to put flesh and blood on that proclamation, to say more than the name, to
say what it means for our lives here and now - that is the challenge of preaching.
To say some meaningful, helpful word to people trying to negotiate this baffling,
frightening, fascinating world - that is the task. To connect Jesus Christ to
present human experience: that is the calling of the preacher.
Let me extend to you the grace of God as Jesus revealed it by assuring you,
whoever you are, whatever your history, whatever your present circumstance,
God's grace already embraces you, you are valued, you are loved. And if that
reality ever breaks fully over you, your life will change and little by little by the
Spirit of God you will take on the likeness of Jesus and in your life image him who
is the image of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/065ff71aba70dc3afb889d8e75e5e946.mp3
7d0dd98c38715ff9082ef23650349658
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost V
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:16
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19960630
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1996-06-30
Title
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The One We Proclaim
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 30, 1996 entitled "The One We Proclaim", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 4:5, Matthew 16:16.
Grace of God
Nature of Religion
Re-imagining the Faith
Reformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/345c6580f5f4d6192048901e67fe3f0a.pdf
d11253dfd9b7a9e2f5eb563ec40e8910
PDF Text
Text
Religion Can Be a Monkey on Your Back
Text: Romans 14:23; Isaiah 46:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 11, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It's been suggested to me that there are those of you who keep wondering what's
happening in the saga of Christ Community and the Classis of Muskegon - let me
just say that on Tuesday evening there is to be a meeting of the Classis of
Muskegon, and it would appear that the separation document which has been
prepared will be passed. That seems to be the opinion. We're not lighting off the
firecrackers yet, but nonetheless it would seem that we should soon be beyond
this nightmare of the soul. It looks very favorable for us, and as if all things that
we had hoped for would be in place, plus we would be in touch with the national
offices of the Reformed Church in the next five years in a continuing
conversation, which I think is also a positive thing. You'll probably get the press
reports before I could tell you again, but if that is the case, we will have a brief
meeting next week following the ten o'clock service.
Well, all of that is about religion, and religion can really be rotten. Religion can be
a monkey on your back. Religion can be one of the most depressing, dispiriting,
draining, oppressive, manipulative, coercive, negative forces in the world. That's
quite a confession for a preacher.
When I was young and growing up, thinking about becoming a minister, I was
worried whether or not God would last, whether or not God could be adequately
defended, whether or not people would continue to practice religion. I guess I
was worried that I might get to this point in my life and be out of work. But, as a
matter of fact, I have come to conclude at this advanced age that the religious
human animal is alive and well on Planet Earth and that religion is endemic to
the human person, that there is something within the human being that will
always make that person reach out in some fashion for something or someone
who is beyond, some transcendent realm, some Beyond, some person, force whatever it may be - there is something within us that can only be filled with a
connection with something that is beyond us. Here in the Church, we speak of
God, and when we speak of God, we speak of the God Whom we've seen in the
face of Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion a Monkey on Your Back
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But, I'm talking about religion more broadly this morning. It's not just the
Christian religion; it is religion as a phenomenon that I want to think about with
you this morning. I have been thinking about it a lot in these past weeks and
months - Religion.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he was in the darkness of the Second World War,
incarcerated for his conspiracy against the life of Hitler, wrote his Letters and
Papers From Prison, in which he plays with that idea a lot and he talks about
what form would a religionless Christianity be. He recognized that religious
practice can become religiosity, and he recognized that in the modern period,
after a couple of hundred years of the development of the human sciences, that
God was being edged out of the world, and so he talked about "Man come of age."
Now, that statement became almost a model for the post-war decades, but it just
shows how contextual our thinking is, mine included. But, any good preaching or
any good expression of the word of God needs to be the word for that moment
and that context, and so I'm not faulting Bonhoeffer for, in the depths of the
darkness of the 20th century, speaking about man coming of age and God being
edged out of the world. As a matter of fact, fifty years later, religion is alive and
well, and while some of the traditional religious trappings have gone by the way,
we find that we live in a day when there is a conservative religious reaction on the
one hand and then, on the other hand, there is the New Age manifestation of a
spiritual hunger within.
A couple of weeks ago I used a few statements which we typed up in the bulletin
insert last week - Carl Jüng's statement that in his practice of psychoanalysis
there was not a case of people in the last half of their life that he could not trace
back to their lack of meaning, and that lack of meaning was the consequence of
the failure of any religious mechanism, religious ritual, religious practice, which
ritual and practice was the means by which the person is put in touch with that
which is beyond. And some of the statements about the youth, the younger
generation that have been led into self-destructive behaviors and addictions and
even violence because they have no frame of reference, no rooting in a religious
tradition that is able to mediate to them that which is beyond them.
I'm reminded of Hendrikus Berkhof, my old mentor, who once said, over against
the youth of his day a couple of decades ago, that in The Netherlands, in Europe
generally, he couldn't talk to that generation about Christian faith because they
had absolutely no basis on which to make connection, and he said they're not the
prodigals, they are the children of the prodigals, you see? The prodigal son left
home and knew that there was a home and there was a father and, as we'll see in
the next couple of weeks, he eventually went home.
But, if the prodigal has children in the far country, the children don't even know
there's a home. So, how do you begin even to engage in that discussion which can
lead to a religious practice that is positive and that becomes a means for relating
the individual to God, to that which is beyond? Because, if it is true that to be
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion a Monkey on Your Back
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
human is to have a hole in us that can be filled only by God, then we, being
human, will be in trouble if we have no place in which to rest our souls, if we have
no mechanism, no means, no space, no place, no community in which to
experience that connection – not that that connection cannot be and is not
sustained and ought not to be sustained in our own personal and private lives, in
our moments of solitude and so on. But those moments alone and those moments
of solitude, I believe, are cultivated, are experienced only if we have been given
some kind of frame of reference and if we are connected with community that
corporately comes into the presence and acknowledges that presence - indeed,
that worships, that occasionally is lost in wonder, love and praise.
So, to begin with, I would simply say that I think religion is a potentially very
positive and necessary part of human experience. Have you ever thought of giving
it up? Have you ever thought of just chucking it? Have you ever wondered if you
will keep at it? Or, have you taken a long sabbatical and maybe you've come back?
I think if we think, if we're honest about our human experience and our religious
experience, then probably there are those times when you say, "Hmm, Sunday
morning again. The Chicago Tribune and a cup of coffee doesn't sound too bad. I
mean, to have to shave and shower and show up…."
Religion can be burdensome, it can be heavy. The prophet recognized that:
Second Isaiah, the one who was prophesying in the sixth century before the
Common Era. The reading that I did was a kind of mocking piece - "Bel bows
down. Nebo stoops." These were the top gods of the Babylonian pantheon. And
Babylon ruled the world - magnificent city of Babylon, the Babylonian Empire,
the forces of which came in and decimated Jerusalem and brought the Jews into
exile. And in that day it was just the conventional wisdom, the common
understanding, that the winners must be in touch with the most powerful gods.
And so, these Jews, rather dispirited, away from their own land living as exiles,
said, "Well, the gods of Babylon must be it."
But, the prophet of Yahweh, the God of Israel, had another vision of things. He
could see that Babylon had its day. But, Babylon would soon cease to be, for on
the horizon was Persia, and the Jews had all experienced on the New Year's Day
celebrations how the Babylonians would take their chief gods and load them on
floats and have their own little Coast Guard Festival, you know? The gods would
parade through the city and people would bow down and throw flowers - "These
are your gods, O Babylon."
But now, the enemy's at the gate. Now there's panic in Babylon. Now they run to
the temple, grab those statues and haul them out and put them on beasts of
burden and sort of balance them precariously as they try to get out of town with
their gods. So, the prophet of Israel said, "Look, the gods are going into
captivity!"
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion a Monkey on Your Back
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
A little humor there. They're dragging their nose in the dust as they're being
dragged along by the oxen and the people are trying to save their gods. Now,
that's an irony, isn't it? People have to save their gods. And the prophet says to
the Jews that they're going to go home; he's announcing the salvation that God's
about to bring. But he can't do it without this little aside, this little mocking
picture of the gods of Babylon who cannot save, but need to be saved, who cannot
bear, but need to be borne, who are not the God who lifts the burden, but who are
gods that become a burden.
I'm using that image this morning just to say to you that religion has a shadow
side, and that religious practice, which at its best can lift and inspire and heal, can
in the expression of its shadow side, become coercive and manipulative and
become an end in itself, and it can become a burden, rather than a burdenbearer.
We may not do as the prophet went on to say, we may not take some wood and
some gold and some precious stones and fashion ourselves an idol and then fall
down before it. But, let us not be deceived. Our religious practice also, in the
Christian Church and really in all of the religions, can become an end in itself
rather than being a mediating agency by which the grace and the peace of God are
brought to people. Bad religion is one of the most destructive and potentially
dangerous powers in our world, and I would have to say after all of my years of
ministry, even though most of my contacts have been with Christian people in the
church, I have to say in all honesty to you, I have seen people as damaged by
religion as helped by religion. And I run into people all the time who have given
up, have given up on the Church and given up on religious practice because of
some hurtful, painful experience or some disillusionment with the exercise of
religion in its institutional form.
And I want us to think about that clearly this morning, because I want us to
recognize that if we will be an authentic institution of religion, we must practice it
so that its positive power is uplifting and inspiring, helping and healing people
and not manipulative and controlling and destructive of the human spirit. You
know what I'm talking about this morning? I'm talking about a God, the God of
heaven and earth, the God Who is beyond us, the God Who is beyond our wildest
dreams or our ability even to contemplate, the God Who has been revealed to us,
the God Whose heart we see in the face of Jesus, but the God that we cannot pull
down and domesticate in order that we might manage.
But, do you see that that's the danger of religion, that we get a human form and a
human ritual and the human institution and then we make it absolute? We
identify it with the Absolute as though what we have in our religious view and the
practices of our religious exercise, are identical with God, God's self, and then we
become coercive and manipulative with that religious experience. What I'm
trying to say this morning is that we may be incurably, inevitably religious. But, if
we fail to see that religion is a human product, and if we absolutize it as though
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion a Monkey on Your Back
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
it's divine, then we become dangerous people, and then our religion becomes
something that's oppressive.
Where did we ever miss the boat, anyway? Why can't we hear the word of God as
it was read this morning, after mocking the gods Bel and Nebo who are being
dragged through the dust out of the city in order to be rescued, in order to be
saved? Why have we not heard Who God really is? "Listen, O House of Jacob, all
the remnant of the House of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth. I
have borne you, carried from the womb, even to your old age, I am God. Even
when you turn gray, I will carry you. I will carry. I will save."
Five times over, I is repeated - I, I am the One, I will carry, I have made, I will
bear, I will carry and will save. You see, religion that is good, that is positive, that
is true, is religion that will say to people, "You are loved by God. You are being
borne by God. You don't have to rescue God; you don't have to worry about God.
You don't have to get panicky and in a frenzy about all of your religious exercise
and all of your religious duties, so that sometimes you'd just like to kick it all
over, you'd like to leave it all, you get weary of it."
Don't we get weary of it? We have to support everything. We have to support the
PTA and Easter Seals and the Church! We have to support the youth group and
the Worship Center and we've got to keep worship alive. What if I don't come
today? What if everybody decided not to come today? There wouldn't be anyone
there. Poor Dick would stand on his stool all by himself.
All of that heavy duty and obligation, all of that "ought" and "should", all of that
"must", all of that musty religion that becomes oppressive and burdensome. I'd
give it up, too, if I believed that that's what it was about.
But, how do we miss the word of God? "I am He, even when you turn gray, I'll
carry you. I made, I bear, I carry, I save."
We get so hung up with our religion. Paul had to struggle when he wrote to the
Church of Rome. He said, "Some of you keep one day, some of you keep another,
some of you eat vegetables, some of you eat tenderloin. For goodness sakes, what
does it matter? Why don't you just do what you do out of faith? Why don't you do
what you do out of conviction? Why don't you be a person that lives out of your
own center rather than by some template that's placed on you? Why don't you
live out of faith, out of trust, why don't you be who you are and all the time know
that, whether you live, you live unto the Lord, and whether you die, you die unto
the Lord. So, whether you live or whether you die, you are the Lord's."
Why hasn't the Church let people know that God is the One in Whom they live
and move and have their being? Why have we threatened and condemned, judged
and cast out? Why haven't we said to people, "Rest in the Lord"? Practice the
sacrament of baptism, because in that beautiful moment, we are helped to know
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion a Monkey on Your Back
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
that that child, a gift of God's love, is connected. We're connected. The water isn't
magic.
Elliot Brown was loved before church this morning as much as he'll be loved after
church this morning. Can't we see the value and the beauty and the wonder of
this sacrament without us getting into a great panic because some child failed to
get baptized? We break bread and we take the cup and we experience in that
moment a ritual action because it's filled with tradition and it's history and it
becomes for us a moment of connection.
But, would I be disconnected if I never took bread and never took cup? I wish we
worshiped seven days a week. I'd make about six of them. I love it! I love it! The
organ begins. Something happens to me. I need this place; I love this place. But,
if I could never worship again, would I be less loved of God?
For God's sake, no. Religion, when it becomes duty, when it becomes obligation,
when it becomes coercive and manipulative, when it instills guilt and claims it
alone can open the door of heaven - then religion has gone awry, then religion is
rotten. Then it's a monkey on your back; you ought to take a sabbatical for a
while, until you get good and hungry, until you can't stand it any longer. Then
you come and eat bread and drink wine and let water flow down, and then, then
you relax and you listen to the word of God who says, "From the womb, I have
borne you. I will carry you. I will bear you up. I will save."
Go out and tell your neighbors how good it is when religion is good, because a lot
of them aren't here because they got a taste of it when it was bad. And when it's a
monkey on your back, it's a disgrace to the Eternal God Who created us, Who
keeps us, and Who will never let us go.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/78cb196dece63d44d34574758e0778d8.mp3
9aef241877ebf5fe31913d060b3fee86
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Pentecost XI
Scripture Text
Isaiah 46:4, Romans 14:23
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19960811
Date
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1996-08-11
Title
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Religion Can Be a Monkey On Your Back
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 11, 1996 entitled "Religion Can Be a Monkey On Your Back", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 46:4, Romans 14:23.
Faithful God
Inclsive Love
Nature of Religion
Spiritual Quest
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9e42196ca7c3dcc96759a710c953a116.pdf
54a09586e19db8459ea6b76f27313c6a
PDF Text
Text
Take Care How You Kick Over the Traces
Scripture: Isaiah 1:1-6; Luke 15:11-16
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 18, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We're thinking, in these days, about organized religion, its institutional forms,
and last week I noted that it can be an oppressive and de-humanizing force in
one's life. Bad religion has destroyed a lot of people. But, we also noted its
importance, its critical importance, because religion is that which relates us to
that which is beyond us, and puts us in connection, in communion with God. So,
it's not a matter of ridding ourselves of religion, but it is a matter of
understanding religion's true function and what its true message really is.
I clipped an article from yesterday's Grand Rapids Press. The headline says,
"Church Attendance Reaches 20-Year Low." It's the research of a certain George
Barna who has written a number of things about the contemporary scene, at least
over the last decade, maybe two, and in this news report, he tells us that we have
perhaps been lulled to sleep by the fact that the percentage of people who attend
church has remained rather constant, but to remain constant in a growing
population is like feeling good about the fact that I'm still making just as much as
I made in 1960. The Church is losing ground and this article says that we are at a
20-year low. His comments about it reveal that all denominations, including
conservative Protestants, have grown slower; there's been a very large decline in
institutional religion. Young people especially are confused about morals and not
familiar with religious tradition, and the global youth culture has become
pluralistic and relativistic. I don't think anybody's doing much to help them sort
it out. And then the commentator said it's not just a phase they're going through.
There's less reason to say they'll come back when they never went in the first
place. The reserves of religious tradition are dwindling.
I believe that's true, and I believe that the frantic activity of much of the
institutional church is an attempt to stem a tide and not very successfully. A few
weeks ago in The New York Times Magazine, the magazine that's included in the
Sunday edition of the Times, there was a brief article on the Willow Creek Church
west of Chicago, which has become such a phenomenon in our day and has
spawned so many look-alike congregations called "seeker congregations." It's
been a very successful movement. But, the insight of the columnist in this
particular magazine article was that the truth is in the packaging. In other words,
© Grand Valley State University
�Take Care How You Kick Over Traces
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the success has been a success in marketing, and while marketing is not
unimportant, it is not what is ultimately important, for in this little article, a
representative of the Willow Creek Church said with some pride, "And we have
not changed one article of our belief."
And I want to say, "Shame on you." If you think you can take that old core and
not re-examine it and bring it to new expression in a new day and in a culture
that is radically changing all about us, if you think that you can take that old core
and simply dress it up and put it in a shiny package and sell it, the success will be
temporary because you have not dealt with the issue in depth. Good religion
needs to be very clear about the message it presents and about its function, which
is to be an agent, a means, not an end in itself. Good religion is a means to
enabling the people to come into communion with God and to experience God in
the depths of their being. The message is critical, and what is the message? The
message is that God is love.
Well, ho-hum, right? Haven't we always heard that God is love? But, I mean God
is love in the deepest biblical sense, the most radical sense of love, that which
came to expression in Israel in its best understanding. My text says that the "ox
knows its owner and the ass its master's crib, but Israel does not know; my
people does not consider." This is the portrait of God throughout the whole of
Hebrew scriptures, the God Whose hands are always outstretched, the God Who
pleads with God's people, the God Who never turns away but always beckons. In
this context, a little further along the chapter - "Come, let us reason together, says
the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Farther on in that same
prophecy:
"Come, seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he
is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous one his
thoughts, and let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy upon him
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."
Throughout the whole of Israel there was this pleading note of a pleading God
with outstretched arms, waiting only to embrace the one who would return,
coming to one's senses, coming home.
But, of course, the consummate expression of it is in the parable of the Prodigal
Son, which is terribly misnamed. It's not a story of a prodigal son; it's not a story
of a son at all; it's the story of God, of a father, of an unquenchable love, of an
irresistible grace, of a love that is unconditional and irresistible in its appeal to
God's children. The context is important. It's the third of three stories. The first is
the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep. The second, the woman who searches
the house for a lost coin. And then this story of a father who had two sons.
Jesus was responding to the criticism of his life and ministry. In the opening of
the 15th chapter, those who represented institutional religion in the day of Jesus
© Grand Valley State University
�Take Care How You Kick Over Traces
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
were grumbling. They were grumbling because they said he receives and eats with
sinners. And as you've heard me say many times, the mark of Jesus' ministry, the
way in which he embodied his message, was in the table fellowship that he
practiced. Even for us to break bread together, to sit at a meal together is an
expression of intimate friendship. But, in Jesus' day it was especially the case.
You did not break bread with that one who was not friend. You did not share a
meal with the outcast or the alien or the estranged. And in the temple religion of
the day with its code of holiness, it was very clear who was in and who was out.
There was a kind of exclusion practiced. And the reason that the temple
authorities were grumbling at Jesus was because Jesus went against the
conventional wisdom, he went against what everybody else was doing. He opened
his heart and he opened his table to all comers. No one was excluded. And that
was threatening to the institutional religion of the day, and they grumbled.
And so, as Jesus always did, he responded with a story: There was a father who
had two sons. There was a younger son who was a rebel who asked for his
inheritance early on and who left home and wasted his life, ending up in
decadence and despair. And there was an obedient son who followed the letter of
the law, but grudgingly so with a kind of inward resentment over against the
father that was as painful to the father as was the rebellion of the other. There
was a father who had two sons, both of whom broke the father's heart.
So, for two or three weeks, let's think about this old story. Maybe you say, "How
can you say anything new about that old story?" Well, I wonder myself, but let's
try. Let's focus primarily this morning on that younger son. For him to ask for his
inheritance and to leave home was a radical request that was unheard of. In his
culture, in Jesus' day, what he was really asking for was the death of his father.
He was cutting himself loose from his whole legacy, everything that was sacred
and holy, everything that was home. For in that day more than our own, a person
was identified by a father's house, by the village from which he stemmed. All of
his life, that was his identity. His total social security was in belonging to a house
and to a village and to a community. That's who he was. And so, the request of
this young man was a horrible request that implicated him in the wish for the
death of his father.
I don't know whether Sigmund Freud ever talked about this parable or not. I've
never seen a reference to it, but I think he could have done a lot with it because,
according to Freud, the origin of religion is in the wish for the death of the father
which then creates guilt which then needs atonement. I don't think Freud had it
all right by any means, but I wonder without reading Freud back into Jesus or
taking contemporary psychological insights that we do have from the behavioral
sciences and reading them into the parable, I wonder if Jesus was not essentially,
intuitively, instinctively understanding that there is within us that which would
leave home.
© Grand Valley State University
�Take Care How You Kick Over Traces
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
As a matter of fact, I think the two sons are not two different sons; I think the two
sons live in all of us, whether it be two sons or two daughters, both reside in the
heart of each of us and there is in each of us that which would leave home, that
which would rebel, that which would cut loose. And I suspect that Jesus
understood that as an observer of human nature and human behavior. He didn't
need Freud to tell him about that; he didn't need our modern psychological
insights to know that. Truth and illumination were not born in the 20th century.
And if we walk around that for a moment, I wonder if Jesus was really
condemning that leaving of home altogether because we have learned, have we
not, that it's necessary to leave home. Now, in the maturation process of every
individual, is it not true that we must go through a process of individuation?
Must we not separate? Doesn't every parent want a son or a daughter to move
from under their roof and to find that kind of independence that will bring to
expression the fullness of that person?
I shake my head at how in earlier years I preached this parable and it's still being
preached that way all over the church, as though this is the parable of the
Prodigal Son and as though it is a warning to young people that there are great
dangers in loose living. That is to trivialize this story. As a matter of fact, aimless
freedom or autonomy, in this case, can lead to decadence and destruction.
There's no question about that. But, that's not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus
is talking about that within us that necessarily and normally and naturally must
find its own independent expression. And I think what Jesus is saying is that's a
very perilous journey. Well, it is a perilous journey, isn't it? Is there a parent
among us that doesn't hold their breath when our youth are going through that
process?
A few weeks ago my elderly sisters came up to visit Nancy after her surgery and
one of my sisters is here today, but I talk about my sisters once in a while because
they hear the tapes and they feel good just to know that I'm still thinking about
them, but my sisters were remarking about what a nice boy I was, what a nice
child, and the fact that as a youth I never brought any grief to my parents. The
years of adolescence when one ought to be separated, I just sort of lollygagged
along and didn't cause any particular concern, to which Nancy responded that
she sort of wished that I would have gone through my adolescence when I was
with my parents rather than with her.
I don't know whether we just go through our adolescence one time. I was
comforted hearing one psychologist speak one day who said for the male,
adolescence is from 17 to 47. But, as a matter of fact, folks, it is necessary for us to
move away from home in order that we can be at home with who we are, and it is
a perilous process. My sermon title this morning is, "Be Careful How You Kick
Over the Traces," because the pitfalls are many and potential disaster lies around
every corner, and there is no parent that has not had sleepless nights over a son
or a daughter who was struggling to find themselves. And it isn't just the
adolescents. Those of us who are old enough to have children and grandchildren
© Grand Valley State University
�Take Care How You Kick Over Traces
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
know that there is never a time when our children get beyond the pale of our
concern and are not the subjects of our prayers. To be human isn't easy, and to
find that kind of independent expression of the fullness of our own person - that
doesn't come without some struggle and some serious mistakes and often some
pain and some dreadful hurt.
But, that's really enough about that younger son, because that's not the focus of
the story. As I said, the focus of the story is the father. That father in the story is a
window that Jesus offers us into the very heart of God, and if good religion is to
reflect accurately the nature of God, then it must listen to Jesus in this story,
because if the son's request is outrageous, then the father's response is incredible!
For, what does he do? He gives him the goods and lets him go. And that is the
point at which it is most difficult for us to emulate the behavior of God, this God
reflected in this story by Jesus. He loves him and lets him go and stands by the
side of the road, trembling, watching and waiting, hoping that this one will
return. That is the picture of a love that is unconditional. It is the story of a
relationship whose bonds are love with no other strings attached. And even those
of us who love our kids find that there are times when we get into a tug of war
and a battle of the wills and, love them as we may, our own egos do get involved.
There is a power struggle often before parents and child come to reconciliation
and peace. But, that's the amazing thing about the biblical nature of God - that
God loves and lets go and keeps arms outstretched, waiting for the free and uncoerced return.
This is where the Church has failed so miserably and not just the Church, but
institutional religion, period. For institutional religion moves into the role of
parent, not after the model of God, but after the model of the human parent, the
stern, demanding parent, the parent that, if Freud has any truth at all in him, is
the parent that we would kill, the parent that we must flee, the parent that we
rebel against. The Church becomes the upholder of virtue and of morals, the
guardian of society's values; the Church condemns and excludes, draws lines, and
to that extent conveys a distorted image of God and sets forth altogether the
wrong message, for that message is being rejected en masse! Institutional religion
is being left in droves because there is that within the human person that simply
will not remain in that position of childhood and servitude and, consequently,
God is dishonored through God's own people.
I said the message is God is love and you said, "Ho-hum, so what else is new?"
That is new, that God is that loving, that love is that unconditional, that love is
finally irresistible, that to the rebel, there is finally nothing against which to rebel!
There is no barrier that needs to be overcome; there is no seawall against which
to break one’s waves, for God stands with arms outstretched and the only thing
that can break the rebellion is a love in which there is no fight, and if I read this
story accurately at all, that's the amazing news of that which Jesus taught and in
his life embodied - that God is love, period.
© Grand Valley State University
�Take Care How You Kick Over Traces
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
How do you fight love? When the son comes home, no questions are asked, no
condemnation is offered, just salty tears and arms that embrace. Because all that
God is ever about is to bring God's children home.
Years and years ago I read an old sermon illustration; it's about as musty as the
book in which it now resides. It's about a son who left home with brokenness with
his father and went out and got rid of all of the rebellion and came on hard times
and sent a letter to his father saying on such and such a day I will pass by the
house. If I would be welcome, tie a white handkerchief in the branch of the old
apple tree in the front yard. And as he approached the homestead with heart
pounding, he saw not a handkerchief tied in the apple tree. He saw hundreds of
white handkerchiefs tied to every branch of the apple tree, because finally, all the
divine parent wants is for you to come home. I invite you this morning, whether
you're young and rebellious or old and crotchety, why don't you come home?
Come on home.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/20040fa0f427ae2ec56ac12b2cd6cfe7.mp3
c62eb01261940b58ba78f89dff12a047
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XII
Series
Prodigal Son Parable
Scripture Text
Isaiah 1:3, Luke 15:13
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19960818
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1996-08-18
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Take Care How You Kick Over the Traces
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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application/pdf
Description
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 18, 1996 entitled "Take Care How You Kick Over the Traces", as part of the series "Prodigal Son Parable", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 1:3, Luke 15:13.
God is Love
Inclusive Grace
Nature of Religion
Prodigal Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee508445f3ec9c76c0dc8fc896362770.pdf
36e03de43a71ee64621553f7695f1916
PDF Text
Text
The End of Religion
Text: Isaiah 58:6-7; Luke 10:25; Jeremiah 22:16
Richard A. Rhem and Ken Medema
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 15, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Ken, I'm going to rehearse for the people what we have been talking about these
weeks so that you can come on board, and they might finally get it.
It started off on Pentecost when we talked about the spirit of God and the breath
of God or the wind of God that permeates the whole of reality - everything in
existence exists because of the enlivening Spirit of God. And then, next week was
Trinity Sunday, and we reflected together about God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit, and we recognized that that ancient symbol was struggling to
point to a mystery, and mystery not in the sense of something that maybe
eventually will be able to be solved or dissolved, but mystery in the sense of that
which is beyond our ability to comprehend, mystery in the sense of God being
incomprehensible, as the old theologian said, incomprehensible to human
understanding. So, we have a mystery that we cannot grasp, and yet the presence
of that mystery, that life-giving Breath is present to all that is.
I came across a wonderful analogy in the Confessions of St. Augustine, which I
had never seen before. Saint Augustine, in a beautiful poetic expression, a prayerlike expression to God, said, "O God, You are like a vast, limitless ocean." And
then he said all of creation, all that is, all creatures great and small, tables and
pianos and stools - all that is like a sponge, huge sponge, yet a sponge with limits.
All of creation, that 15 billion year old river of energy and matter and space and
time, all of that as a sponge is submerged in that infinite, limitless ocean. The
ocean, of course, is without limits, is more than the sponge, but there is not a
molecule or an atom of the sponge that is not saturated by the liquidity of that
infinite ocean. It's a beautiful analogy, I think. God more than, but a part of; not
one thing exists that is not permeated, shot through with the life, the breath, the
spirit of God.
But, the mystery, Ken, still remains undefined. What is its nature, its intention,
its purpose? For us in the Christian tradition, we find that the mystery comes into
focus in a face, in the face of Jesus. In the prologue to John's Gospel we have that
wonderful poetic expression, "In the beginning was the word and the word was
with God and the word was God, and all things were made by him and apart from
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
him was not anything made that was made, and that word was life to the world."
And then a dramatic statement in the 14th verse - "The word became flesh and
dwelt among us, and we beheld a face." Thus, in the humanity of Jesus, the
mystery is enfleshed. So now, the mystery which is beyond our comprehension
but which is experienced as the breath that inspires and radiates through all that mystery now has definition and specificity. It is the face of Jesus that shows
us the intention of the Eternal One. That face of Jesus, that life of Jesus points us
to compassion as the end of our religion, the purpose of our religion. And I say
this on the basis of that parable which we already looked at last week, the parable
of the Good Samaritan. Certainly the question of the lawyer coming to Jesus was
right at the heart of things. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Aren't we always wanting to secure ourselves?
And so, Jesus pointed him to the Torah, love God, love neighbor, etc. And then
the lawyer, wanting to make that somehow within some reasonable bounds, said,
"Who is my neighbor?" and Jesus, unwilling to set any limits, says to him, in
effect, you are the neighbor. You are to be neighbor to all of those who come your
way. The story of the Good Samaritan concludes with the lawyer having to say the
one who was neighborly was the one who showed mercy, and Jesus said, "Just do
it."
That's the way of Jesus. That is the intention of the mystery that is God.
Compassion is the end of religion - end, in the sense of purpose.
When Jesus said this, he was being true to his Jewish tradition. Recently, when I
heard Karen Armstrong, the English scholar, lecture on "The History of God," she
made the point so strongly that all of the great religious traditions point, finally,
to compassion. Compassion is the point of religion; it is to be the consequence of
our devotion. Certainly Jesus was reflecting what Isaiah said in chapter 58. There
was religion a'plenty, but the question is raised, "Is this the kind of fast I want?
Would I want you to go around looking all droopy-eyed with sackcloth and ashes,
carrying on a fast, going through your religious devotions, all the time still
centered on yourselves? No," the prophet says, "All of your religious devotion is
to no avail except it lead to compassion. Is not this the fast that I require, that you
loose the thongs of wickedness, that you release the oppressed, that you take the
homeless poor into your home and feed the hungry and clothe the naked?" Jesus,
in the Good Samaritan story, or in the parable of the sheep and the goats,
"Inasmuch as you've done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you've done it
unto me" - points to compassion as the end of religion.
Jesus was simply being true to his Jewish roots. Ken, my point this morning is
that religion's end, its purpose, is compassion. It is doing good. It is loving,
healing, helping, and if it doesn't issue in that, it is empty, without meaning and
without regard to God. Does that strike a chord with you?
Ken: Yeah, about 50,000. How much time do you have? (Ken plays & sings)
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
So, here's a great, vast ocean
And all Creation like a sponge
And when I look into the water,
it's amazing what I see.
First, I see the face of the One
who came to make it clear,
came to make it known
for all the world to hear.
Then I look again - I can see the face of my neighbor
and my enemy who lives here in this place,
the people I've rejected, the people I've ignored,
the people I've been closing out and setting outside the door.
And in this water I can see them, crying in their tears,
and I see them looking now at me and I know why I am here!
And I see these faces reflected in the water of
incomprehensible, mysterious space and love.
And I know beyond the vastness of the Mystery,
the great white sea.
Everywhere I look I see
the reflection of the faces
of the people close and far
and in my neighborhood
who need my good.
And I'm thrown on mercy once again
and mercy I'm called to show again.
And that's the end. That's the way.
That's what it's all about.
I think that's real close, and in my head I think I always knew that, but in the
transformation of my own religious experience, Ken, I have come to see how, in
my growing up and in my early ministry and in my preaching, I made salvation
into a kind of cult. I made it into a kind of a cult that majored in personal
salvation, the kind of "Me and Jesus." I wanted to be sure I was safe and secure
and bound for heaven, and frankly, this life was something to be endured in order
that we might really enter into life and light eternal.
I suppose the greatest transformation in my own experience is to recognize that
eternal life is now and here and God is now and here, and this life is the life to be
lived. I can trust God for whatever else there is, but even though in my head I
knew compassion was an obligation of the Gospel, I didn't take it all that
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
seriously until I began to look at my own selfish, self-centered, egocentric,
arrogant salvation lust. Not only did I make it a salvation cult but, in the
organization and institutional forms of religion (and I've been a part of it all my
life), I begin to see not much more than Trivial Pursuit. This is a time of the
assemblies of the churches, and the newspaper is full of articles, great debates on
such critical issues as whether to call God He or She, whether anyone else is going
to get to heaven but those of us who know the formula, whether persons of
different sexual orientation can be ordained to ministry, etc., etc. The media is
full of articles about the fact that denominations are coming apart at the seams,
and the more I look at it from the outside, the more I see how far we've missed
the mark. How much we are concerned about things that are of trivial
importance, and we fail to do the one thing needful, which is the whole end of
religion. I believe that self-centered, arrogant religion is coming to an end.
There's a great thrashing about now, the fundamentalist reaction is the last gasp
of a dying movement.
We were guests of Bishop Spong a couple of weeks ago. As we left St. Peter's
parish in Morristown, New Jersey, a beautiful church, all that stone and stained
glass, he said to me, "This is quite an institution. But down the street is another
Episcopal parish. That's a different place." He said, "There, when a stuffy
Episcopalian comes in, the rector says, 'You know, I think you'd like the parish
down the block,'" because that parish is filled with all kinds of marginal people,
black and white and Hispanic, straight and gay and all sorts in between, all
shades of humankind. They run soup kitchens and they have diversity seminars
and they are involved in the community and the city. He said, You know, as
Bishop I have to go once a year and I take in members, I lay hands on members,
and there are always some who go through the Episcopal rigamarole, and if
Episcopalians are anything, they are really strict about their liturgy and their
forms - so here's the Bishop taking them through their forms and lays his hands
on them.
And then the Senior Warden stands up and he says, "Now, are there any others of
you who believe in this ministry and want to commit yourself to it?" And then a
whole raft, another group, of people stand up who believe in the ministry. They
don't really care about all of the rigamarole of the Episcopal liturgy and all of its
ritual and all of its forms and the institutional form of the Church and the
membership of the Church and the paper games that we play. But there are
people out there who, when they see something authentic, when they sense
there's ministry going on, when the compassion of Jesus Christ is flowing, they
say, "Yes! I want to be a part of that."
Ken, the old forms are dying, but there's something new emerging, and it's going
to be a whole community of people of all stripes and sizes and shapes who are
going to band together and say, "Enough church games. Enough theological
niceties. Enough of all of that selfish, egotistic concern about one's own little soul,
© Grand Valley State University
�The End of Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
and let's begin to love the cosmos that God loves, and let compassion flow." How
does that hit you?
Ken: Holy Mackerel!
Ah, Baby, we built ourselves this little boat
'cause we were frightened of the sea,
built ourselves this little boat
to put back the smokin' mystery.
Went ashore where the waves were,
so we put off this little sail,
What you gonna do when
your little boat starts to fail?
We thought the boat would last forever,
we thought we were so damn secure,
And now we feel it tremblin' and there's water comin' in,
Ah, now the dissolution does begin.
So, we're gonna jump into the water.
The boat will be gone.
We'll have to jump into the water,
like a sponge, swimmin' on and on,
And we'll little by little we'll see
the pieces of driftwood just floatin' away,
As we jump into the water
on a fine, fine summer's day,
As we jump into the water
as that old boat gets washed away.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/69e01d45914f9846f122f9c4736784b7.mp3
d71dc9751c370b48fab162d17a8498f1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Pentecost IV
Series
With Ken Medema: A Cosmic Symphony
Scripture Text
Isaiah 58:6-7, Luke 10:25, Jeremiah 22:16
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19970615
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-06-15
Title
A name given to the resource
The End of Religion
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 15, 1997 entitled "The End of Religion ", as part of the series "With Ken Medema: A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 58:6-7, Luke 10:25, Jeremiah 22:16.
Compassion
Nature of Religion
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b8d39b67042d470cabfd05debbdc3b33.pdf
903807a576789eda8603b8e2135b1928
PDF Text
Text
The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?
From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Text: Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 8:28-39
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 13, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The title of this sermon, “The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?” raises a
tough question for which there is no easy answer. And that is what I have named
the sermon series I begin today. Tough Questions.
By that, I mean questions that matter, that impact my life and society; questions
that raise critical issues for ourselves and our world.
These are questions for which there is no easy answer, no answer that can be
checked by a scientific experiment or calculated by computer technology. So
much hangs on the answer, but the answer will finally involve a commitment of
faith because the nature of the question defies a clear and simple answer.
We will open ourselves to some critical questions that most of us wrestle with
some time or other, but often leave unspoken in conversation because we are not
always ready to admit to the question or to face the possibility that some tried
and true formulas of faith may need revising, which is scary.
But a healthy faith, a positive spiritual life can hardly be possessed if there are
questions that now and then surface but are pushed down and denied. And so,
let’s raise some tough questions these weeks, seeking not easy answers, but
honest engagement with the questions and hopefully a place to stand that
provides freedom and confidence for our lives.
That we have questions about some of the “answers” that our traditional biblical
faith has supplied is not surprising. How could it be otherwise? The whole
biblical story arose from 2000 to 4000 years ago. The human experience of God
was portrayed in narrative, saga, myth, allegory and parable, which conceived of
the physical universe and of God within the framework of an ancient picture
which was believed to be the way things were, but not at all in terms of our
present understanding of the universe, humankind, society, or historical
development as we know it.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The ancients wrestled with fundamental human questions as we do - Where have
we come from? Where are we going? Is there some purpose unfolding? Does it all
mean something? Those questions are addressed in all the world’s religions. And
the stories, myths, and teaching of all religions are attempts to find some clue to
the meaning of Reality we encounter as humankind. The Bible is the cumulative
religious understanding of Israel, culminating in the event of Jesus Christ, and
the belief about God, the world, nature and history formed the framework within
which the biblical answers to ultimate questions were articulated.
But that framework no longer reflects the reality of the universe or humanity or
God’s interaction with the world. I don’t think I have to belabor that fact; it must
be obvious to any reasonable reflection on the ancient worldview.
But then, if our whole understanding of the nature of the universe and
humankind has undergone radical re-conception, is it still possible to believe the
ancient answers to life’s tough questions? For example: The Providence of God: Is
it wishful thinking? To engage that question, let’s look at the model or the
paradigm from Scripture within which the providence of God was declared and
proclaimed.
But, first, let’s see what Providence has been understood to consist in. I had the
Questions and Answers of the Heidelberg Catechism printed in your liturgy.
These questions come in the second part of the Reformation Catechism out of the
16th century - the discussion of the Apostles’ Creed, the opening statement of
which declares,
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
QUESTION 26: What dost thou believe when thou sayest: I believe in God
the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth?
ANSWER: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of
nothing made heaven and earth, with all that in them is, who likewise
upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence, is for
the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to
have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body
and soul; and further, that whatever evil he sends upon me in this vale of
tears, he will turn to my good; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God,
and willing also, being a faithful Father.
QUESTION 27: What dost thou understand by the Providence of God?
ANSWER: The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby,
as it were by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth, with all
creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought,
fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and
poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
QUESTION 28: What does it profit us to know that God has created, and
by his providence still upholds all things?
ANSWER: That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and
for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that
no creature shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so in his
hand that without his will they can not so much as move.
In the Catechism’s statement, the Providence of God is rooted in the biblical
teaching of creation. The God Who creates, likewise upholds and governs. In
consequence, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.”
In order to picture this biblical model of God’s interaction with the creation, I
drew a diagram which still needs some work, but I think will make the point THE BIBLICAL MODEL - A THEISTIC SALVATION MODEL
God is predominantly transcendent/omnipotent. God intervenes in
nature/history. The biblical story is largely a redemption story centering in
God’s saving action to redeem the human creature and effect God’s
Kingdom. Creation is largely a stage area for the drama of salvation.
This model does not deny God’s presence or immanence in Creation; the Spirit is
present in Creation and Jesus is God’s presence in flesh. However, God’s
transcendence predominates; God is “above,” other than that which God calls
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
into being by God’s Word. And what God creates is perfect, harmonious, “very
good.” The Genesis story in the succeeding chapters through chapter 11 then
recounts human rebellion, disobedience and the consequent corruption of the
perfect paradisical state. The human creatures’ disobedience is spoken of in
subsequent Christian teaching as the Fall and the human family is marked by that
original disobedience, which moral failure is the root cause of all that goes wrong
in Creation. The biblical story beginning with Genesis 12, the calling of Abraham
and Sarah and the covenant of Grace constituted with them, marks the turn from
the Creation theme to the salvation or redemption theme - the long movement
toward the End of history with paradise regained - the Holy City, the new
Jerusalem and the dwelling of God with humankind.
In this scheme, which is the traditional biblical model or paradigm, the focus is
the Divine-Human relationship; the stress is on salvation and the physical
universe is simply the stage on which the redemptive drama is played out. God is
outside but intervenes and really controls what happens, because God is
Fatherlike, God can be trusted to turn even evil to good purpose, but all things good and evil, come from God’s “fatherly hand.”
That is the picture, the framework, the model within which God’s Providence is
affirmed in Scripture and has been taught in the Christian faith tradition. This
understanding is held not only by folk in the churches, but finds expression again
and again in popular conversation. This idea has permeated the consciousness of
Western culture - “God has a purpose in it.” Over and over one hears it in the face
of tragedy and suffering of every sort. It is not a reasoned conclusion on the basis
of evidence; it reflects a deep, deep, uncritical response to life’s experiences. It
must reflect a deep longing in the human heart that it be so.
That’s why I raise the tough question - Is it wishful thinking? Is it something
within us that craves such a Providence to be operative because we are aware of
the fragile nature of our lives, how vulnerable we are to a hundred or a thousand
perils beyond our knowledge and control?
But if such “comfort” is posited on a conception of God and cosmos and human
reality that we can no longer really believe, then are we only fooling ourselves?
Simply believing something does not make it true.
Well, how do we understand our reality? If not the biblical model of Creation in
Perfection/Fall/Redemption, then what model might be more reflective of what
has been discovered about our universe and our human reality? How might we
conceive of God and God’s inter-action with the world?
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
An Alternative Creation Model:
If you eliminated God as Mystery and the immanent Divine Spirit permeating the
movement from Big Bang toward Shalom, I think those scientists who deal in
cosmological thought, astrophysics, sub-atomic biology and the related fields
would agree that this diagram reflects our knowledge of the physical universe and
our total reality. All that was present in the Big Bang has been unfolding,
developing from that micro-second to the present.
Some scientists sense the presence of a Mystery; some deny any possibility of
positing purpose and goal. But, the phenomenon of religion is a human response
to some ultimate Creative Source or Force from which all reality derives, some
purpose or intention - a movement toward a Goal.
We have reflected on God as Mystery whose creative life-giving “Breath” or spirit
permeates all that is, whose nature is given definition by the Word/Spirit in flesh
in Jesus from whose life we see the nature of the Mystery as gracious. This is the
claim of faith; it is not verifiable as are the echoes of radio waves from the Big
Bang of 15 billion years ago. Such a claim is not provable by any means derived
from the sciences. But, the question arises:
Is such a claim consistent with a conception of the universe, our experience of
God and our experience of being human? It is my contention that it is. Further, I
would contend that the old model of Creation/Fall no longer convincingly
explains our experience of ourselves, of God, of cosmos.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
The Creation model posits by faith the Mystery that is God as the Creative Fount
of all that is, claiming that that which sparked the whole cosmic drama of fifteen
billion years was endowed with the whole potential that is being actualized; all
that is was there “in the beginning.” The operative term for this model is
Emergence, the continuous unfolding of the potential that was contained in the
originating Creative explosion. Over 15 billion years the inorganic moved to the
organic and there was life. Organic life emerged into consciousness, selfconsciousness, the pre-human, the human. And the human moves toward the
level of spirit. And where will spirit lead? Will there be a level of spiritual
community beyond anything our human community has yet known in its
warring, despoiling, rapacious madness?
Let me be clear; the model might suggest that it is ever upward and onward, but
that is not necessarily so. Why?
Because at the level of the human, the creature becomes co-creator, able to
respond to the beckoning of the Spirit or to be dragged down by the pull of the
lower from which he/she has derived.
This is where the claim of the Providence of God must be re-thought. The old
Creation/Fall model posited a God Almighty and all controlling, a
transcendent/wholly other Being whose “life” was not really immanent within the
cosmic process. That God, spoken of as male, existed apart from the cosmic
drama, but rather directly governed, controlled all that transpired. Thus, the
Heidelberg Catechism claims, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly
hand.” The nurturing parental conception of God softens this claim and the
positive value of such a faith is that one becomes patient in adversity, thankful in
prosperity, with good confidence for the future.
But there are problems here. All things from God’s hand?
The Holocaust? There are serious voices that claim we can never think the same
about God after the Holocaust - 6 million of God’s special people?
Or, what of the beautiful child living in close proximity to this church in a
life/death struggle with cancer? And the instances that we encounter again and
again are beyond number.
Is it a comfort to believe all things come from God’s fatherly hand? And then, too,
such a claim is contrary to the emerging, unfolding, developing, evolving reality
of which we are a part. There seems to be no tinkering with the amazing universe
about which we have learned so much.
Further, such a view of God’s interaction with the world and our lives runs
contrary to our own concrete experience. We do determine the course of history
and of the cosmos in a very real sense. We can destroy the planet or we can
nurture it. We can work for peace or create conflict, violence and death. We can
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
work for dialogue and mutual understanding among religious traditions or use
religion as the fuel to warfare. We may wish it were not in our hands, but it is. So,
then, is the answer to our question, “Yes?” Is trust in the Providence of God just
wishful thinking?
My answer is not an easy answer. It is not a simple “Yes” or a simple “No.” I do
believe one can yet believe in the providence of God within the cosmic drama of
which we are a part, but it will undergo a significant revision.
The classic biblical story of God’s Providence is the Joseph story in Genesis. I
cannot here re-tell that story. You can read it in Genesis 37-50. It is a story of
human arrogance, meanness, grief and deep pathos. The family of Jacob is
human, all too human. The brothers hate Joseph, their father’s favorite who
himself is not wise in relating his dreams of superiority. In the end, Joseph
becomes a powerful ruler in Egypt. Jacob sends his remaining sons to Egypt to
buy grain because of a famine in Canaan. They are recognized by Joseph who
puts them through tests and great stress. Finally, he reveals himself to them.
They fear for their lives. But Joseph spares them.
Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm
to me, God intended it for good... Joseph had a choice. He could have wiped them
out in an act of vengeance. Rather, he forgave them, breaking the cycle of
violence. In so doing, I believe Joseph was responding to the Spirit that beckons
toward shalom rather than yielding to the impulse from below that would have
satisfied the desire for vengeance and retaliation. Joseph discerned in the milieu
of human conflict a way of peace that led to reconciliation; Joseph acted with
grace.
Paul is probably as responsible as anyone for the traditional conception of
Providence. The 8th chapter of Romans is a statement of his conviction that all
things are directly determined by “God’s fatherly hand” as the catechism claims.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are
called according to his purpose. Paul believed God had pre-destined that we be
conformed to the image of Jesus. He goes on to make an absolutely marvelous
claim that whatever befalls us in no way can separate us from God’s love in Jesus
Christ.
Can we translate Paul’s confidence in terms that reflect our understanding of our
world, our experience? I think we can, but not as straightforwardly and simply as
Paul claimed.
The biblical model of God in direct control of all that happens so that nothing
happens but that which “comes from the Fatherly hand” collided with the model
of the universe that arose in the modern period - we speak of the Newtonian
model - the great machine that grinds on its way according to ironclad laws of
cause and effect leaving room only for a Creator at the beginning to get things
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
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started and then from outside the system becoming an observer, perhaps on rare
occasion intervening, tinkering with the system. This is a Deist conception - God
the Supreme Clockmaker who creates, winds it up and lets it run on its own.
This model left little room for God’s intimate involvement in the universe or in
our lives. It collided head-on with the idea of Providence as conceived in
Scripture and catechism. This understanding of the universe has dominated the
last three hundred years and created the tragic gulf between religious faith and
scientific understanding of the world. The conflict has been costly to both science
and religion and is the cause of large-scale defection from religious faith by the
intellectual leadership of the world.
But, there are leading thinkers today in both science and religion who see in the
more recent understanding of the universe the manner in which God’s
continuous immanent creativity is operative in the unfolding drama influencing
the course of cosmic development toward a goal according to a gracious purpose.
As my thinking - the I that I am - influences the whole of my being, even to the
most elemental physical processes, analogously so a God transcendent - more
than the totality of all that is but not apart from any aspect of it – might influence
the course of its development in ways that are life enhancing, creative, and
increasing in complexity, moving the whole to higher levels of development.
Computers remain a mystery to me, but I do know there is hardware and
software. The hardware is mechanical; it functions according to physical law. But,
the “machine” is useless without a program that determines how its myriad
circuitry operates. The program is determined by a human mind with a purpose
in mind. The program is encoded on a disk and inserted in the hardware
equipment so that the desired result is achieved.
Might God be the author of the software of the cosmos? And if God as Mystery is
revealed to be mirrored in Jesus, then could we not trust in the creative, gracious
intention written into the universe’s program of development?
Finally, when we speak of God, we speak of mystery and when we think deeply
about our own being, we run up against mystery, as well. All analogies break
down; we come to the end of rational discourse. Yet, I believe there are resources
in our faith tradition and in the amazing unveiling of the wonders of the cosmos
that point to a God much larger than the old, biblical stories portrayed, but a
God, nonetheless, full of grace with a purpose far grander than we’ve yet
conceived of.
The old conceptions gave confidence for the future and comfort for the present.
Comfort is “com-fortes” - that is, enabling one to live with strength. I do believe
that is possible, to an even greater degree, given what we are learning about the
nature of our world. But there is this critical difference: in the model I am
suggesting, we are called to be co-creators with God. We can thwart the Creator’s
© Grand Valley State University
�The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
purpose or join in its realization. The dice of the universe is loaded, biased toward
life and creative movement toward spirit and community, toward Shalom. But, it
will not happen unless or until the human species catches the dream and forsakes
its warring madness.
The Providence of God - is it wishful thinking? If we see ourselves passively being
played upon, waiting for God to unilaterally create heaven on earth, sparing us all
harm and suffering -Yes. But, if we understand that providence as God’s
continuous top-down influence nudging, beckoning, urging toward humane
community - No.
When we learn to react to our life situation as did Joseph, with humility and
grace, then I believe we will experience the reality of what Paul expressed If God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the
love of Christ?... nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Living thus, open, free, confident, I will see how God works all things together for
good and, yielded to that overarching Divine persuasion, I will find my life being
conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, whose highest expression of human
selfhood was the integrity of offering his life for the Divine Dream that drove him,
praying,
Thy will be done.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/063cf23767e2bedba7d37632acae5caa.mp3
5a72b8bd702c0a8ed24e2eb1cfa0f89b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost VIII
Series
Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Scripture Text
Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19970713
Date
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1997-07-13
Title
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The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 13, 1997 entitled "The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39.
Mystery
Nature of God
Nature of Religion
Shalom