Launched: Theology of Consent
On one level, Theology of Consent is my dissertation through Northwind Theological Seminary–– an exercise in crossing the wires of René Girard’s mimetic theory with wires from Whiteheadian-inspired open and relational theology, then stepping back and watching what happens.
On another level, it’s me just trying to figure out what I think about life, loss, love, grief, sacrfice, the church, the world, God, and hope. Yeah, a whole slew of complicated things, like so much debris floating in the air after an explosion (like the explosion of loss for me and my family on New Years Day of 2015).
There is something about the woundedness of love, the way it presented itself to me in 2015, in depths of strength but also vulnerability that I’m still trying to excavate. It’s the only thing I’ve really been interested in all these years. I think the divine can best be described in terms of love, but not a watered-down version of love that sees God as capital-O Omnipotent, controlling, and just biding his time until he impatiently decides to get down into the cracks of your life and fix everything. No, love that is vulnerable and something very, very personal. Something that doesn’t have to get down into the cracks of your life because it’s the thing already there.
I think God might actually be love and that the fundamental characteristic of love might actually be consent. Consent is always present, though it never controls. Consent can be wounded, thought it never gives up. I will not soon forget reflecting upon the paradox of consent one evening as I considered Mary’s response, “Let it be.” I thought about the immense power this lone teenager wielded; of the way so much hung in the balance as she considered her options. I was attempting to wrap my mind around something so small, being the fulcrum for something so large, when I heard a whisper: Maybe the entire cosmos revolves around consent. I don’t have proof, but I suspect there’s truth in this whisper. Theology of Consent is the best I am currently able to do in explicating such an absurd idea.
This writing is something of an end for me, a type of landing in my search for hope, a kind of filling for the insatiable appetite I’ve experienced in the famine of grief. But it’s also something of a beginning because all endings are just beginnings. So, as I close this chapter, I hope it helps you open new chapters.
And new ones after that.
Jonathan
PS - a genuine “Thank You” to so many friends––from newsletter to patreon, from the old days to the current days––who read, critiqued, and offered input for this work. The writting is better because of your willingness to get involved.
