Sunday, November 9, 2008

Emergent Mid-Atlantic Conference


Peter Rollins told stories, pushed the envelope, and dialogued with John Franke. Here's a few highlights:
  • subjective violence vs. objective violence
  • retroactive need
  • refusal to do pastoral care
  • theology as the architecture we build in the aftermath of God
  • we always get God wrong when we speak, but we are impelled to keep on talking
  • interdependent particularity
And two questions it stimulated for me:
  • If we tend to be attentive to subjective violence (the crime-fighting of Batman) while objective violence (the poverty-creation of Wayne Industries) is sublimated, might rejection of success (or criteria for success) enact a Girardian unveiling for churches or other bodies?
  • Might a focus on embodied existence in general (and Gen 1:26 and Matt 25:40 in particular) provide a path beyond a framework in which finitude and fallenness form an impenetrable barrier to Truth?