Scathing rebuttal as follows:

First: Damn . . . just to make it easy on you.

Second: I agree with your last part about the Spirit being equally as active now as in the first century. That's foundational to me; I don't see any great breaks in the continuity of reality between today and any previous age. BUT, for me that is a fatal blow to orthodoxy, because I see no superiority of the paradigm of first century believers over modern day believers. The disciples of the first century were presented with a story just as we are, and both are required as a simple matter of fact to interpret it based on our understanding of reality.  

When you speak of rewriting Scripture according to our paradigm, I fail to see how we can speak pejoratively of doing so. In fact, I see such rewriting as our only option. I understand the concern that this could result in Scripture becoming "whatever we want" it to be. To this concern I would pose: do we really believe the Spirit is as active today? Really? If so, I believe that within community Scripture will always be rewritten, in the Spirit (Presence = Present) of God. We hold to the same Bible because we have no other access to Jesus. If we could figure a method for time travel, I would much prefer a few good documentaries from which to seek a more applicable interpretation of Jesus. Thus far, this has not proved a viable option. So, I stick with Scripture . . but according to my understanding, not theirs. Again I don't think they were better off than we.  

Third: I firmly agree that the Jesus of history is the core of our faith. I've never once questioned this. Never. But, all we know of Jesus is shrouded in myth and metaphor. I don't believe this is due to an attempt to obscure him, nor to make him out to be something other than what he was. In the paradigm of the first century though, myth and metaphor was interpretation. When presenting their Savior to the world, the first believers did what was utterly natural to them: present him in the category or a rabbi, miracle-worker, Pharisee, and in doing so also show how he was much more than any of these things. This was interpreting for them. Their interpretations, for myself and countless others in our contemporary world, have ceased to aid in understanding Jesus. In fact, quite the opposite if in the name of orthodoxy I am required to believe not only in Jesus as Lord, but also as supernatural miracle-man. Culturally, I don't find the first-century worldview to be superior, and if I am required to bastardize my own understanding of reality in order to call myself Christian, I am regrettably not. I agree with you that Christianity makes some fantastic claims. At the core of Christianity, I can perceive claims which will always seem outrageous. . . I've read Paul. I understand that some of our faith will appear as foolishness, but I feel that we have readily taken this as a justification (in the face of Modernism) for adhering to a syncretism of worldviews which are incompatible. We want to act as though it is perfectly fine to live by the principles of modernity in all facets of life, except religion where it is perfectly acceptable to flee to an inconsistent premodern view of history. I cannot accept this. The foolishness we embrace is one that remains no matter what paradigm we use to interpret Jesus. Therefore, I cannot look back on the first-century as a bygone time, utterly different from our own, where supernatural miracles were the rule. I only think that people of that time interpreted as miraculous, the same event that we would seek to understand through causal relationships. Where they saw God in the miracle worker, I see God in the depth of his humanity and I use the miracle myths to understand such humanity better.

Lastly: I see major theological problems with the idea that God simply sectored off part of himself in which death could reign for a while and be absorbed. The Living God stands over against death. But more importantly than all of this is that it represents a line of thought that is thoroughly foreign to Jews of any era, and unquestionably foreign to the Jews responsible for the writings of the New Testament. To these, God cannot die.

This is a big deal to me, because I see it as one of the major dividing lines between Christianity and the other two Abrahamic faiths. It is true, I am not currently in dialogue with many Jews of Muslims. But, I find it to be of no little theological importance that we live in a world where the annihilation of the human race could likely occur because of a disagreement between these religions. I find it to be the worst blasphemy to assume that such an event would be justified by some bullshit eschatology on the part of Christians who would dare to assume that God wills a final battle between those who know him as YHWH, God, or Allah. If there is any hope for the future of humanity, it will begin because we begin to take seriously the call to interpret our religions critically, and against what we are required to believe for the sake of remaining orthodox. As a Christian who takes seriously the threat which my own faith poses to the future of humanity, I see it as necessary to critique what I think to be outdated and divisive concepts of God, and Jesus the founder of my faith.

I say all that to say, I've thought seriously about these things. There is nothing trivial about them to me. I don't trifle with orthodoxy for the sake of stepping on toes.

We cling to the idea that God loved the world enough to send Jesus (whatever that may mean to us). Yet, we think it noble or unavoidable to allow the tension between religions to escalate towards the death of life itself. I can point the finger in this situation indefinitely towards any other and in the coming future the result of hell on earth will remain unchanged. Or, I can critique my own faith deeply, and in doing so see its true contribution to hope, while standing firmly against all the divisiveness it has represented. In doing so I cling to the thought that such an example will lead the world to be a place where God does not will, nor allow, me to kill another for choosing to call him Allah.

If I say anything controversial, it is because I have ceased to see a future in saying anything else.

a few more . .

Ok, since it seems to have grabbed the interest of so many, allow me to state a few of my other objections to the various trinitarian/atonement/divinity theories.  I am open to thinking divergent to my own, but these are the issues I keep getting hung up on.  In no particular order:

1.  "The Crucified God" - I have not yet read this particular book, but I do have some objections to the general concept that God himself was crucified.  As I hear it, God alone is perfect, and as a perfect being he demands a perfect sacrifice to atone for men's sins.  So therefore, in order for Jesus' sacrifice on the cross to count, Jesus had to have been perfect.  So, syllogistically we come to see none other than God himself in the person of Jesus hanging on the cross, offering himself for our sins.

Here's where it breaks down for me.  We believe in a God who is not merely the Creator of the universe, but also the Sustainer.  We are not here because God spoke, but because he is always speaking.  We are maintained by the fact that he is always singing our name.  So, if God dies the song dies too.  This also brings me to the second big objection I have:

2.  If God dies by what power is he raised?  If God is dead, then nihilism is our only option.  This is one platform I can't abandon.  We have hope of a resurrection because we believe in a God who can't die.  We believe in a God who is life.  If the source of all life suffers death, then all is lost.  I fully support a christology in which God identifies with his messiah (Son), and even one in which he suffers immanently in his chosen.  I can't believe in a God who dies on the cross, because if God dies there is no one with the power to raise him.  Rather the beauty I find in the story of Jesus is a hope in what was beyond hope.  In Jesus, I see the greatness of human drama in which when it appears that even God himself had forsaken this rejected messiah, unforeseen at the last moment, God, the source of all life, vindicates Jesus by assuming him into God's own eternal life.  But, for me, this hinges on the reality of God's eternal deathlessness.  If God dies, I see no means by which a resurrection is possible.  Radical theology becomes the only line of thought that makes any sense.

I'm pretty much at a point where I'm ok identifying myself as a pan-en-theist.  I believe the biblical idea that there is no place in the world where God is not present.  We may experience him differently, even sometimes as though he's not there, but nonetheless I believe he pervades everything and every person.  In this way, I understand that God is fully present in all human suffering.  I definitely believe that God was present in the crucifixion.  I think in that particular fact the question, as much as ever, becomes why did God not do something about it?  I find the unique Christian answer to be:  he did.  He raised Jesus into eternal life in God.

But again, in my view, if God dies on the cross all is lost.

3.  Another way I've heard it posed is that sin being the rejection of God, and hell being the state of separation that is the consequence of our rejection, our sin demands that someone suffer hell.  Depending on the semantics of this position I can either see it as a good point or one that is totally misguided.  

I feel it breaks down when we attribute divinity to Jesus:  for our sake, God forsakes himself?  I don't really see this as solving anything other than making God seem schizophrenic on some level.  I guess atonement completely breaks down for me when we cast it as a form of punishment.  As I stated earlier, I have no room for a blood-thirsty God, nor a God who puts himself in time-out to save us from our just-desserts.

Even Moltmann who embraces atonement unequivocally, agrees that the concept of expiation is outdated.  He speaks of "dissociating ourselves from the inadequate images of sacrificial theology:  ransom, expiatory sacrifice, satisfaction, and so forth."  He brings out a refreshing point that in Jesus, God is not saving us from the sins we've committed, but from the sinners that we are.  We are not seeking spiritual bleach for spiritual dirt on our souls, but to be reborn such that sin no longer is characteristic of our being.  If people spoke more consistently in this way, I doubt I would have near as many problems with atonement.

Personally, in the cross of Jesus I find a unique place where the pan-en-theistic God proves to humanity that he has not chosen a faction, but desires to embrace all.  Jesus, who has chosen to represent the vulnerable, is killed by the collusion of Jewish power groups and Roman political authority.  Jesus does not respond with vindictive accusations.  He verbally embraces all those who oppose him, praying for their forgiveness.  In the end it appears that he dies alone, until his followers experience him not as dead, but eternal.  Jesus, chose the cause of the poor.  He chose the lost causes.  And, in him God affirms this choice by not allowing death to have the last say.  Yet, at the cross we see oppressors and oppressed standing side-by-side.  The world's factions are brought together and face the consequences of their divisions.  The Roman centurion recognizes that the man he killed is the man who should lead him, and as he looks away he sees the poor, marginalized followers whom this leader represented.  This servant of Caesar realizes that Jesus is better at being an emperor than Caesar is, and the call of this Lord is to those whom he is oppressing.  The poor should by no means be painted idyllically.  These are the same people who frequently plotted to kill the same Romans that Jesus just submitted to unto death.  In this messiah, and no other that I've seen, God proves that he hasn't taken a side in our factions, only that he has taken our side as his creatures.  To me, all our excuses for sin and hate for the Other are atoned for in that moment, where both sides are faced with the hideousness of the consequences of division.  God does not take the side of the repressed Jews, nor the Roman overlords, nor the pious Jewish leaders, but rather the faithful servant who suffers for all.  

It is not that God required atonement to reconcile us to himself.  We required atonement to reconcile us to each other. 

Who's telling who?

All the theological conversations I've had of late have proven one thing to me:  I really don't have my mind made up on a wide variety of issues.  Maybe, it would be more accurate to say that I refuse (for the time being) to make up my mind.  Several friends have challenged me of late, generally regarding the Trinity, and I have come to see that really all I know are my objections to certain theologies.  I haven't taken a stand for a way of thinking, so much as taken a stand against what I will not believe.

In our contemporary context we often hear talk of how individualistic our society is, and how this is something that needs to be remedied.  We need to return to community and regain the social aspect of our humanity.  This is something I generally will give my unconditional agreement to.  Lately though, I've been wondering if we haven't partially misdiagnosed the situation . . . at least as far as America goes.   On the one hand I agree that the Western context has atomized social groupings for the sake of political control.  Where other countries in the world use their spare time to form power groups to influence the culture at large, Americans rush home after a long days work in order to not miss their favorite TV shows.  We spend our spare time desperately trying to listen to "what's important" rather than desperately trying to persuade others around us what really is important.

But this is where in my mind the other hand comes into play.  In this setting, I think it's actually the opposite of what we often hear:  there is a severe lack of individuality in our culture.  I've heard it said before that modernity was marked by the autonomous thinking individual, and now our postmodern setting is supposedly marked by people trying to return to communal living.  I agree that there is a level of truth to this, but it is a minor truth that in my opinion distracts us from the greater discord.  I think "post-modern culture" plays to the sense of loss that so many feel in not being part of a community, and offers cheap community at the cost of personal autonomy.

Modernity convinced us we didn't need anybody.

Postmodernity points out that we don't have anybody, and so don't need ourselves.  Conform while you still can!

A friend of mine has talked to me (and others) about the need for community a lot over the past few weeks.  He's big on narrative theology.  His point is that the community comes together to tell our story to ourselves, and that the community has a say in every person's story.  We tell each other who we (each) are.  In a sense I agree completely, and in another I completely don't agree.  

The problem is that there is no simple trade off here.  Whether we sacrifice our individuality for the sake of community, or forsake our community for the sake of autonomy, both will result in the loss of our humanity.  There is no true preference for one over the other.  Individuality is legitimate only in the context of community and a community is formative only insofar as it encourages us as individuals.  

It's a dialectic.  We exist in the tension between the two concepts, and to fail at either is to lose both.

This is my problem with the narrative community.  I understand that I know myself only by seeing myself in the Other.  I get the argument there.  But, I find that this is the thin ice where we often unknowingly step into conformity, which in my mind is the sacrifice of individuality for the sake of false community.  I know this based on the fact that I grew up church of Christ, where every congregation is autonomous and autonomy among members is a cardinal virtue . . . and yet on the whole it has a tendency to be one of the most grossly conformist denominations in existence.  We preach autonomy and fail to see the nauseating irony that everyone looks and acts the same.

I find this to be disturbingly true for Western culture at large.  I think what is needed is not one remedy or the other, but to stretch ourselves between the two.  I perceive that most of the people I grew up with need to pursue true individuality and autonomy in their own thought and spirituality . . . I say that because I see that as the only way that community could be possible.  

If I'm going to contribute to the communal recollection of the story of Jesus which is the center of our faith, I can only do so as an individual who has sought God in total honesty on an intra-personal level.  Otherwise the narrative we create will be redundant and lifeless.

In other words, it is true that I only know myself based on who my community tells me I am.  My autonomy cannot define me.  I need others for that.  Yet, the story that the community is centered on matters only so far as I the individual am liberated to tell it as I experienced it.  The story the community tells itself becomes true in me as I am freed to tell it afresh.  The relevance, the truth, of the community's story hinges on the voice of the individual.  Just as the individual's self-understanding, which liberates him into autonomy for the community is dependent on the words and actions of the people that surround him.