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...

Inspiration...Object and Extent

As usual, theology class left me a bit confused as I thought through old ideas in new ways. The subject was inspiration. The question, whether the Bible on our desk was inspired. According to the doctrine of inspiration, after the author of 1 John penned the words “Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ Χριστὸς” [“Jesus is the Christ”; let’s assume this, for sake of discussion, to be a complete, indicative sentence], he, while staring at fresh ink, is staring at inspired words. However, what if his buddy Jim walked up, peered over John’s shoulder, and perfectly copied those words—Would Jim be staring at inspired words? According to the doctrine (as relayed by Dr. Gentry), no. Inspiration is an attribute predicated to the process of writing the original manuscripts of scripture, not to the actual original manuscripts themselves. Inspiration is a non-transferable attribute. If one photocopied the original manuscript, the photocopy would not be inspired, because it was produced by a photocopier which was not governed by God’s special working, rather than by the special guidance and intention of the Holy Spirit.

Yet, I have understood it, recent Christians have gone about affirming that “the original manuscripts of scripture are (were) inspired by God,” obviously thinking that “inspired” is an attribute of the manuscript. So, while inspiration may properly be a quality of an action—namely, the penning [verb] of the Biblical texts—there is another sense in which it is a quality of the text. In the first, inspiration refers to the Holy Spirit’s influence (“super-intention”) upon the writing subject; in the second, inspiration refers to the fact that the words of the original manuscript were intended and given to man by the Holy Spirit. Let’s think about this second kind of inspiration. Imagine that John were to rewrite, perfectly, without deviation, a second copy of his first epistle. Doesn’t it seem reasonable (thought paradoxical) to say that John, after such a rewriting, would have just produced an inspired text, even though he did so without being inspired? Because John was inspired (in the first sense) in the writing of 1 John, the text of 1 John is inspired (in the second sense). But then, 1 John is an inspired book. And if doesn’t matter which copy you pick up—if it is exactly the same as the one John first wrote, it is inspired.

Or, have I made an assumption? I think I have. There is a difference between saying “’That leather skin [or piece of papyri] with ink lines on it,’ (which is the original copy of 1 John), is inspired” and saying “1 John is inspired.” One refers to a particular (i.e. the original) copy being inspired; the other, to the text, to the abstract nature of the text, being inspired. So, can we say that “the text” in the second, abstract sense, is inspired, or that it being inspired follows from John being inspired while writing the identity-making copy of it? Assuming we can say this, is that “inspiredness” transferable to an English copy? I suppose that depends on whether the language of a text is an accidental or essential property of “a text” (in the abstract, nature sense). If part of the identity of 1 John is its “being written in Greek”ness (or, if part of the identity of 1 John is certain attributes that necessitate the text’s being written in Greek), then a particular 1 John in English is not really 1 John at all. Or, is 1 John something beyond language, having its identity purely in meaning? In this case, particular copies of I John relate to “1 John” similar to how statements relate to propositions. If this second account is the case, then our Bible stand a chance at being inspired (in so far as they faithfully capture what the original 1 John communicated [darn, communication is a joint activity; texts don’t communicate; texts and people communicate, right?]. However, if “1 John” is by nature a Greek text, then there is no sense, not even a derivative one, in which our English Bible’s are inspired.

I suppose my driving question is "To what does the quality 'inspiration' apply? And if the answer is 'the original manuscripts of scripture,' then to what does this quality extend?" Does it extend to all documents insofar as they exactly reproduce the (ink coordinates of the) original? Or, more broadly, does it extend to all texts in so far as they capture the nature (meaning) of 1 John?

What does it mean for something to be the “Word of God.” And, if “Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ Χριστὸς” is or ever was the word of God, then is “Jesus is the Christ/Messiah/Anointed one” the word of God? Too many questions; not enough theories...

The Biblical Text: Window or Painting?

A few days ago, I was speaking with an aspiring Bible translator, annoyingly challenging her on the point of bible translation. It seems like Bible translation is this gung-hoe commitment to bring the Biblical text to non-text-based cultures. In my understanding, most people in these remote tribes are not sitting around reading books; the void in their heart is not one and the same with the void on their book shelf. No, these people’s entire view of the world is given to them orally, through the stories, teachings, and traditions of their community and its leaders. So why the push for Bible translation? Well, because we (that includes me) think the text is special, or, more commonly, strongly, and incorrectly, that it is necessary. Some belief along these lines seems to be the only thing that could sustain the 10-20 year commitment bible translation demands.

But the problem for me, and I think, thought they might not realize it, for many other Christians, is that we really don’t think the Biblical text is that special or necessary. Thought we, or at least I, tend to view the Bible as the Christian’s bread of life, it isn’t, and Jesus says so himself (Jn 5:39). The gospel, not the gospels stand at the heart of Christianity. We are saved, not because we buy into to inerrancy or plenary verbal theory of inspiration, but because we buy into the message of Jesus and believe in him as the Messiah who dies for sin and is raised in victory (or something proximal to that).

Maybe, thought, the Bible, while not necessary for salvation, is so for Christian life. Yet, it wouldn’t seem so from our hermeneutics. In most churches, we read the bible for a minute, and then talk about. And if it brought us to focus in closer on the text, that would be good. But it seems that so often the point of Bible teaching is to get one’s students to look thought the details of the text and to the abstracted, life changing principles it contains. For example, the entire point of systematic theology is to get at those principles and doctrines scripture contains. It’s as if systematic theology often sees itself as separating the wheat from the chaff, the meaning and real important doctrine from its textual casing. The theologian or Bible teacher is the great liberator, freeing doctrine and principle from its textual imprisonment. So, the take away from the sermon is never textual; it’s conceptual. It’s “Jesus loves us”; “Jesus wants us to obey him.” [Is it as if no matter how plenary verbal we are in theory, we are neo-orthodox in practice? I'm speaking way beyond my knowledge here, as usual]. But do we leave loving the text, or an abstraction of and from it?

I think this whole musing brings to a question of texts in general. Are we meant to look through them or at them. Are they windows or paintings? If they are windows, then all that really matters is what’s on the other side of them. But what if one can see what’s on the other side of the window other than through the window? If it is what we see that matters, of what concern is the means by which we see it? Yet this is precisely the problem I am having with Bible translators. Why can't just one man from each tribe come learn another language, and speak the Bible to his community? That is how the community would learn normally, plus its quicker and more direct. The end is the same; the people learn to live out of stories they believe to be true. But, if the text is a painting, then the viewer’s response is not consider the scene; it is also to appreciate and love the portrayal. Is not that almost the heart of loving art, loving the precision of the stroke, the blending of color, the contour of the line. But if that is what it is to love art, then what is it to love a text? And, how dangerously are our hermeneutics at odds with a love of the Biblical text?