Resurrection Credulity, and a Theological Vision of Death

I was just reading about death--about what happens to the body after death.  How the corpse stiffens...how it turns different colors...how bacteria in the intestines literally begin to eat the body.

Many people are incredulous that Jesus could rise from the dead.  I wonder if it because they don't see death, or life, in a theological perspective.

Death is obviously the termination of life.  But life is God's creation.  More so, human life is an offshoot of divine life.  I don't mean that humans are divine, but that life, livingness, resides with God; that before there was human life there was divine life; and that our human life comes from God.  He creates living beings...who have a quality that he has: namely, life.  He multiplies that quality.

I think that the Jews could believe in resurrection because they believed that this life was produced by God, as part of his good earth.  He had produced life.  Life was his project.  "...Be fruitful and multiply..."  Death was the termination of his creation.  So resurrection was his undoing of the termination.   My point, I suppose, is that if you can look at all of life and say that it came from God, that it could only come from God, is it really then difficult to then say that he reversed death, that he created anew?  Its as easy as believing that God defeated an enemy...the last enemy. 

Do Christians Intellectuals Have the Heart of Jesus?

The heart of Jesus—you know, Jesus had a heart, passions, motivations and values that drove him from deep within.  Just as he preached to others, that heart was love, agape.  A commitment to act out of a deep concern for the good of others.  The gospels sometimes give us a glimpse of heart driving Jesus’ life: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”  At his core, he had a concern for the helpless, the lost, and the needy, and this concern drove him to heal and to provide.  He was like his father, who sent his son because of his great love for the world and the lost within it.  (We should remember, however, that some, many, or possibly all of his miracles were also done for the sake of saying something about his messianic identity).  Importantly, this heart of compassion or love was also the motivation for him teaching.  “Jesus saw the huge crowd…and he had compassion on them…So he began teaching them many things” (Mr 6:34, NLT).  Jesus’ ministry, his healing, his providing, his teaching, even perhaps his whole vocation, was driven by a love for people.

Do Christian intellectuals have this heart?  I’m a student at Princeton Theological Seminary; I’m surrounded by people who either love or at least devote themselves to studying the Bible, church history, theology, or other intellectual issues of relevance to the Christian faith.  And these people surround themselves by scholars in the field who devote themselves to research and writing about these topics.  Are we doing this out of a love for the church?  Perhaps the harder question, and it is indeed harder because it is more concrete, is, Are we doing this because we have compassion on people, because we see the needs of real people and want to meet that need?  Aren’t the students and professors here at Princeton the best of the best?  Certainly they’re top tier.  But are these the people who are most performing their impressive labours out of a concern for the real needs of people whom they wish to love and serve by their work?  

This kind of heart seems conspicuously absent among Christian intellectuals, (perhaps proportionally to how “academic” they are?).  We are the ones who live in the church’s treasury; we examine, study, and appraise all of its resources—the word, its saints, etc.  And yet we are often the ones least concerned for the ways that people need the resources to which we have such access and exposure.   We have the knowledge, but do we have the love to serve with it?  We are the ones who know the mind of Christ; but do we have his heart?  At the end of the day, Christian intellectuals are to model their lives after their savior, and I don’t see how that can avoid meaning that they are compelled to appropriate his heart into their lives—leading them to research, think and write about the Bible and theology for the real, (most likely spiritual) needs of real Christians.  

Expectations and Christians' Ingorance

Most American Christians don’t know practically anything about the Bible or church history—and no one seems to blink.  Take the books of the Bible: most people know that Genesis is about the creation of the world (let slide the fact that that is only the subject of the first 5% of the book); some know that the Exodus is about people leaving Egypt.  But what percent of people in the church know what Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy is about?  Could any normal Christian give a paragraph summary of those books?  A one sentence summary, of any of them?   How about 1 or 2 Samuel, or a summary of any of the 17 prophetic books?  Is it even possible to overstate the typical American lay-persons’ ignorance about the books of the Bible? And all this still says nothing about knowing a basic story of the Bible or the basic chronology of Biblical narrative (knowing that “Christians” “pastors” and “disciples” aren’t in the OT).  The more I study the Bible the more I realize that we Christians absolutely do not have even most basic acquaintance with it. 

It’s the same case with the typical Christians’ knowledge of Church history—actually, it’s probably worse.   What percentage of people in a typical church congregation could even name just 10 Christians from 100AD – 1900AD?  Some probably would mention a few names from the reformation or post reformation period.   It’d be even harder to name 7 from 100 – 1500.  And this doesn’t even include knowing anything about those people!  (Honestly, I could only tell you the smallest bit about 4 or 5).  Could any Christians you know tell you of even one event, person, period, or issue from Church history that has taught, warned, or inspired them as a Christian? 

What I cannot fathom about all this is that no one else is bothered (or that its only a small minority of us who are).  How can the people who confess that the Bible is the word of God also be the one who know nothing about it?  How can the people who confess that God works among his people and gives them gifts to understand him also be the ones who ignore the teaching and testimony of the majority of the Christians—namely, those who have come before us?   Cleary our ignorance of it is nothing else than the result of not taking the time and effort to really learn about it.  Is it that we think it is not worth learning?  I’m sure most would say that knowing the Bible is a good thing.  But for most, I think this opinion—that knowing the bible is a good thing—is intended as a generality; I don’t think most think very strongly that it would be a good thing for them.  If they did, perhaps they’d be working toward it.  So maybe the issue is that we don’t see the value; maybe part of the problem is that despite seeing the value, we are simply lazy.  Just like the overweight person thinks that being in shape would be nice, their often times too lazy to put in the effort to attain that reality. 

Ultimately, however, I think the real root of our widespread and profound ignorance is rooted in the fact that in the culture of our churches, knowing the Bible or church history is simply not essential to the Christian life.  Certainly learning about the Bible and Church history is not on the standard agenda for those Christians who see the Christian life as being merely about believing in Jesus, being saved, and trying to be good (i.e. those for who do not focus on the importance and normalcy of spiritual “maturity”).   And for those other congregations that do preach about sanctification and discipleship as the calling and journey of the Christian life—the knowledge of the Bible or of church history is typically not a very important goal.  In either camp, knowing the Bible or church history is simply not necessary to being a Christian. 

And so, as creatures of necessity, we are ignorant.  In life, what needs to get done is what gets done, and often little else.  To prove my point—that the cause of our ignorance is in the culture of our church generally, and more specifically, in what we consider to be necessary or essential to the Christian life—consider this: did any of us grow up in a church that said, “if you’re going to be a Christian, you have to learn the Bible and church history”?  No we did not.  And I bet if we did, we would have been forced to make a choice: either learn, or leave.  Now I’m not commending this approach for church’s today; it’s probably unbiblical.  But it does helpfully show that the cause of our ignorance well lies in the fact that knowledge has not been required or expected of us.  But is that right?  Should we really not expect Christians to learn the Bible and know their past?  I believe those concerned with the increasing biblical and theological illiteracy and ignorance in the church today need to alert the church with a call to a change in what is expected of Christians. 

Stories of Vigilante Justice as a Witness to God

I recently watched two action movies (Shooter and 24-Season 8) where the main character, a lethal killer, found himself up against a government system determined to cover up the evil it sent him to expose.  The government's moral vision was so corrupted that it though it best to protect the guilty and punish the hero laboring for justice.  In this circumstance, the main character determined that he needed to take matters into his own hands—which meant hunting the guilty down and executing them. 

Of course, this vigilante justice—where an individual appoints himself to bring justice to wrongdoers—probably has an unethical aspect to it.  Only certain people are actually allowed to execute the guilty, namely, those appointed by and acting as agents of the state.  But at the same time, we love these stories and probably find ourselves cheering the main character on. 

Is this story a myth—a story with a transcendent ideal embodied in it?  These stories of vigilante justice are based first on the belief that sometimes a system cannot be trusted, and that the correct moral analysis of a situation is one rooted in the heart of a righteous individual.  An upright heart, not a system, is ultimately the only thing that reliably perceives what is right and what is deserved.  Second, these stories are based on the belief that while the guilty may go free in our human systems of governance and justice, they should not and (hopefully) will not escape the righteous judgement of that individual.  Our love for these stories speaks to a deep human belief that the right perception of justice sometimes resides in one righteous heart, and that that the guilty should meet that righteous heart and receive their due judgement. 

I see in this ideal a unconscious longing for and witness to God, an echo in our heart of the fact that a truly correct moral perception is found only in one heart—the heart of God.  Our human systems are corrupted by human frailty and human evil.  But even when our systems fail, when the guilty walk free in them and we are blind to it, they will not escape justice itself, for there is one who sees the truth.  And that one who sees the truth is the exact one who will bring the guilty what they deserve: judgement, execution, justice.

This is incredible.  These stories testify to a longing for justice, and even a vision of justice, that is directly fulfilled in God.  Our hearts truly do seem draw to the story of God...

Christianty and Pragmatism

In my experience, most Christian intellectuals treat Pragmatism--the approach to life that values practical action particularly highly--is a philosophy to be named, criticised, and rejected. Christians who defend the life of the mind (like Mark Noll) lament that evangelicals have given so little value to thinking and understanding the world deeply, and have instead concerned themselves with activism.  Christianity is captive product of pragmatism.  Christian philosophers, such as Peter Kreeft, confidently refute Marx's call to action by appeal back to Socrates who could reject pragmatism and declare that the purpose of life was to pursue wisdom and truth.

But I am not convinced. Is pragmatism really a foreign value to Christianity?  More to the point of Kreeft, does Christianity promote a life of reflection and the pursuit of wisdom?  I cant help but see that the "Christian as philosopher" (the notion that chief end of man is to pursue wisdom and truth through reflection) is not the vision of the Christian life set forth in scripture.  To Noll's point, does Scripture summon Christians to be people who have a unique and substantively Christians understanding of history, economics, politics and linguistics?  Again, I don't see this in scripture.

The scriptures which most directly address the Christian--the epistles--do these encourage a life of reflection in pursuit of truth?  Does it tell Christians they need a solid grounding in Christian liberal arts?  NO!  It assumes that Christians meet together, that they worship, that they seek to love one another through the daily task of life, that they seek to remain faithful and hopeful as they suffer for their faith, that they continue to hold on to their faith in Christ, that they pray for one another, etc.  The Christian is not called to a life of reflection.  And certainly, I have a hard time thinking that the early Christians--mostly farmers, slaves, artisans and merchants--would have felt that they were called to understand the nature, society, and human nature.  The Bible does not call us to a life of contemplation or reflection.  I think CS Lewis spoke of contemplation as one mode of existence, and experience as another.  My understanding is that the Bible assumes most people will live in the experiential mode, but they are to supplement it with the contemplation of the gospel, and that that contemplation is to then vitalize and direct their experience / action in the world.

What I do see is that the Christian is summoned to faith, and their is a content to faith--an that understanding meant something for the nature of history, of the person, of the state, etc.  But these were all theological matters, and they we simply to be believed as part of the gospel and the larger story of God and his work in the world.  (and it was not as if the Christian's calling to simply try to study this; if anything, study is a means to the end of knowing, and it is necessary because what we should believe is unclear--the apostles did not see the task of believing or knowing this way).  In other words, the Christians was called to faith in the gospel, not to some humanistic understanding of all of life.  The Christian is called to a robust faith, but not to be or pursue a humanities or liberal arts major.  (Again, I think my concern is that people who are passionate about humanities and liberal arts will see their specific endeavour -studying these things as people who believe in the gospel--and make it somehow the task of the Christian  more generally, or of all church leaders.).  The scandal of the evangelical mind is not that we don't have a Christian account of the humanities, but that we no longer have a substantive account of what makes us Christian--the gospel.

So the life of reflection and understanding is typically opposed to pragmatism, and some of our Christian leaders (who just happen to be university professors devoted to contemplation, surrounding themselves with students devoted to contemplation) --some of our leaders tell us that Christianity is in desperate need of us embracing the former and not the latter. But I think our Christian theology itself pushes us to pragmatism, to be concerned with common actions of daily work and life.  People matter.  People die.  People will spend eternity somewhere.  People need.  And God cares passionately about all these things.  Now we see through a glass darkly.  If I remember correctly, that is said in a particular context...about loving ones neighbour ..  Are we supposed to be spending all our time trying to clarify our Christian vision, or acting based on what we've seen clearly so far?  Is action-rooted-in-faith or contemplation-rooted-in-faith a more faithful mode of Christian living?   

The Awakwardness of Biblical Studies for Christians

Writing a commentary is a strange thing for a Christian--and so is reading one for that matter.  I was reading Titus today, and realized that in 5 minutes I pretty much understood the first chapter.  It'd be strange to study it for 5 years.  Sure, I'd learn a lot about its finer points.  But its awkward.  Titus was not written to be studied; it was written to be heard and obeyed.  Now to any of my friends quick to defend the value of academics and to rebuke my pietistic anti-intellectualism, you just have to admit it: there is a different posture, a very different mode of engagement, between hearing a charge to receive it (or it as you understand it) and rigorously analyzing a charge to decipher its meaning.   My question is: What mode of engagement do you think Titus intends?  

Now, I'm just as concerned as the next guy (probably more concerned than him) about the massive swathes of scripture that the church has left unengaged and, generally speaking, has not heard or heard with understanding (90% of the prophets [heck, just about all of the OT narrative], much of the law, certain books of the NT).  And I am somewhat cognizant that certain portions of scripture are pretty inaccessible to me (Revelation, for example).  I have to learn a good bit more about how to read those texts and what is going on in them before I will ever understand them in the way the author, appointed by the will of God, intended me to understand them.  But not all of scripture is like this to me.  Much of it, perhaps more than I have admitted, is clear.  ...And I think I need to read or write a commentary about it...  humph.   Scripture is for hearing and obeying, not for studying and commentating.  The latter serve the former, when they are necessary.  But they are not always necessary, and when they aren't, they are a distraction.  

Money as the root of the medieval church's sins...

How right Paul was that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”  When anyone reads about the late medieval church (the “catholic Church”  in Europe from around 1000-1500), they are confronted by a long list of sins riddling the church.  Simony (people buying their way into church positions), “Venality” (being open to bribery), “pluralism” (people holding multiple church offices), and the list goes on.  What I am struck by is how so many of the problems of the early church all have to do with money.  Even the indulgence trade (a practice around the time of the reformation (1400-1500s) of having church people “buy” time off from purgatory)—the issue which prompted the reformation—was a matter of money and the church trying to get more of it. I wonder how much of the long list of the church’s blighting sins throughout history really just has money at its root.  It would be interesting to trace church history from this perspective…

An Open Letter to a Good Friend: On Dogma, Mystery, Concervatism, and his Break from Tradition.

Kevin,

I enjoyed reading your post.  From your writing ripples wafts chestertonian air.  It’s fun to read your writing.  While I am interested in all your content (publishing, marriage, choosing to love) I am, predictably, most engaged by your comments about breaking with tradition, about your journey ex evangelica.

As I considered your thoughts, it seemed like the first main thing you were getting at is, to put it simply, that there is a lot of intellectual crappiness in fundamentalism and evangelicalism. [1]  Its anti-intellectualism (trusting the minimally trained pastor; reading the bible without a brain; the notion that truth only comes from the Bible, and not the tribesman, etc) and emotionalism (worship is about raising your hand; the bible is a book of inspiration); its repetitive, overworked focus on and overvaluation of sex; its cliché, parochial, and shallow ethics (alcohol is bad); its negative emotional-epistemological stance: excessive ease of belief   (“people who can hold to any number of dogmas at any given moment”), its aversion to all things intellectually new.  …It’s all pretty crappy.

One issue you mention is just as crappy, though more complex.  Teaching you that there is a spiritual geography called heaven and hell.  We’ve here applied a particular (and troubling) literalistic view of theological language: when the Bible talks about a place called heaven with streets of gold, it’s all pretty straightforward—it’s a land in some definite place, pretty much just like ours (material, spatial, physical, etc.).   This literalistic understanding is present in other areas of Christian confession. We say that “God” is a person, who exists in a place with a mind, who has emotions and a will, and who acts in this world and communicates with people, etc.  All these attributions are understood literally, and those who make such confessions see what they are saying to be totally unproblematic.  We know what we are saying about God, and were saying it’s all true. 

The problem, of course, is that these things make no sense.  We can’t really understand there being a material, spatial, physical world outside of this universe, and no one believes that heaven is in this one.  So where is it?  What kind of cosmology are we predicating?  Or with God: What does it mean to be a person without having a located, perspectival consciousness?  How does he focus and attend to all people, to one in NJ and one in china?  How does God exist everywhere (and that not as some rarified material substance)?  I have no concept of existence except as of existing at a particular point.  What it mean to say that God thinks, when he just knows everything?  How does he choose without having a body?  Christians confess that he is at work in the world providentially, in and behind human decisions, for example (consider the story of Joseph in Egypt in Genesis 36ff).  How does this work?  How does God act?  How does he communicate with a soul, let alone all souls everywhere at one?  I could go on.  The point is, I don’t understand anything of what I mean when I make all the banal claims that Christians make about the existence of a particular God.

Its all pretty intellectually crappy, not to mention unattractive.

1) But that’s always been true.  There’s a lot of crap in the Christian camp.  Theological ethics that rarely get beyond sex and alchol?   The view that scriptures meaning is obviously apparent to all, and no one needs to learn to read it well?   Furthermore, our failure to realize the uter mysteriousness of all our language about God makes us look like foolishly overconfident to those pressing the philosophical complications.

But this is not why I stay in the tradition.  I'm not here for the crap.   I find Christianity intellectually habitable because the Biblical authors were themselves profound, subtle  sophisticated, and passionate thinkers.  Because there were Anselms, Luthers and Calvins, and because there are great minds in the church today.  As a man who I was wisely one encouraged to read said, We should “indeed be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false and unhelpful, but…wholly uncritical in the sense that we do not … waste time in thinking about what we reject but lay ourselves open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.”  And I think there is a lot of fish here with these bones. 

2) To make a more specific comment on theological language: George Hunsinger’s essay “Beyond literalism and Expressivism..” is good reading here.  After noting the serious difficulty of maintaining our theological language if it is construed literally, Hunsinger proposes a realist view of theological language.  Basically, while God does not, for example, act in the way we understand acting, the word “act”, taken up by God into his purposes and used in his self revelation, actually is appropriate: God acts like we think of acting, but in a way that is also uniquely his own.  He is a “person,” but unlike person as we know it.  He has awareness, but different from any awareness we know.  Etc.  I think this analogical account of theological language needs to be applied all over, including with heaven and hell.  This language genuinely gets at reality, but not in an unqualified, literalistic way; but also not in a liberal, ‘this-language-is-just-a-metaphorical-way-to-express-my-religious-experience’ kind of way, either.  It’s all analogically asserted.

3) Of course, this raises the question of our epistemological stance.  We are sometimes so comfortable with the claims we made.  Yeah, yeah, some of the radical ones need to be defended (thank God we’ve got our William lane Craigs), but it’s all a pretty un-radical world.  Not so.  I think everything in the Christian life is mysterious.  Christian theology lays another layer of reality atop the one we see, and says its true.  The very idea of God-as-a-person, not to mention each of his attributes.  God’s activity of creation, the idea that he is at work in this world, somehow participating in it causally; the idea that God hears our prayer; that he speaks (without vocal cords); or even the popular idea that he “speaks” to us in our minds/souls inaudibly and through our feelings/sense of him—What is that?  How does he interact with our physiology?  The idea of the reality of human sin, the atoning nature of Christ’s death, the idea of God being man, etc.  It’s all mysterious.  It all believed by faith.  I can’t ground it adequately, for the system is simply way too large.  But I confess it all, and by grace believe. The problem I see, is with those who do not realize the fundamentally mysterious nature of everything we say about God.  

4) Your beef with the fear-filled culture of fundamentalism seems to note its (admittedly excessively rigid) conservative culture.  It’s not that conservatism is afraid of the new; it’s that its afraid of losing the old.  Time erases just as much as it creates.  So conservatism is about disciplined sacrifice: we may well miss out on the latest truths, but we will hopefully keep what we’ve seen in the past.  It’s surprisingly like marriage.  Marriage requires us to sacrifice and resist a whole set of impulses, in favor of taking one set farther in one direction than all the impulses of the present would ever take us on their own.   

Oh: is hoping for marriage more valuable than enjoying it?

Well, I hope that’s enough to make you think.   Your world of fundamentalism had a lot of crap, but maybe there are slightly better pools, and maybe even that water, unavoidably adulterated, can be filtered, and not just flushed.  Your final objection—about religion, particularism and universality, about the need for a religion or life philosophy (or version of Christianity) to account for, explains, and appeals to universal human experience [or something along those lines]— that will have to wait till another day. 

Nik B

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[1] IM sure my writing will miss your main points, though I have tried to grasp them; but nonetheless, I think it will help you clarify them, if you find the time.

The church's mission is not about making the world more christian...

[An old email (5/10/2012) to a friend on how culture is a real part of the church's mission, but not in the way it is sometimes conceived:]

Perhaps evangelicals like myself traditionally think of culture as having one basic referent--there is a culture out there (ex. general American culture).  Culture refers to public culture, culture of the world or nation state.  Then, since God is interested in culture, Christians are to do their best trying to redeem that (public, national) culture. So, aren't we supposed to argue for family rights, religious liberties, ethical law; we've supposed to make our world more compassionate to the weak, more caring for the suffering.  Better school education--better sex education--teach abstinence in the public school, crack down on drugs;  and not just that: encourage kids to be all they can be, rather than our current culture of lazinees or mind-numbing video and TV overload; try to see our country have better marriages, rather than cohabitation and divorce,  etc.  In other words, we're trying to reform our nation to make it look more...just!  moral!  really, to make it look more christian.  

But, I think (or wonder)  if this neglects an important and radical biblical distinction between church and world, perhaps doing so because of following in (cultural!) modernistic univeralistic thinking.  Our enlightenment worldview says that all people are basically one / the same.   Fundamentally, we are human [this might not be a purely enlightenment commitment], and all humans are of one basic kind.  In this common brotherhood, we share a common identity and we use reason as our common meeting ground.  And in this common ground we form a shared life called the public arena, governed by reason, the fruits of which is culture. That is where culture occurs.

But that all seems questionable to me.  Biblically, the church is a separate community.  Fundamentally, we are something else, with our own story, our own calling, called to live a common life together as God's people.  A people who are no longer Greek, no longer American.  and what does that mean if not a new identity, socially, and consequently, culturally. This is the church-world distinction. 

I believe this distinction between church and world has some import to our thinking about missions.  Sometimes we think of God so loving the world.  God displays his love of the world by using the church to be a vehicle to love the non-church.  
But I think that God's love for the world is displayed in the church.  God's goal of a redeemed world reconciled world is realized in the church, not outside it.  So, we see, in my opinion, a mission of the church to the world which is primarily a call to join it, to be included in the community of Christ, the sphere of restoration, blessing, reconciliation.   

But the distinction between the church and the world not only supports the idea that the church is the domain of the realization of God's mission to humanity.  It also, I think, will capture the fact that God's mission to to the world is not just achieved when people are brought into the church.  The church has not yet itself fully become that community of restoration, reconciled to God's lordship.  The church needs to grow into the life which is the goal of redemption, and it is a life which comes progressively, through the continuation of God's mission.  I guess what im saying is that justification is not the culmination of God's redemptive mission, but rather the sanctification of the community.  God labors for a people who are both his own and who have receiving in them (communally) the new (and eschatological) life of Christ.
 
The church-world distinction helps us think about the church as a distinct community, as the domain of God's enacted redemption, and as the place where God's mission climaxes. I think those commitments end up supporting the idea that the church's cultural and social mission is not in transforming the culture and character of the world, but rather in itself being a new, redeemed culture / society.   (And therein is its verbal and deedful testimony to the world that Jesus is its lord!).   God is interested in a redeemed culture; but he is looking for that redeemed culture in his redeemed community, not in his unredeemed community. 

The spiritual complexity of Luther and Karlstadt

There is something I love about Luther--things like his immovable conviction and courage or his total disdain for fame (my consolation is that in time, my books will lie forgotten in the dust").  But then when I read about Luther's return to Wittenburg from the Wartbug castle, and how under certain "biblical values" he tried to wrest the reform movement back into his own hands (which meant pulling it from those of Andreas Bodenstein Von Karlstadt) Luther appears so political, and quite frankly, repulsive.

Similarly, when I read about Karlstadt, I see such a ...sad man.  Nearly possessed with an inferiority complex, excessively accumulating degrees, taking criticisms personally, always feeling attacked  ever consigned to second fiddle, following Luther's theology but never credited much as a leader, except perhaps of aberrant movements happily forgotten--Karlstadt seems like a man trying to find a passion that would also establish his own worth.  He strikes me as a broken man, as one not whole.  But then when I read of his amazing paradigm shift, of his abjuring academics for the life of a layman, for sweat and toil; or when I hear hows his tracts showed a "vigorous concern for a regenerate life of obedience to the Lord," Karlstadt seemed to have a passion and vitality that not even Luther had.  He had something even Luther was missing.
 
Luther is protestantisms saint; but at times he seems such an unattractive man.  Karlstadt...is it right to say that he protestantism's embarrasing uncle?He was such a weak man, yet there was something so strong in his heart.  The complexity and humanness of these men--not even to mention their raw and prolonged animosity toward eachother--seem to me like sources that could teach me so much.
  

Christian Growth is not learning

We think that Christian growth takes place in our head, by learning more.  This just is not true.  When “growth” is talked about in the NT, it talks about living in a certain way.  One bears more fruit, one becomes more conformed to the pattern of Jesus, ones love abounds more and more.  Where, then, do we get the idea from that growth is about learning the Bible and doctrine better and better?  Maybe from the combination of the reformation notion that the shepherd is a teacher, and the shepherd is also the model for the community.  The pastor is the one who knows the Bible best, and that’s the part of him we see most when the majority of our interactions with him are via the pulpit.  So if we are to be like him, then we grow to know more and more.  That’s why the ultimate Christian is the preacher.  But it’s just not Biblical.

The Logical Break Between the Missio Dei and the Missio Ecclesia -- OR -- Why Comprehensive Salvation does not Necessarily Imply Comprehensive Mission.

Salvation does not imply mission.  And frustratingly, everyone thinks it does.  So much missional theology in, say, the last 25 or 50 years, has so emphasized the comprehensiveness of God’s salvation, and from that claimed that mission should be comprehensive.  But it doesn’t follow.

Yes! We must say it—we must proclaim it:  God wants every aspect of created existence to experience his transforming and healing restoration. God wants to heal—to recreate—the relationships between people, to dissolve animosity and hatred, arbitrary exclusions, such as racism, for example.  God wants to care for the poor and provide for them, to lift them out of poverty to provision and dignity.  God wants to transform politics, so that it reflects the political relationship between Jesus and the church, so that leaders with power serve in humble, self-denying love and truth. God wants to transform creation and our relationship with it, so it no longer groans, so we no longer abuse it, and so we no longer suffer from it. God wants to transform individuals’ human hearts, so they are not driven by pride, crushed under anxieties and wounds, or sullied by hatred, bitterness, or selfishness; he wants to make them fully healed, fully alive with love, ready to love and serve and delight in doing so.

Isn’t all that what we think of when we think of “salvation”?  And yet, something is seriously missing from that list, namely, our relationship with God himself.  God’s interest is not just in the existence of a thoroughly, overflowingly good created order, bringing it back (or even forward) to the way he would delight for it to be.  God wants to transform people’s (both individually and “as a whole”) relationship with himself.  For people to totally love, delight, and glory in God’s goodness greatness and grace; for them to find satisfaction in him and not stuff; for them to want him most; for people to use all they have to worship and honor him; for people not to sin by living lives of distraction and diversion, but to be totally centered in Christ, living from his love and grace.  God wants to transform our understanding of him, so that we understand him rightly, so we can praise and love him rightly, and realize his own love for us rightly.  Yes, salvation is comprehensive, capturing not only every relationship within the created order, but also the relationship of the created order to himself.

To speak of “the comprehensiveness of salvation” is really to speak about the character of the vision which God has for the world, the character of the telos God has for it.  God has not left the world to its current condition of brokenness and suffering—comprehensive brokenness and suffering.  Instead, God has committed to heal it in every aspect.  There is a world God has in mind for this world, a future state to which he has committed to bring it, and “comprehensive salvation” refers to the character of that future state: it is healed comprehensively, in every dimension and depth.

Here is what I hate: you cannot go from this fact that the salvation which God desires for the world is a comprehensive one, to the fact that the church’s mission should be comprehensive.  The comprehensiveness of mission absolutely does not follow from the comprehensiveness of salvation, at least not inferentially.  Let S stand for the statement “God’s will is for every aspect of the created order to experience his salvation.”  Let M stand for the statement “God’s will is for the church to work toward every aspect of the created order experiencing God’s salvation.”   P does not imply M.  P might be the reason M is true, if M is true; but it does not imply M.[1]  

I cannot stress strongly enough that the question for mission is not “where does God want to bring the world?” but “what specific part does God want the church to play in his work of bring the world to the end he desires for it?” It’s not, What does God want generally?  Its, What does God want of us specifically.  He may want a comprehensive mission; but he may not.  In his wisdom he might have a strategy, a plan for how he wants to bring about the comprehensive salvation of the world, and it might not include the church getting started on all of it now (or at least it might not include the church focusing equally on all of it now.)  God might well have a task he wishes the church to focus on now, because that is the role he wants them to play now in his larger drama.  God might well wish for the church not to undertake to “mediate salvation” to certain aspects of the world and its existence.  Maybe he does, but a case has to be made for it—and all evidence for S is not relevant to making that case, the case for M.  The fact of the comprehensiveness of salvation must not stop the question of the limits and priorities, of the specific character of the mission God has for the church specifically.   The question for the church’s missiology must only be what God wants it to be doing at this time, what role he wants for it to play at this time, given what he wants to do at this time.  The missio Dei and the missio ecclesia are not necessarily the same, and they must not be assumed to be so.[2] 

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[1] Example/analogy: The reason I might want my mechanic to repair my car is because I want my car fixed; but the fact that I want it fixed does not necessarily imply that I want my mechanic to do it!  (maybe it’s too expensive right now, etc).

[2] And the missio Dei is not imply that God is always working at realizing all of the future he is bringing to the world; he might be focused on achieving different aspects of the goal at different times.  

What I like about Open Theism...but why its probably wrong.

I'm reading about Open Theism in a Greg Allison's Historical Theology, in the chapter on Providence.  Its been a while since I last read about it--wow, around 5 years ago.  But as I'm reading about, there is something I like about it!  This sentence hit me:

• "God is free to sovereignly decide not to determine everything that happens in history."

Is not God's freedom this radical?  is not God even so free as to become a man? (can we even say, free to become a creature?)?

I think what I like about John Sander's open theism (Sanders is representative open theist here) is that it reminds us--us who have long emphasises God's total omnipotence -of God's vulnerability.  Sanders makes the issue whether or not God risks: the God who knows all and has all power is "the God who never takes any risks..."  What Sanders says is that God has the sovereign freedom to chose to be affected by his creatures.  He is free to give his creatures power, free to give them a power, and free to become vulnerable to their power.  What I like in open theism is not so much its metaphysics (which I will dispute shortly), but its portrait of the suffering God.  Does not God suffer?  Is that not where love takes him?  What else could the cross lead us to say? When we just think of God as the one who has all power, power power power, we can forget that God is vulnerable. [of course, saying that might be the wrong words, but I hope you feel my sentiment]

I think what I like too is the idea that God has chosen to "give us space to operate." Rather than determining every action, God has let us determine actions.  It is the flip side of GOd's otherness.  He has chosen to create something other, and to let it be other.  He respects its ability to be what it is, because that is his sovereign will. God, because of his love for love, because of his love to create people who can love, sincerely  from themselves, has given them true freedom, freedom to self determine.   This is the God of love.

I think we should, somehow, welcome this portrait of the God who blesses man, who gives him freedom, who desires after communion with them (does that sound wrong to you?  It almost does to me, but how can it be?  does not God desire communion with man?  Is that not ridiculous?  Is it not true though?), and who in this decision to give freedom and this decision to love, if that love was a decision, does not God in this make himself vulnerable, open himself up to suffering, open himself to the sorrow of sin?  In making the cup for a sweet wine, he makes the a cup from which to drink bitterness.   In some way  this all seems kind of biblical, and powerful, and profound, and worshipful...

 But of course, I think the issue is that maybe God is not free to not be in control.  Here's my thought: If God knows everything, if he know all counterfactuals--that is, if he knows all the ways that the world could play out for every different way it could start--then anything he chooses is in a sense a choice that implies the whole future.  God knows what will happen if he he sovereignly chose to not to determine everything that would happen in history.  And if one knows everything that would follow from one's choice, and those things only follow given ones choice, then God knows what he is choosing  God knows what his creatures will do.  He knows the world that is to follow from his decision.   And do something when you know exactly what the results will be...that's not really a risk.  So yes, God has sovereignly chosen to not control each action, he has chosen even to be vulnerable to human action (maybe). But that doesn't mean God's not in control.  It just means that in his control he chose to permit a thousand actions.  It doesn't mean that he's risking.  A God who knows everything is a God who cannot risk.  A God who knows everything knows exactly what he is doing in making this world with freedom.  A God who knows everything that is happening, and a God who can intervene  is a God who has to chose at each and every moment whether to intervene in what he sees, or to allow what he sees.  But a God who is allowing, or choosing to contradict, or just choosing to act at every point in time regarding every event in time...well, there's a word for that kind of God.  Its a God who is in control, who exercises providence. 

If Mission isn't the goal, what is?

(continuation.  Also, please note, most of what I say i do not believe; I'm just explaining the logic of the view I find myself holding, even though I think they are probably wrong.  I'm just trying to be honest and face the assumptions I (and probably others) sometimes imbibe)

Some might say intimacy with God is what our Christian life is all about, but that seems too self centered.  I don’t exist just to forget everyone or just use them to get closer to God. Being like Jesus as the goal seems too unrelational.  While we may need relationship with God (addressing and attending to God himself), the goal—taking on some character—is not relational. 

Maybe the goal isn’t singular.  Maybe it is two-fold.  That seems to be the wisdom behind the wesminster confession’s statement that the chief end of man is to a) glorify God, and b) enjoy him forever.[1]  To my mind, the marriage image given in scripture of our relationship with God suggests the two-fold activity of giving and receiving from God.  We love God through worship and service and through how we love eachother; we receive from God by enjoying, savoring, thanking (this is getting into worship) and growing. 

OK.  So, maybe the goal is giving and receiving, living in marriage with God through worship, obedience,receiving, etc.  This just changes my inquiry and shows that I was never interested in the goal of the christian life in the first place.  Rather, I just wanted to know, what is the life with which God is pleased?  What is the life which he praises?  What is the life that matters, is great, that is most honored, that is above?  

Is there a problem with this question?  Does it show that I am still trying to gain social superiority (in the kingdom), respect, a satisfaction in some affirmation, to be the best?  I want to be in first place, or at least the upper level (elite), in the kingdom.   

For the God for whom everything is mission, and whose central preoccupation is redemption of the world, it tends to seem that he wants me to serve that mission, and values me in accord with how well a role I play in that mission story.  So, the key to praise and value is performance of mission.  And, as ministry tends to refer to public tasks, I thus need to accomplish something great in the sphere.  These are the people some of us praise in the Christian community: brilliant thought-leaders, heads of amazing ministry organizations, etc.  We praise world-shapers.  That’s the measure of stature, significance, value, honor, praise, etc in the kingdom.

The other God I believe in, besides the God for whom mission is everything, is the God for whom the church is everything.  He cares about how much or how well people participate in serving this new community, the church.   For both these gods, marriage is nothing.  A husband (or father) (in his husbanding and fathering) is no world-shaper.  His only value is in the hope of a spiritual assist. And nobody thinks that having a fun day with your wife or kids is ministry to the church.

We can be great world shapers without being great lovers and worshippers of God.  And we can be great world changers for whom everything, including our love and worship of God, is for being great world changers.  But what is the life with which God praises most?  These world changers are great in our eyes for what they have done, but are they great in God's eyes, and if so, why?  What are we to be growing towards as Christians?   I’m so hungry for praise I can’t, like most do, pursue it on the side and be content with happiness as my main dish. 

Maybe this is all a problem of trying to find identity and worth in the church, rather than in God, or in God as a servant, whose exellence is in his work, rathther than as a wife or son, whose excelence is in love, affective (subjective) and enacted (obedience). I don't know.  

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[1] Aside: ugh, I hate academics.  I've put the Westminster Confession (without reading it) into the box of naieve, unenlightened, overly simplistic hermeneutics (they didn't read the Bible historically, but instead with that the more timeless, systematic, abstract, dejudiasized, protestant scholasticism approach).  Its not of enduring value because it’s the product of its times.  Unlike our theology today…

Is Mission Everything?

(this post is prompted by realizations I had during a conversation with my beautiful fiancée a few days ago, in which I began putting my finger on some of the structure and difference of our paradigms).

Lots of things are important in our Christian life: living holy, becoming like Jesus Christ in our character, worshiping God and having affective love for and an obedient will toward him, being used in our gifting for the building up of the church, glorifying God, etc.  On the one hand, these Christian injunction (being used, becoming holy, conforming to the character of Jesus, etc) are all connected , all of them promoting and spilling over into each other (this is how my fiancée would naturally see it).  But, for someone like me who tends to think of the logical relationship between ideas, and the organization of truths, I tend to think of one as ultimate.  One of these is the goal to which the others contribute.  The question I had recently is, “Which one?”

Historically, I’ve tended to believe and live like mission is everything (i.e. the goal).  I want to be holy so that I can be ready to be used by God. I want to be growing constantly so that I can become equipped for serving God.  I want Christ-like character so that I can have a heart and reputation and connection with God that makes powerful ministry possible.  I want to be close with God so that I might be lead by his Spirit … into ministry.  I even want to rest so that I can be rejuvenated for serving God.

(this view of the Christian life where mission is everything has been encouraged, I think, by some (recent) biblical theology which seems to emphasize the mission of God as the essence of the Bible and the most fundamental theological reality.  The implication of this seems to suggest that mission is everything to God.)

Relationships are also about mission.  The hope is, sometimes, that my friendships will help me (or them) grow for more effective mission.  The whammy is marriage.  Marriage is a consuming commitment, so how does this fit in a world that’s all about mission?  The answer is, “Not easily,” but that hasen’t stopped me from trying: “maybe marriage will help me do mission better… if not, then maybe marriage just represents a different strategy for mission: rather than doing ministry out there, I spend my labors trying to build up a few, trying to form a spiritual DNA in my family that will multiply ministers.”

The problem with mission as the ultimate goal is that it seems to not include so much of the not-so-missional stuff that makes up the reality of marriage (recreation, romance, and domesticity) and raising kids (playpens, base ball games and skateboarding, etc.).  Pursuing marriage (and the family it brings along with it) has caused to wrestle with what life is all about, because it doesn't seem it can be all about mission, at least not in the way I (and others?) typically conceptualize “mission” (or “ministry”).  Most take mission to refer to things we do out there in the public sphere of the church or world.  But most of our life is not there or in tasks, let alone those tasks. 

Secondly, mission as the goal of the Christian life is not a God-ward goal, but rather a world-ward one.  I can be all about mission and accomplishment, but not really about loving God and knowing him.  My goal is not that I might know Christ and be conformed to him, but that I might accomplish great things for God.  My goal is not relationship or fellowship with God, but simply success in the work for God.  That seems wrong. 

Thirdly, making mission everything makes everything be all about work.   All my deeds and pursuits are to accomplish.  This kind of thinking—having mission as the goal of all my life—has revealed to me that I don’t know how to live, but only how to work.  Is it a surprise that much of the mission emphasizing is written by men (who—and this will offend some—often tend to focus on work compartmentalized from the context of relationships and family) and that my paradigm has been challenged by beginning to live with a woman?  What is it to live as a Christian, aside from working for the Kingdom?  What is my ultimate calling (if it is not ministry)?  Im not sure, but Ill give my other thoughts in my next post.

A Defence: Further thoughts on a Missiology based on heaven.

Two great friends, who I love, respect and appreciate, have replied to my  previous post on "The Missology that comes from rethinking heaven."  Here's my defence.

My main criticism in the previous pose is NOT of a holistic missiology.  My main criticism is with saying that a) the NT's vision of an ultimately this-worldly, embodied, social, physical eternity somehow implies b) that social justice and creation care should therefore be priorities of the church's mission.  

Heck, I dont even care if the NT teaches "b", or even if it claims b on the basis of "a"!

I have a problem basing one's missiology on the Bible's teaching about the final world.  We should base our missiology on the Bible's teaching about missology.  Maybe I've gone crazy, but I think that doing so--basing a missiology on the Bible's teaching of the final, future salvation--amounts to saying, "If I was God and I had a physical, embodied, earthy, and thus social and political world, as my ultimate goal, and if I was using the church in my plan of redemption, then I would want that church to pursue in the concerns of social justice and creation care during this present time, in order to gradually begin bringing in in that end world."  

Well who cares what you would do or think if you were God!  I care what God thinks and wills to do.  I care what God wants his church to being doing now. And that just happens to be something of native concern to the NT, and something about which the NT has a bit to say! I don't care that there are people's who perceive in the NT a holistic missiology.  That's fine. I don't care, except that one day I might listen to them (i.e. read their books and consider them).  Presently, as I see it, Hauerwas' account (as I understand it) resonates with my experience of what the NT actually says and emphasises: namely, that the mission of the church is of the NT is not to make this world or its structures a better place (except as those structures are existing within the community of the church), but rather the NT pretty much emphasises proclamation and working to achieve a renewed life within the community of the people of God (a community that should be ever expanding).  That's how I see it.  A bunch on proclamation, a bunch on bringing the gentiles in, a bunch on being the renewed people, living out and working for a community shaped by a radically different set of values (love, mercy, loving the broken, etc).  That is not about reforming global issues of structures. 


If he, or the Bible, teaches that creation care / social justice (or secular political reform for that matter) are the business he wants the church to be about now, then fine.  Lets do it.  If God or the Bible teach that and happens to base the logic of that teaching in the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, of our present participation in the escaton, fine.  At that point, out missiology would be based on Biblical teaching about what God wants the church to be doing now. But us looking at a doctrine, and then basing a missology on it, that seems like a bad way to derive our missiology.   I think that the shape of the missiology for the church should follow the shape of the missiology in the Bible, not some other shape, even if that other shape is constructed using certain Biblical principles or doctrines.  


Of course, my position--that one should not base their missiology on some theological premise, but instead on the Bible's own teaching about missiology--is something to think more about.  On the one hand, it seems potentially limiting to theology, and I probably actually practice this deductive thing elsewhere.  But, at the same time, it would be weird to base a christology straight on OT texts about messiah.  hello, the NT teaches a lot about christology itself.  That's my beef.  I'd be happy to hear more thoughts. 

The Missiology that comes from Rethinking Heaven

Surprisingly, Time Magazine recently devoted their cover study to reviewing a trend in academic theology.  Weird.   The essay was titled "Rethinking Heaven."  It basically recounted how a team of  theologians--with NT Wright as the captain--are writing about how Christian salvation is not a ticket out of this world to some other worldly place called heaven where we go when we die, but rather, that the ultimate future of the saved is one this planet, when heaven comes to earth.  Christian believe that God will raise the dead and that they will live on this earth--albeit renewed and restored earth--and will there enjoy an embodied eternity with God. God is not abandoning his world, but intends to bring salvation to it.

The author, following the work of those he reported about, claimed that this view of heaven supposedly gives renewed support to causes of environmentalism and social justice.  I guess the reasoning goes: "God is ultimately interested in this world, in its embodied concreteness, which means in its social and physical dimensions.  He is not giving up on it, but instead, his plan is for salvation to reach into those dimensions too. [tha'ts the point it makes against the older, "fly away from this earth to a paradise in the clouds" view of heaven]. So, we the church, God's people and the agents through which God works out his salvation, should pursue those causes, because God pursues them too."  Salvation includes creation and embodied life, so that should be the church's mission.

I hope I'm not caricaturing the logic of this kind of position.  That's just how it seems to me to go, both in Rethinking Heaven, and in the works of those like NT Wright.  But I just think that one's view of heaven is entirely not the point when it comes to the question of the church's mission.  Who cares!  One's view of heaven is not what really determines it.  I'm fine saying that future salvation is embodied; that heaven will not be in the clouds but will be on earth.  talking about the final state does not tell me what God wants his people to do now. This is my big frustration in all this talk.  The fact is, God may want that end state, but he might have his own time and way for achieving that goal.  How can we jump from "God ultimately wants it" to "We're supposed to pursue it now?"  God has his own design and his own strategy, his own game plan and time table for when and how he wants to do things!

As far as I can tell in the NT, I see Paul, to take one example, very concerned with sharing the good news and tangibly and materially loving Christian communities, or those on the verge of becoming Christian.  I don't see him pursuing social reform in the Roman empire, with the important exception that in his mind, the church was the sphere of social reform. But addressing problems of Roman governmental policy or the environment, or even trying to make this world a better place--NO!  I don't see it.  A more biblical view of heaven doesn't imply a missiology, let alone one that, at least in my view, isn't a strong theme in the Bible.

I guess what im upset with is that the missional conclusion that people claim to follow from the "rethinking of heaven' in fact doesn't follow (its invalid; not to mention deduction seems like a fishy method for generating a missiology).  Just because the earth and embodied life is God's ultimate object, that doesn't mean that now is his time for that.  You know, God doesn't necessarily want to use the church to everything he wants done.  ...There will be, um, that thing called the return of Jesus. 

If we want to think about the mission and calling of the church for this time, why not just start with that question?  The Bible does have a lot to say about it--directly. 

Sometimes, I just really want to figure it all out.  To understand Paul and his theology, to understand Jesus as he really was and as the gospels present him.  Sometimes I want to figure out the historical genealogy of modern theology and of the views and theological language the flutter about in the swirl of our evangelical world.

Its a great feeling when those moments come,when the insight flashes.  There is a conversation, a million thoughts out there in the world of ideas, but I have a few thoughts that organize all the others...

But--and this is always such a challenge for me to remember!--I am not called to be a theologian!  Even if I am, I am  not!  I am called to walk with God, to love him, to worship him, to rest in him, to receive from him, both blessing to be enjoyed, as well as tasks to be performed.  "Walk before me and be blameless" (Gen 17:1), not, 'Walk before the community of thinkers and be successful or insightful."  Its hard to do theology as a living, because my walk with God is a condition for my work!

I can turn my attention and affections (away from God) toward learning and knowledge and understanding for happiness!  But no!

Lord, give me a chest and a heart big enough to support the brain I want to have.  There is a joy and excitement in insight, but give me the heart to love you. Lord, if you will be something I talk about for the next...bunch of years, I must have a lot of love for you.  i don't want to write of you without loving you.

Academia only cares about my brain.  But if I am a Christian first, then you care for my heart too.  Lord, may my scholarship be part of my worship, of my love, of our fellowship.

Basic Hermeneutics

Often when we grab an Old testament text, we quickly seek its relevance to us. We read ""Sons I have reared and brought up, But they have revolted against Me. An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master's manger, But ... My people do not understand" and then say--"look, we as the church are sinful and rebellious." We imagine that Isaiah was a late twentieth century american preacher. But that, obviously, is not the case. And Isaiah had nothing to say to late American churches. Better rather to imagine that we are 8th century (BC) Jews. We must imagine ourselves in their world, seeing through their eyes; smell what the smelled; fear what they feared. Or better yet, with prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, we are to imagine ourselves as YHWH, the pain of his people's apostasy, the stench of their unfaithfulness. Before we ask what does it say?" we should ask "What did it say." The first time travel should be us to the past and from the self to the other, not the past to us.

Tradition and the "New" Hermeneutic

As to how new it is, or what it is, I am not as sure as I ought to be, but still Im taken with a new approach to Scripture. The approach I am getting at is that assumed by those such as N.T. Wright. Here is a shallow account of it:

1. The approach seeks to think about scripture and its content in the thought forms of the Biblical writers. Of course, elevating "authorial intent" as the standard of meaning of scripture is nothing revolutionary. Yet, it seems that much of the typical (conservative evangelical) hermeneutics I have encountered end up methodologically looking for authorial intent via dialectical proof texting, wherein in we discover Paul's intent by some sot of comprehensive harmonization of his texts that pertain to some subject. In addition to this method, we end up construing the authors intent in our own modernistic concepts. However, this approach to Scripture I am considering seeks to drive deep into the author's conceptual springs from which flow his particular images, language and theology. We are looking to think in Paul's terms--be it the "two-aged" eschatology, or "mystery" as the inclusion of the Gentiles, etc.

2. This approach is thus historically/sociologically driven. No longer do we work with the "plain meaning of the text as we read it;" Instead, we seek out the "perhaps lost (partially or substantially) meaning of the text as it was meant." To accomplish this, we avail ourselves of all the modern day resources of history and sociology. Thus, in this hermeneutic, extra-Biblical texts of communities that we think the Biblical authors may have identified with, their Christian distinctives aside, are essential to the interpretive enterprise. The dead sea scrolls, targums, Jewish psuedopigrapha and apocrypha, the Septuagint--whatever can reveal the spirit of the times, these are our guide to getting into the Biblical authors' thought world, where the true meaning of the text/content of their theology lies. Since nearly much of the New testament was written by Jews (and many of the first Christians were Jews), recovering the first century Jewish mind is part of understanding what Jesus meant to these earliest Christians. Another part is understanding the (roman) world into which this theology was thrust. N.t. Wright calls this the derivation and confrontation of Biblical ideas, but that is a matter of too much detail for this post. The basic point is that, for this "new" approach, Historical sociology is the new hermeneutic key.

My trouble with all this, and thus, the reason that I write, is that this approach stands in a tension with tradition. Wright, and the wave of new testament scholars of which he is but a single part, are, in a creative and respectable away, going "back to the Bible," and with great fruitfulness. But, are they leaving their foundation in doing so? Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen in their book "The Drama of Scripture", while arguing that "the vision of God's ultimate purpose" for the world is not one wherein "Christians [are] suddenly transported out of this world to live a spiritual existence in heaven forever, quote N.T. Wright's statement, "Very often people have come to the New testament with the presumption that 'going to heaven when you die' is the implicit point of it all... They acquire that viewpoint from somewhere, but not from the new Testament." Bartholomew and Goheen go on explain just where that 'somewhere" is: "this view of the end is the result of the combination of Biblical teaching with pagan Greek philosophy in the early centuries of the church. It is especially in Augustine's early work, harmonizing Scripture with Neoplatonic philosophy."

Yet, while Wright, Bartholomew and Goheen may claim that God's ultimate purpose is to restore all of creation rather than to provide an escape from it, the seeming subtlety beneath it all is the conviction that church history basically started off on the wrong foot. As Christian became predominantly Roman-Gentile, it drifted from its homegrounds, loosing the context that grounded the intricacies and profundities of its thought. How much of our theology and interpretation is what is is because it was formed in this Greco-roman setting, rather than in its native Jewish contexts?

I think this "new" hermeneutic realizes that its conclusions may differ from those of Christian tradition. But how can this be done so comfortably?! it is as if, in the attempt to fetch fresher water, we are poisoning the well! Is there a way to keep the essentials of our tradition--, creeds, councils, basic orthodoxy, all without which we are completely lost--and yet claim that we, because of 1500 years of improper trajectory, need to significantly adjust our bearing? Can we articular this rigorously, so that we don't stand on our tradition with one foot and kick it out from under ourselves with the other? I hope so. In fact, I'd love to help. But that dang N.T. Wright has probably already stolen the idea and is now turning it into yet another book. How to proceed forward without leaving anything behind: it is a notorious struggle...