It’s another review
Trey Doty has shared his thoughts on It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit.
Nice thoughts too.
Is Theology Broken?
If you wander the halls of emerging/missional thought most of the conversation is about ecclesial issues. Liturgy. Leadership. Gender. Sexuality. Culture. Sometimes the issues drift a bit into topic of salvation, Hell, judgment, which are theological but which relate more specifically to the topic of who is in and who is out, what is a real church, what is a pretender. What is a community? What does a Christian community do? What is the focus? The practices? The rhythms of the week?
Look at Gibbs and Bolgers 9 traits of an emerging community: 1. Identifying with Jesus 2. Transforming secular space 3. Living as community 4. Welcoming the stranger 5. Serving with generosity 6. Participating as producers 7. Creating as created beings 8. Leading as a body 9. Merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities.
These are expressions. Practices of the community which say very little about what a person might hear if they ask, “Who is God?” or “Why did Jesus die on the Cross?” or “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Oftentimes what a person might hear would differ very little from what they might hear in a typical Baptist or Presbyterian church. The medium has changed. The basic message has not.
Now for most this would seem a good thing. Don’t mess with what is right, right? Reformation zeal for challenge, and questioning, and change, and dynamic re-examination of core doctrines has led to post-Reformation stagnation in which orthodoxy is less about finding out the truth of God and more about making sure to stick to what Calvin or Luther or Wesley thought. A supposed Golden Age of the Spirit’s revelation ended centuries ago, and now we assess each other by how well we do or do not fit into pre-approved boundaries.
Yet is this good? Is this right? Can we say that not only do we need liturgical change in the face of a changing society but also theological transformation? The latter is thought forbidden with charges of caving to the spirit of the age thrown willy-nilly. Theologians are scared. Pastors are frightened. Everyone ducks behind the safety of era old walls, not daring to venture out for fear of being branded as a heretic, branded by those who themselves are branded by others, who think the Golden Age of the Spirit wasn’t in the fifteen or sixteen hundreds but centuries before.
Do we just respond to the spirit of the age or is there something more potent that not only suggests but might even require our re-assessment of the very foundations of our theology. Not to toss it all out, but to reframe it, to restore it, to take out the dross and the filth that has accumulated. A new theology that takes account of the Jewishness of Jesus, which is the Jewishness of God himself in expression. Removes the assumptions of brutal ages and pagan philosophies that filled Christian theology with all sorts of exceedingly rational, coherent, and utterly wrong doctrines. What does Athens, after all, have to do with Jerusalem?
Theology now is top heavy with Athens, so much so there’s not even an awareness among those who lash out with charges of heresy that they, the self-appointed inquisitors, would likely fall on the wrong side of a Scriptural conversation with Jesus. The absence of an integrated Old Testament theology, the plucking out of passages to apply to latter day questions and assumptions, the breaking apart of Scripture into mangled bits and pieces rather than a coherent whole story told of God’s pervasive interaction with humanity and the world abound in sermons, in books, in countless conversations. Orthodoxy has less to do with God and more to do with our settled systems of assumptions about God. God is second to the theology. And that is wrong.
Theology is broken. It’s not until we begin to re-assess theology at its most bare forms again that we will see a resurgence in our communities. Look at history. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Anthony, Francis, Benedict, Ignatius–they formed movements not on liturgical change but rather on substantive renewed understanding of core doctrine. Their God was different than the God of other Christians around them. Expected different things. Demanded different service. Valued different mindsets. Asked for different works. The theological changes erupted into ecclesiastic transformation.
This doesn’t mean tossing out Scripture or right, established doctrines. That is the liberal pursuit, and results in empty churches, famished souls, starved spiritualities. It means embracing Scripture anew. It means taking Scripture more seriously, not less. It means listening to not the spirit of the age, but the Holy Spirit of the ages, who has worked in and through history to guide and reveal, opening up society to take an ever greater appreciation for the justice and love of God.
As some see their primary goal for the church of God to revolutionize leadership structures or liturgical moments, I see my goal as focusing on the theology first, and the practices derived from this renewed perspective. Not that I’m starting something new. We see this work begun in many circles, often academic, in the books of NT Wright who refocuses us on Jesus. With Jurgen Moltmann, who emphasize the hope of God, even in the realities of the worlds suffering. Many others have written for decades, spurring and teaching. But not drifting into the lives of the congregations and communities.
So the pastors and the teachers and the prophets, not just the academics, need to follow the paths of Wesley and Luther and Calvin, and with new daring rediscover the fullness of God, who was and is and is to come. Not to pursue falsehood instead of established truth, but to get rid of the accumulated falsehoods that have led to decrepit communities. Geneva was not, after all, the Kingdom. Sin abounded. Mistakes were made. Nor did the Great Awakenings keep people awake or Pentecostalism remain an ever present fire. Society is broken. Christendom is lost. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t reflect enough of God’s truth to maintain a season of God’s reality.
If then the words spoken about God did not result in fullness and peace we run into a quandary. Either God is broken or theology is broken. Many popular atheists today would suggest the former. I disagree, but now have to face the fact that it is theology that is broken and theology which requires a fix.
A task for a lifetime. Wary and daring. Hopeful and cautious.
John 12:20-26
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus .”
Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus . Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
If we too wish to see Jesus we need to follow him, not the broken theology. Wherever he might lead, wherever he is.
Questions for theology
Michael Welker, in his essay included in the book The Future of Theology, asks some important questions about the present state of theology. It is not just church that is struggling. Our theology itself is broken. And it is the very foundation we need to address if we are to find a renewal of Christian communities in our era and beyond.
Here is what he writes in “Christian Theology at the End of the Second Millennium”:
Under the spell of [distorted] perceptions of the world and self, many theologians in the Western industrialized nations find themselves confronted by the question: What direction can theology take in the third millennium? At the same time, Christian theology must ask itself whether and to what extent it has itself contributed to this crisis in orientation.
Has theology taken seriously its task of bringing to people’s attention God’s vitality and love for human beings, God’s creative and delivering power? Or has it rather directed their thoughts and feelings to some rigid authority in the beyond that has merely formal ‘relations’ to the world and to human beings? Or has it directed them to mere projections of deliverer and deliverance amid the various problems and crises?
Has it, in its questions concerning God, assiduously exhausted the biblical sources of knowledge of God, sources that grew for more than a millennium and that for more than two millennia have shaped ‘world culture’ for both good and bad? Or has it contented itself with theological abstractions that are seductive because they offer simple, integrative syntheses, thereby offering to common sense impressions of God and of salvation?
Has it developed forms enabling people of different cultural and social spheres to organize their various searches and questions concerning God as well as their various experiences of God into a critical and creative framework? Or has it become specialize in ‘the God-human being relation’ characteristic of the abstract, imperial modern thinking, or in those particular contextual experiences of God that maintain their immunity against any enrichment and questioning by other experiences of God?
Has it released the powers of distinguishing between experiences of God and images of idols, between illusions of self-redemption and an orientation toward God’s saving acts? Or has it largely specialized in strengthening religious claims of immediacy and religious moralism?
Has it found forms for critical discernment that do justice both to the vitality and the doxa of God on the one hand, and to the creative freedom of creatures on the other? Or has it stabilized old, long-transparent forms of dominion and self-preservation in order to avoid the difficulties of real joy in God’s vitality, genuine fear of God, and the vitality of human experiences of God?
These self-critical questions about whether theology has not contributed to the present crisis in religious orientation direct our attention to a religious form that has long dominated the Western world, and that now is deteriorating. At issue is classical bourgeois theism. Its collapse strengthens the present crisis in normative and religious orientation just as much as does half-hearted, immature searching for alternatives.
Highly recommended
I don’t tend to recommend a lot of books here. Which is funny because I tend to read and like a lot of books. I’ve never been much of an evangelist, I suppose. But sometimes a book catches my heart and I think it needs to be read by a lot more people.
I’ve just got started with one of those books. The Gospel According to Relativity by James Geiger. I’m only about fifty pages into it, but I think it should be bought and passed around by anyone interested in the shaping changes of the church. Geiger is unique in that he’s not a minister nor an academic theologian. Which means he’s approaching the topic of Christianity in this present world as what would previously be called a layman. Only he’s not that either, at least as what that term might have previously implied. He’s a very thoughtful, engaging, and stimulating writer whose thoughts are immediately applicable to some of the particular problems of emerging and missional church thought. Namely he presents a very potent response to the difficulty of accepting pluralism without descending into relativism. If you’ve been around critiques of new forms of church you’ll know that is a chief charge, and one which I’ve rarely seen adequately answered. “Trust us” seems to be the standard response. Which I do, for the most part, but not everyone does.
Addressing these kinds of issues isn’t just about justifying new forms of church. Addressing these issues can serve as a guide and foundation for nascent communities, helping them to avoid the pitfalls that are most certainly out there and can drive even the most earnest Jesus followers into uselessness.
Even better Geiger avoids the seemingly all too common problem of emerging and missional books. He isn’t writing to leaders and organizers. His book very much reads, in fact, like a book by Philip Yancey, mixing depth and readability in a way that would be perfect for the thoughtful, well, lay person. Being outside the hallowed halls of both Christian academia and Christian leadership culture Geiger writes for those who don’t have to think about how to be missional, because they are already living lives outside the church.
It is philosophical and thought provoking, yet I think it is entirely approachable and helpful as we navigate our way past postmodernity into what finally gets around to replacing modernity. And this, Geiger, suggests shouldn’t be yet another time/era based organizing model as modernity was, and as all previous philosophical/cultural movements have been. It should be based on motion. A movement movement. Not limited by time and space but rather flexible except for the constant that can be the point of reference. The constant of Christ.
I’ve not gotten too far into, as I’ve said, but I’d love to get others reading The Gospel of Relativity as much as possible, for conversation and because I think Geiger’s work should be significantly more influential than it presently is.
The Politics of the Beatitudes
Tod Lindberg writes on the politics of the Beatitudes. This isn’t a new topic by any means. However, what’s especially interesting to me is that Lindberg is not a Biblical scholar, pastor, or theologian. He’s an expert in politics, someone who spends their life considering the present political situation. Very much worth reading, and his book, The Political Teachings of Jesus, has now found a place on my amazon wish list.
If no one persecutes people for following the teaching of Jesus, then the category of the “persecuted” disappears. If no one persecutes those who seek righteousness, then this category, too, disappears. And if the response to the poor in spirit is not to show contempt for them but to uplift them, to encourage them to find the value in their lives that they have somehow lost sight of, then that category, too, disappears. Thus, these three categories of the blessed for which Jesus makes promises only with regard to heaven disappear entirely wherever the Jesusian teaching takes root on earth. This explains why Jesus assigns no earthly reward for people in these three categories. His silence anticipates that once people follow his guidance there will be no one left in these conditions. His ambitious political agenda is to rid the world of both persecuted and persecutors — opposite sides of the coin of persecution.
This echoes a fair bit of Jurgen Moltmann’s thoughts on the subject, though Moltmann is more explicit about spreading this concept into eschatology. He sees heaven as the place where persecutor and persecutee are finally, fully, reconciled and no one is left in those conditions. It is the church which is supposed to, then, reflect this reality even in the present as the Kingdom that has already come in the power of the Holy Spirit, who is, I think the Personal presence of the Kingdom. Where the Spirit is, there is the Kingdom. To the degree we participate with the Spirit we participate in the Kingdom.
Moltmann has also a wee bit more Marxist leanings and an interest in Liberation theology and politics, which I suspect Lindberg disagrees with, for good reasons. Moltmann is a theologian, not a political scientist, and politics is one area that I’m thinking he could use some helpful guidance.
Christians confess
An interesting website has popped up recently. It’s called Christians Confess. Basically, it’s a site where folks can apologize for the ways in which the Church has done wrong. The fact is that I believe there have been huge ways in which the church has done wrong to those within the fold and those outside. It’s not the case, contrary to popular books, that religion poisons everything but it is true that religion has often been delivered with poison. And that’s a sad reality, one which we deal with constantly in ways obvious and subtle.
The idea of confession is an interesting one to me. Confession is a rather non-Protestant thing to do for the most part, however when it happens it can be extraordinary. Back in 1995 Wheaton College had what it called then the Wheaton Revival. Now when we think of ‘revival’ we usually think of tent meetings, and fiery preachers, and healings, and maybe a worry bench, with definite evangelism. The Wheaton revival wasn’t like that.
No. It was public confession. And when I say public I mean in front of 1000+ fellow students and faculty. When I say confession I mean everything you can, and hopefully can’t, think of. It went on for about a week. Stopped late at night but then picked up the next day. All confession, all the time. Wheaton students, the cream of the crop, Evangelicalism’s Finest, let down their guard and spoke their faults. And it was extraordinary. Not because good tidbits could be heard. No. Because when someone finished confessing they were surrounded and prayed for by a group of others. On the weeks end there was musical worship and to this day I have not had such a full understanding of heaven as I did on that evening. Everyone, completely laid bare, praising and singing to God in open community. It was epiphanic.
So I appreciate a good confession. But not the bland, acceptable kinds, the sorts we hear in a lot of Evangelical fortresses where openness is not a virtue. Things such as “I confess I didn’t evangelize enough this week.” Or, “I confess I got really angry when a guy rear-ended me at a stop sign then got out and beat me up.” Basically those are attempts to claim virtue or victimhood through supposed confession.
Christian’s confess isn’t about our personal sins, except as they add up to become corporate sins. Which they do.
Folks have picked this up on their own blogs and started passing the following challenge around.
1. Apologize for three things that Christians have often got wrong. Your apologies should be directed towards those who don’t view themselves as part of the Christian community. Alternatively, apologize for things you personally have done wrong towards those outside of the church.
2. Post a comment at the originating post so others can keep track of the apologies.
3. Tag five people to participate in the meme.
4. If desired, send an email with the link to your blog post at the Christians Confess site, giving permission for your apologies to be added to the website.
So thinking this is a good idea what would I apologize for?
The church has paid attention to all sorts of obvious sins. Made a big deal out of those. And it has seen the sin as more important than the sinner. Love is rejected to be replaced by judgment. The need to be right has overshadowed the need to be gracious. We attack the so-called sins of the barroom and the lower classes while excusing the sins of pride, and greed, and all sorts of things elders do while being pampered with power and acclaim. The Church, I confess, has gotten its conception of sin and grace all out of sorts, and has created massive controversies and driven people away because of it.
The church has long emphasized rich over poor, successful over struggling, popular over hidden. It has made a stated preference of seeking after kings and rulers, in every sized pond. It has made those who do not feel a part of this world also feel like they don’t have a part in the church. Those who do well in this world do well in the church. We have a lot to say to the upper middle class. We don’t have much to say to the poor. Our good news isn’t really all that good unless a person is dealing with a particular sort of metaphysical guilt. I apologize for being a community of the wealthy, for insisting that people dress up and show off at church, for building programs, and tithe driven leadership, and thinking that successful businessmen have an inherently stronger understanding of a Jesus oriented community. I apologize that we don’t heal the sick and frankly don’t want them around because they are difficult and embarrass our smiling communities. I confess, the church has alienated the alienated and embraced the world blessed. Thus turning around the beatitudes for our comfort.
The church has confused liturgy with spirituality. This might not seem something to apologize to non-Christians about, but it is. Because there are times in which those outside the church need answers to unanswerable questions. They seek a depth of spirituality that drives them to move past their present lives. They feel the pull of the Holy Spirit who not only isn’t limited to the church, the Spirit is in fact the most potent missionary of all, working in manifold ways to lead people to God. Yet, the church doesn’t think in terms of the treasure we’ve been given to nurture and grow. We think in terms of sales. In terms of structure. In terms of set lists of actions. We think that those who have been touched with a unique calling of the Eternal God to find some increased sense of the Divine in their lives would find a 40 minute lecture on parenting and a 1/2 hour of mediocre music with repetitious lyrics to be the Answer. And if they reject that we say they have rejected Jesus. I confess, the church has failed to present the fullness of God to those who are drawn to God. And it has left those who seek to wander elsewhere and away, not realizing they didn’t even begin to taste what the true Church should be about. I confess the church has been a bad place to meet God for so long and that we’ve been arrogant about insisting that it’s quite a good place really. It’s not me, it’s you. But it really is me.
So having said that, who would I be curious to hear from?
I guess Eric, Peter, Robert, Amy, and Debby. Christina too, though she doesn’t like links to her private blog.
Fitting God into our mission
I remain puzzled as to why we’re so bored with the very things Jesus asks us to do, like picking that foreigner up out of the ditch, giving away our goods to the poor, going to court with a young man who’s being railroaded by the system, taking an orphan into our home, going the extra mile with the oppressive and manipulative, forgiving the offender, baptizing, and witnessing. I find these things really, really hard to do. I fail all the time. If I can’t even do these things well, why would I believe that I could transform my culture, let alone change the world?
Mark Galli has an interesting article in Christianity Today.
I think it’s because issues that are away and outside of us have a romance that appeals to our inner need for a quest. We are bored and tired with our present lives, so going somewhere exciting and different stirs up all sorts of inner emotions, emotions that we confuse with the emotions the Spirit of God fills our heart with. This isn’t just the case with changing the culture. Short term missions philosophy is afflicted with this. Go, spend a $1000 doing a puppet show in Mexico while there are poor and needy down the block in your own neighborhood. The Crusade, going off to do Good Works elsewhere, is hard to argue with because certainly there are good works needing to be done everywhere. But, Jesus didn’t ask each one of us to disciple the world. He asked all of us together, as a united body, which oftentimes means that we are called to do our part in the ways and places Jesus has put us. The Great Commission is great an all, but it’s been a distortion of the faith that we’ve taken this one passage and used to to ignore the many other passages.
Jesus at the end of Matthew did say go and do. However, Matthew 28:18-20 does not in any way surpass Matthew 25:31-46. Indeed, Matthew 28:18-20 isn’t really possible, I imagine, without Matthew 25:31-46. We change the culture, we make disciples, we bring the message of Jesus to those who need Jesus, by being Matthew 25:31-46 sort of people. Unfortunately, all too often we’ve forgotten that commission because we think the last one is the only great one. Jesus did not just give us the goal. He gave us the method. We’ve replaced the method with our own, and attack the symptoms rather than the underlying issues.
But, a Crusade is just so rousing. Because a Crusade is about those people, and my being right. Jesus, however, is much more about me as a person and my being Jesus to others. He is not about our assertion of authority but about our service. Crusades are about taking the form of a warrior, trying to exploit supposed equality with God. However, like Jesus, we are to take the forms of servants, humbling and serving and sacrificing. In that is the glory God delivers and the transformation the Spirit brings about, a transformation that radiates rather than is imposed.
liminality and status system
In my continuing look at Victor Turner I find he gives us a very interesting comparison between the characteristics of liminality and the characteristics of established status.
Here’s the list of contrasts
- Transition : state
- Totality : partiality
- homogeneity : heterogeneity
- communitas : structure
- equality : inequality
- anonymity : systems of nomenclature
- absence of property : property
- nakedness or uniform clothing : distinctions of clothing
- sexual continence : sexuality
- minimization of sex distinctions : maximization of sex distinctions
- absence of rank : distinctions of rank
- humility : just pride of position
- disregard for personal appearance : care for personal appearance
- no distinctions of wealth : distinctions of wealth
- unselfishness : selfishness
- Total obedience : obedience only to superior rank
- sacredness : secularity
- sacred instruction : technical knowledge
- silence : speech
- suspension of kinship rights and obligations : kinship rights and obligations
- continuous reference to mystical powers : intermittent reference to mystical powers
- foolishness : sagacity
- simplicity : complexity
- acceptance of pain and suffering : avoidance of pain and suffering
- heteronomy : degrees of autonomy
So this is the list comparing the qualities of the transitioning self to the qualities of the established self. The important question is what is the transition. When does it begin and when does it end. If we say the transition is “into the church” then we see forms of church that take on the attributes of established selves. This includes structure, and property, and technical knowledge (liturgy, organization, and leadership patterns), distinctions of sex and wealth, and all the rest. The convert is taken out of their old life and during the process of catechism is placed into the new establishment of the church. Thus something as simple as baptism can be the entirely of liminality in such a model. The politics of the church is then the new rules by which a person learns to function and advance.
This assumes the church as a goal. Is church the goal of the New Testament in the Gospels or the epistles? No. The goal, from what we learn from Jesus, is the Kingdom of God. Thus the church is not the goal but merely the collection of those who are participating in the transition from one kingdom to another. We who have been freed from the bonds of slavery to Sin and the Law are even now transitioning into taking up the patterns of the Kingdom of God. And so this transition is marked by a seeming permanent liminality in which we cannot find the established structures until the Kingdom has come in full. The Church has thought itself as a mini-model of the Kingdom and so organized itself according to the structures of status and establishment. Only in doing this it has stalled the process of transition. True maturity means taking hold of those patterns of liminality in full, as individuals and as individuals gathered together for the same goal.
Thus, we might be able to use this list as a guide to our own methods of growth. If we fall into the established side in our goals or structures we will be embracing a stalled life in some respect. The more we take up, and take up into ourselves, the more we will reflect the principles of the coming Kingdom and be more in tune with the Spirit of God who, as a Person, is the Kingdom of God among us.
That’s why the New Testament is filled with the language that admonishes people towards the qualities of the liminal state and away from the qualities of the established state. We cannot settle or stop because we have been called to become heirs and citizens of the Kingdom that encompasses eternity.
outside emerging/missional and inside
The caricature.
And the reality.
Though, for those protecting their power and territory it makes a lot more since to think of the caricature as the reality.
In Europe, God is (not) dead
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the state of Christianity in Europe.
This is a curious era we’re in, really. The church is in an in between state, neither there nor here, trying to hold onto its past glory even as it is becoming immensely emaciated. Reminds me a little bit of Marvolo Gaunt, a name you’ll recognize if you have read the Harry Potter books.
I think of Paul’s comment in Philippians 3:5ff.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind
The Church, especially in Europe, has obsessed with what is behind. It looks eagerly to the history and the monuments and the power it wielded. But because it has identified those things so much with the very identify of Christianity it struggles. The quest for power replaced the quest for Christ, and the quest for present attainment of glory has long marred the unentangled pursuit of God’s wholeness. This isn’t new. I think back to those monasteries sacked by Vikings. Why did the monks collects the treasures on earth that made them targets for slaughter? They saw their symbols as monuments of their holiness, and so lost everything. The grand buildings are the same thing. Monuments to devotion to something other than God’s own call.
Paul writes in Philippians 2:3ff:
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Often called the Christological hymn for its profound expression of Christ’s incarnation this passage has pretty much lost its original punch. Paul wasn’t only writing about Christ here. He is applying it to the church, telling those involved this is the model of Christian community and mission. Only for so much time, instead of humbling themselves church leaders have sought to exploit their rank, taking the form of exalted kings, and lorded over all they could. Church leaders went from being a true servant to becoming rhetorical servants who live in palatial palaces, wearing opulent costumes, that they think symbolizes the power of God.
Now, though, underneath the rotting structures, finally abandoned as no longer producing power, let alone significant devotion there are movements of the Spirit popping up here and there, bringing us back to the Acts experience. Finally. I pray it is not too late.
