ATWHATCOST?

Hello Andrew, Thanks for an amazing website. Are you constructing A Theology With High Aspirations Towards Community Open Source Theology? An ATWHATCOST? What about a Mustard-seed Open Source Theology? That is, a MOST based on Mark 4:31-32.

If you turn your chart on end, God is the “ground” or “source of being.” The “connections” you list are the branches sprouting from the roots (God’s infinte love, of course). You know, the way a shrub, like a mustard bush, produces several branches right where it emerges from the ground rather than a single trunk like a tree. The “Emerging Culture” is the “community” of “birds of the air” that come to take shelter in the shade and make their nests in the supporting branches.

A shrub is an organism (therefore organised, in a manner of speaking), it has systems (roots, branches, stems, leaves, fruits(?) and seeds, not to mention inhabitants). A mustard bush grows at an amazingly fast rate, even under drought conditions, producing millions of additional seeds from that first speck. (What a great metaphor…Was it Scott Peck who used this analogy in “The Mustard Seed Conspiracy”?) In effect, in Jesus’ parable, it creates an ecosystem. A tiny thing like faith, not really even planted, but just tossed out on the bare ground, takes root, and voila…you have structure and shelter.

Maybe in the “shrub” system academicians help identifiy some stories and passages in scripture, along the line of a the Anglican Lectionary, say, to correspond with each of the connections branches. Perhaps they also identify some important points of certain stories. This divides the “connections” branches into smaller branches, which in turn support “stems, leaves, fruits, etc.” which represent specific interpretations, opinions, articles by academicians and scholars. The laity are the birds which come and take shelter in the shade, feed off the fruits and seeds. They may begin to bring their own twigs and pieces of bark,in the forms of stories, perceptions,ideas to the places in the tree that would seem to support them. After awhile nests would surely form that would support “families” of lay builders.

This “plan” obviously is not original, and is straight forward, but it does sort of capture the “both/and,” both structured and open-ended, concept. I think your point (5.) that there should “…be a commitment to intelligent, critical, and respectful reading of the biblical texts” is well-made. It makes sense to acknowldge roots in tradition, in order to feed the new branches that may grow from them. Come to think of it, isn’t that what OST is already accomplishing? May we all grow in God’s great love and mercy.

Peace, JRN