How God works in the world.

Part of my problem with the previous 10 points on political theology is that while I like the phrase about working for a world that asymptotically approaches the kingdom of God, the sentence seems to carry some bit of distance, some bit of “God is out there somewhere while we/the church do some work over here until God decides it’s a good time to come back?”

In reply, I have a quote from James Fowler, whom I've been reading for Souljourners. Here is quotes Peter Hodgson's God in History:

“My thesis is that God is efficaciously present in the world, not as an individual agent performing observable acts, nor as a uniform inspiration or lure, nor as an abstract ideal, nor in the metaphorical role of companion or friend. Rather, God is present in specific shapes or patterns of praxis that have a configuring, transformative power within historical process, moving the process in a determinate direction that of the creative unification of multiplicities of elements into newe wholese, into creative syntheses that build human solidarity, enhance freedom, break systemic oppression, heal the injured and broken, and care for the natural. A shape or gestalt is not as impersonal and generalized as an influence or a presence, since it connotes something dynamic, specific and structuring, but it avoids potentially misleading personifications of God’s action. What God “does” in history is not simply to “be there” as God, or to “call us forward,” or to assume a personal “role,” but to “shape”—to shape a multifaceted transfigurative praxis. God does this by giving, disclosing, in some sense being, the normative shape, the paradigm of such a praxis. This is what I mean by the divine gestalt.”

Commenting on this quote, Fowler writes, “[Hodgson] is suggesting that behind the events that represent breakthroughs in the history of people and nations, a discerning observer can detect long lines of convergent providence. Whether we are speaking of the civil rights movement in the United States or of the final breakthrough to putting the scourge of apartheid behind the unifying people of South Africa, there are lines of faithfulness, not always visibly connected, that converge to make breakthroughs possible. Even the visible, human leaders of these movements have themselves been influenced and nurtured by communities of faithful people whose names the world will never know.”