Pastor Scott's Thoughts

Rob Bell and a New American Christianity by James Wellman

I just got home from the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. Nothing like 14,000 theologians and biblical scholars to make a weekend wild. The best part of going each year (other than connecting with great friends) is the massive book fair. Every religious publisher in the universe is there rolling out their latest books.

I bought several. (I usually take an extra suitcase to bring books home in). But the first one I read was an interesting little book by James Wellman on the ministry, life, and impact of Rob Bell on American Christianity. It was honestly very hard for me to put down and I had it finished by the time my plane landed this afternoon. Wellman does a great job of being fair but critical. The beauty of the book is that he not only researches Rob and his ministry but thoughtfully reflects on what the resonance his ministry has had with so many says about the nature of American Christianity.

Rob is a spiritual hero for many and a major source of contention for many others. (So much so, that I considered not writing this review. I am trusting the graciousness and maturity of most of my readers). But whether you love Rob or hate him, I think Wellman's book will give you important insight into the way he thinks and the vision of ministry he carries with him passionately.

There is a lot that could be reflected on, but let me just mention the thing that I treasure (and honestly envy) most about Rob, and then the thing that troubles me most.

I love and frankly covet the artistic side of Rob Bell. What has made his ministry both unique and powerful is that he is an artist and not just a preacher. He thinks of preaching as a form of art. I love, as Wellman points out in several places, that his vision of the kingdom does not begin as just an answer to the sin problem of Genesis 3 but as the way to reconnect people with the image of God they were created to be in Genesis 1. Wellman points out that what transformed Rob's preaching ministry was when he connected with the deeply Jewish aspects of the gospel. Traditionally Judaism is okay living in tension with questions that go unanswered (just read Job). Judaism doesn't usually invite believers simply into adherance to particular doctrines, but like Jacob (Israel) it invites people to wrestle with God in places they did not expect and in ways they never dreamed.

I am jealous of Rob's ability to paint with words. I envy his ability to invite people into the mystery of a God who exceeds all of our formulas about him. And I love that his primary desire is to reach people who have no interest in the gospel - but to do so in ways that don't coerce them with fear but draw them into the depth and breath of God's love. 

Wellman's exploration of Rob's creative impulse is fascinating. It is his amazing creative ability that in large part drew people to Mars Hill so quickly and it is that impulse that has moved him to explore new avenues of creativity and art in LA. I wish I had more of that.

Although I have points of difference theologically with Rob, my primary point of concern is not so much theological as ecclesiological. According to Wellman, Rob has a beautiful Spirit-led, mission-centric, movment oriented view of the Church (with a capital "C"). In fact, Rob deeply resists thinking of the Church as an institution. For example, Mars Hill does not have a church sign nor does it do any advertising. If you come to the church it is because the Church (the people that are the Church) invited you to come and join in.

There is something beautiful about that view, and it is obviously a view that resonnates well with instituition-phobic postmoderns. My concern is not about his desire to keep the Church from becoming overly institutionalized in the future, but his disconnection with the church as an historic tradition. It isn't that he is not connected with or profoundly aware of the tradition of biblical interpretation or theological development - he is. It is that he rarely acknowledges that he is. I could be wrong, but it is my sense that in the constant attempt to be the innovator and creator he sometimes (maybe often) has failed to recognize the shoulders of saints that he is standing on.

If you made a list of the theological ideas that have caused people to dismiss him as a heretic - a non-foundationalist epistemology, a post-liberal reading of Scripture, a Spirit-ecclesiology, a questioning of substitutionary atonement as the only way to think about salvation, God's redemption of all of creation, the affirmation of the goodness of embodied life through creation and the resurrection of the dead, and even wrestling with questions of the nature of heaven, hell, and judgment - NONE of those questions are unique to him. In fact he is picking them up from folk as far back as the Eastern Orthodox Fathers, and as recent as Nancey Murphy, Miroslav Volf, Jurgen Moltmann, NT Wright, George Lindbeck, Rene Girard, and a whole host of others dead and living. Even the questions he raises in Love Wins - questions for which he received the most negative attention - were far from new. As one colleague of mine said after reading Love Wins, "Apparently all these people who are fired up about Love Wins either didn't read C.S. Lewis' the Great Divorce or they didn't understand it."

My point being, in books like Velvet Elvis or Love Wins he rarely if ever references some of the saints and scholars who stand with him in both his many questions and his few conclusions. But because he tends to stand alone as the artist and prophet, he also gets dismissed as a rogue in blogs, tweets, and books. I am fine if people want to take on a book like Love Wins. But when they do it they ought to know that they are taking on a few of the heavy-weights of Christian history also and not just a forty-something celebrity preacher from MIchigan.

(Parenthetically, I kept thinking while I read the book about Rob that it's too bad he wasn't Wesleyan instead of Reformed. He mainly gets ripped by Reformed folk like Piper and Driscoll for not supporting a Reformed theological agenda. I'm not sure Rob's questions would cause much of a ripple at the Wesleyan Theological Society. It would be interesting to know if he would have planted a Methodist church - like Adam Hamilton - in Leawood, Kansas rather than a Reformed church in Grand Rapids if he would have received the level of criticism he has gotten. There would certainly still be a few Wesleyan, Holiness, and Charismatic folk that would diagree with various points of his teaching, - and who would be jealous of his success - but we may have had tent big enough to hold him). 

My point is that Rob doesn't really care that many evangelicals have demonized him. He pays very little mind to the criticism from the institution. I admire that a bit, but it also concerns me. I love the (big "C") Church not just as a movement but as a people with a history. I love it enough to take bruises from it and still stay inside of it. I love it enough to want to move it forward at a pace it can hear and respond to. I am not there yet, but I also want to love it enough to be willing to die at its hands if necessary in order to speak truth to it.

Tony Jones calls Rob the "Jason Bourne of evangelicalism." I am a little envious of his strength of conviction to go it alone if necessary. I am too tied to this thing called the historic body of Christ to know how to be that independent. Somewhere there is probably a happier medium to reach between the Church as Spirit movement and Church as institution. 

Whatever else Rob is or has done, he helps the church try to reawaken the reality of God's redemptive work going on in every one of us are Christ's disciples. Again, whether you think Rob is a saint or heretic, you will find the book a fascinating read. Here is my favorite quote from Rob's farewell letter to Mars Hill:

i write this to you because of how many of you have been challenged about your participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe over there at mars hill?

as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of faith.

Jesus came to give us life.

a living, breathing, throbbing, pulsating blow your hair back tingle your spine roll the windows down and drive fast experience of God right here, right now.

work taking on flesh and blood.

and so you've found yourself defending and explaining and trying to find the words for your experience that is fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than words.

so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this:

take out a cup and some bread and put it in the middle of the table,

and say a prayer and examine yourselves and then make sure everybody's rent is paid and there's food in their fridge and clothes on their backs

and then invite everybody to say 'yes' to the resurrected Christ with whatever 'yes' they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here right now and

then together taste that new life and liberation and forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have found bread showing other beggars where they found it

remind yourselves that this is what you believe.

remember, the movement is word to flesh.

beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it back into words.

My New Favorite Book - Ross Douthat's Bad Religion

I have a new favorite book. Of course when it comes to books, like my children, I have many favorites. But I really, really do like Ross Douthat's new book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.

I had the chance to meet Ross a couple of weeks ago at a retreat. He is a conservative columnist for The New York Times op-ed page and before that was a senior editor for The Atlantic. Obviously he is a bright guy and gifted writer, but he is also a very committed Christian and has written this book as both a prophetic lament about the current state of Christianity in the public square of America but also as a hopeful place to start dialogue on how to move forward.

The first part of the book is a narrative of the rise and fall of Christian influence in the public square (in the political sphere in particular). It is my favorite part of the book and is probably the clearest and best articulation of how we got to where we are that I can remember reading.

 The second half of the book argues that unlike Europe, as America has become less Christian it has not become less religious. So, rather than becoming secular, America has scratched its religious itch with "bad religions." So Douthat takes time to analyze movements such as the health and wealth gospel or the religion of Oprah and "Eat, Pray, Love" and how they influence the culture at large. It is all really insightful stuff.

So if you get tired in the next couple of weeks watching the toxic scripted bi-partisan politics of the conventions, I recommend the thoughtful reflections of Ross Douthat as a helpful antidote.

The Olympics, Politics, and Postman

As someone who is a bit sports obsessed, I am going to miss the Olympics. Thanks to DVR I stayed up late nearly every night for the last two weeks watching even sports that most people only care about every four years. My new favorite athlete is Missy Franklin. Not to sound too unpatriotic, but my favorite Olympic moment was Mexico winning the gold medal in men's soccer. People in Mexico will remember their win over futbol-super-power Brazil the way Americans remember Lake Placid's "Miracle on Ice."

For some reason, watching the olympics made me think a lot about the late Neil Postman. I met Neil almost 20 years ago at a retreat on technology and faith when I was working on my dissertation. Neil taught for many years at NYU in an area he liked to refer to as "Media Ecology." He's probably most famous for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business which lamented what he saw as the dumbing down of Western culture as it transitioned out of the literate age and into the video/technological age.

At the retreat he read the amazing introduction to the book he was working on at the time (and my favorite book of his) called The End of Education. (I love Amusing Ourselves... but the lesser-known The End of Education and a book entitled The Disappearance of Childhood are my favorites). We ended up in a small group together over the weekend, and for some reason he kind of liked me and so we ate a few meals together over the weekend and corresponed a few times in the years that followed. Neil was a crusty, sometimes crass, stereo-typical New Yorker, but I really liked him personally.

I thought about him during the olympics because of what he would so often say about the nature of television. Borrowing the famous line by Marshall McLuhan, Neil would often lament that when it comes to TV "the medium is the message." Television by nature is good at some things but not so good at others. In particular Neil thought sports made for great television. Sports are usually fast-paced, filled with drama, often has unexpected endings (just ask McKayla Maroney), and is completely unscripted. In other words, its primarily entertaining and relatively unimportant.

And there is no question that the London olympics made for great television. Even when I knew the outcome ahead of time (thanks a lot espn.com and yahoo.com!!), I still found myself jumping off the couch with excitement.

But then I would see the political ads that frequently ran inbetween the events and I'd be reminded of what Neil feared about television - it's effect on social discourse. Politics, Neil believed, made for terrible TV. Not because it couldn't be exciting, but because television, by nature, has to be entertaining to be good. Because that is the case, he knew that careful, thoughtful social discourse would make for horrible television (just try watching CSPAN). Therefore, Postman beleived that politics in a technological age would increasingly be about sound-bites, personal appearance, and the manipulation of the truth in easy ways. In other words, the most important social conversations a culture can have - because they have to make for good TV - would inevitably become trivial. The medium is the message.

In Amusing, Neil compares the careful, thoughful, WRITTEN debates between Lincoln and Douglas from the print dominated 19th century, to the short, sound-bite, talking-points oriented political debates that will fill our television screens for the next several months here in the twenty-first. He didn't like the comparison:

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to prusue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether. And what the other matter is can be expressed in one word: advertising... The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by "better" such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable aabout international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with "image"... For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience and image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences fo the television commerical on political discourse. - Amusing Ourselves to Death (p. 126,133-134).

So I'm sorry to see one set of games come to an end. But let the other (and unfortunately much more serious) games begin!

 

Addiction and Virtue - by Kent Dunnington

One of the great joys of teaching is when a former student outgrows you. Kent Dunnington was a clearly gifted undergrad student at SNU when I was a professor there. I had the privilege not only of teaching him in a couple of courses, but of developing a dear friendship. At the time he - like many college students - was struggling with how to be a thoughtful Christian in a church world that is often anti-intellectual. A couple of my colleagues and I were able to convince him to love Jesus even when he didn't like church people and to find ways of doing theology that got beyond the pitfalls of modernity. His first book is not only a testimony that he did both of those things well, but it is a gift to the Church he has learned to love and serve.

Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice, is the culmination of his work in theology and ethics at Duke Divinity School and his PhD in philosophy from Texas A&M. It has rightly received several excellent reviews including a very positive endorsement in Christianity Today.

Kent argues that the modern conversation about addiction has largely been shaped by the categories of disease and choice and neither in the end has been very helpful. People as they struggle with addiction rarely feel like they have true freedom of choice. All one has to do is sit through the testimonials at an AA group to know that those who suffer through addiction rarely feel like they were acting "freely" while their lives were dominated by their addiction. To call addiction "choice" just isn't very helpful nor very accurate.

But on the other hand, to place addiciton within the category of disease doesn't fit well either. As Kent points out in his book, when one thinks of disease one usually thinks of medical treatment through various chemical answers. However, in the case of addiciton, "medical treatment" does not have very high success rates. Plus, labeling addiction as a disease removes all of the moral implications tied to people's actions and it does not have an answer for why so many people are able to overcome addiction through non-chemical methods.

What Kent offers as an alternative is the philosophical category of "habit" as articulated by Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas habits (or the habitus) are patterns of life that are so deeply woven into us that they operate in ways that become second nature and thus largely beyond the direct control of free will. However, habits are of such a nature that with the right environment, right circumstances, and most importantly the right set of practices, a different set of habits can be formed within us. So, at the risk of greatly over simplifying 97 pages of extremely careful and articulate philosophical reasoning from Kent, thinking in terms of "habit" explains why we often are not free. (Because we are a slave to our habits). But it also explains how one might have the freedom to be free from addiction. (Through the re-habiting of life).

I do think Kent is right about this. But my favorite part of the book is the second half where Kent argues that addiction is a particularly modern phenomena and that an abundance of addictions happen in a culture that has lost its sense of telos (or purpose). In pre-modern cultures there was, more often than not, a shared conception of a telos, purpose, or vision of the good life to which human life is pointed. If people know what their telos is, then they also are able to name the virtues that help them to achieve that telos and the vices they need to avoid that keep them from getting there. (Think Pilgrim's Progress).

But what if a culture lacks a clear vision of purpose or telos? What if postmoderns, inheriting the destruction of the older visions for life that took place during and after the Enlightenment, now live with the angst that life is going nowhere? What is left for people to do? Doesn't this lack of a shared telos for life create a human crisis of meaning? Kent rightly argues that it does. And then in one of my favorite sections, he writes,

The dominant response of our culture is simply to ignore the crisis by means of distraction. In particular, late modern capitalism provides consumers the opportunity to pursue "value" in the absence of any shared commitment to the good... Thus consumerism is an expression of the wish to be distracted from the frightening prospect that we do not really know what is worthwhile. The pursuit of constant titillation, which is the pulse of consumerism, is the enthronement of the immediate over the teleological... But addiction is addicting rather than merely distracting exactly because it provides the kind of propelling and purposive force that consumerism cannot provide. Consumers buy and sell to distract themselves from a lack of purpose. But addicts find purpose at precisely the moment in which they recognize that, rather than consuming their products of choice, they are instead consumed by those products. Addiction provides what consumers do not believe exists: necessity. Major addiction can therefore be interpreted both as a response to the absence of teleology in modern culture and as a kind of embodied critique of the late capitalist consumerism which this absence produced... For modern persons are not only plagued by the absence of a teleology but also by the belief that a resolution to the crisis is not forthcoming since the only imaginable sources of such a resolution - Aquinas's Faith, Kant's Reason, Hegel's History - are the very things that modernity has called into irremediable doubt. Modern persons, therefore, are not so much despearte as cynical or bored. (p. 112-113).

That last sentence is amazing.

The second half of my copy of the book is all marked up, with "Amen"(s) and "That is so right"(s) written in the margins. Kent's critique of the loss of a teleology not only helps make sense of the rise in addiction, but I think it helps us understand many uniquely modern maladies. We shouldn't be surprised that students cheat so frequently in a culture that has lost the telos of education. We shouldn't be surprised at the sexual ethics of a culture that isn't sure what the purpose of having sexual bodies is supposed to be. And we shouldn't be suprised at the economic ethics of a culture whose only end is acquisition and consumption.

Kent's book isn't a "how to" book on addiction. But if you are looking for a very thoughtful way of not only thinking about a culture of addiction and imagining ways forward (especially as the Body of Christ) this is a powerful and beautiful book.

Thanks, Kent for making your old ethics professor proud.

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight

There is has been a growing angst among evangelical Christians for the last several decades over the question of salvation. The angst takes several different forms. It shows up in questions about whether modern American evangelical Christianity looks more like Paul than like Jesus. It shows up in tense debates over substitutionary atonement in relationship to other understandings of Christ's work on the cross. It shows up in the questions about the goal of salvation. (Is the ultimate goal of salvation to get people to heaven or to redeem the creation)? In the Church of the Nazarene (and other Holiness traditions) the tension shows up in the on-going conversations about the relationship between justification and sanctification.

There are other manifestations of the angst that could be pointed to, but the root issue or question is the same: What is the good news of the Gospel? Or to say it another way: What do Christians mean when they invite people to be "saved"?

There are many books that have tried to address this question. Dallas Willard addresses the question in both The Divine Conspiracy and in The Great Omission. NT Wright has taken on the question in books like Justification, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, and his most recent book Simply Jesus. As I look at my book shelf and the three piles of books on my floor waiting to be read, I count somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty or forty books that are trying to address the question of the Gospel under the assumption that at least part of what American Christianity has been advocating as the good news is at least partly incomplete (if not outright distorted).

A very gifted writer and thinker - Scot McKnight - also takes on this question in his latest book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. Scot may be the king of the theological bloggers and I frequently find his insights helpful. So I'm not surprised that I found his most recent book The King Jesus Gospel very thoughtful and helpful. The book is not very long and is written at a level that most lay people will find accessible. I think it will be a nice book for small groups to wrestle with.

Scot's main concern is that the contemporary church has become what he calls a "salvation culture" rather than a "gospel culture." A salvation culture is fixated on the question "who's in and who's out"? A salvation culture, argues McKight, separates salvation from the gospel.

The key to overcoming this divide, for Scot, is rooting the "plan of salvation" into the larger story of God's redemption in the world. He argues that there are four big categories or themes given in the Scripture. The primary story is the story of God's redemptive work in the people of Israel. The story of Israel not only tells us what is wrong with the world, but it gives us the vision for a renewed creation and the trajectory of God's plan of redemption.

The second big category is the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is embedded within the story of Israel. This is the primary reason why the early church refused to get rid of the Old Testament. But it is clear when one reads each of the four Gospels that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are clearly retelling the story of Jesus within the categories and themes of the story of Israel. Jesus is the completion of the story of what God was doing in Israel and apart from that story the story of Jesus makes little or no sense.

The third big category is the plan of salvation. This is the key idea for Scot. The plan of salvation cannot be removed from its location within the story of Israel and Jesus. When one is "saved" one does not just simply cognitively affirm a few ideas about God and his Son Jesus, one enters into the story of God's redemption and salvation as it is revealed in the stories of Israel and Jesus.

The last big category for Scot is then the method of persuasion or evangelism that flows from those first three categories. If salvation is not simply convincing someone of a few ideas (or a few spiritual laws) but inviting someone to enter into God's redemptive story, then our methods of evangelism must flow from those stories. In particular, I believe this is why a re-affirmation of baptism as a means of receiving salvation is so critical. In baptism the new believer leaves behind their former story, former life of sin, and their former story and enters by faith into God's story, God's new life, and God's redemptive story. 

Scot goes on to demonstrate biblically how the preaching of both Peter and Paul reflect a "gospel culture" and not just a "salvation culture." I particularly appreciated the last sections of the book that address how a church can begin to form and reflect a gospel culture.

If you are looking for a good introduction to many of the important conversations going on regarding salvation today, or are looking for a good small group book for discussion. As always, Scot McKnight gives the church a really nice resource for helping us live into the mission God has given us.

Review of Wright and Borg: The Meaning of Jesus

A few weeks ago I attended the annual combined meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion which was held this year in San Francisco. It was a four or five day conference attended by 10,000+ bilblical and religious scholars. Papers were presented. Thousands of books were on display. Receptions and gatherings took place. It is quite a bit of nerdy fun, but these kinds of conferences can also be quite overwhelming - especially for someone raised in conservative Evangelicalism.

My first trip to the conference - several years ago now - was quite troubling because it was certainly not what I was used to. The purpose of both the SBL and the AAR is to advance the academic scholarship of the Bible and religion (as a discipline) not necessarily to advance the Christian faith. That was what seemed so foreign to me. It felt so odd to spend several days talking about God as an object of our intellectual speculation and not as the subject of our worship. (I remember calling my dad and telling him that the conference was great, but if the Lord returned, I think the conference would carry on). I don't ever want to grow fully accustomed to dealing with faith as an academic pursuit, nevertheless I have grown in my appreciation for what even the most suspicious scholarly work contributes to the conversation of vital Christian faith.

In particular, I've grown a bit in my appreciation of what the so-called "Historical Jesus Movement" has contributed to biblical scholarship and even to evangelical thinking about the Gospels. As Christians read the Bible with any degree of thoughtfulness we recognize that what we find there is the product of both divine and human interaction and synergy. Even the most conservative Christian who is convinced that the Scriptures contain the authoritative "Word of God" recognize that the divine Word is received and then transmitted through human agents.

In the conservative Evangelical church our emphasis tends to be on the divine voice revealed through the Old and New Testaments - and rightly so. We are, as the Body of Christ, most interested in discovering what our Creator and Father has to say to us through the preaching and teaching of the church. Religous and Biblical scholarship on the other hand, tends to focus more on the role particular humans and particular human communities played in the writing and formation of the Scriptures. The interest of current scholarship tends to be on the historical contexts, the political motivations, and the social constructions that were at work in the development of Hebrew and Christian sacred texts.

By the way, both are important. I would argue that when conservative Christians fault it is when we pay no attention to human aspects of history, politics, sociology, religious development, etc. at work in the writing (and interpretation) of the Scriptures. But when scholarship faults (at least from my perspective as a Christian) it is when it only pays attention to the human element and leaves out (or nearly leaves out) the presence, revelation, and work of the divine in the Bible.

The Historical Jesus Movement is and was primarily a scholarly pursuit. The basic premise of the movement is that because the four Gospels contained in the New Testament are products of the early community of Christian faith written to inspire others to have faith in Jesus as the Christ, they are faith histories and not what we would consider today to be "acutal" histories of the person Jesus of Nazareth. (Which by the way is a premise we conservatives would not disagree with). So the pursuit of the Historical Jesus Movement is to try and recover - as much as possible - the actual historical Jesus (what he said, what he did, and what he meant) from the Jesus described by the community of faith. That likely means - for those scholars - that much of what we receive in the Gospels are faith additions, embellishments, and products of the later church placed within the mouth (and actions) of Jesus. (Which is the point where they lose most conservatives).

One of the leading advocates and respresentatives of the Historical Jesus Movement is Marcus Borg - Professor of Religion at Oregon State University. I just finished read the book The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions which is a dialogue between Borg and well-known and much more conservative scholar NT Wright. The book takes eight questions about Jesus - How do we know aobut Jesus? What did Jesus do and teach? Why was Jesus killed? What is the resurrection? Was Jesus God? What do we believe about the birth of Jesus? Is Jesus coming again? And what is the impact of Jesus on the Christian life? - and allows Borg and Wright to each write a response (and some dialogue) on each of those important questions. Borg writes from his "Historical Jesus" standpoint and Wright from his more conservative Orthodox vantage point.

The book is actually quite a fascinating read. Subject by subject they alternate who writes first and it is interesting how civil, thoughtful, and convincing both writers are with one another. I found the book stimulating. It was like getting to go to lunch with both of them and asking them the questions you have always wondered about.

Here are three quick thoughts about the book:

1. Although I really enjoyed the book I don't recommend it for everyone. Not because the book raises some hard issues, but because some people aren't wired in ways that will allow them to fully appreciate it. There are a lot of brothers and sisters in Christ who prefer - or are at a place in their walk with Christ - when they desire or even need indoctrination. They want to know what they should believe and are not ready to wrestle with the challenging perspectives of others. I think at some level it is healthy to have to wrestle with hard questions, but not everyone is ready for that or even wants that. So consider yourself warned.
2. Although I largely don't share Borg's perspective, I am very thankful for the work of the Historical Jesus Movement. I think the basic flaw of the movement is that it is always forced to set up rules ahead of time to try and recover the historical Jesus from the Gospels. When we have to set up rules to help us discover what is historical from what is not, the rules always determine what we are looking for ahead of time. For example, if we begin to look for the "historical" Jesus by determining that miracles were added to the Gospels by the faith community after the life of Jesus and anything that is unique to one particular Gospel and not found in the other three is a later addition, then we don't really know in the end if we discovered the historical Jesus or the non-miraculous, highly repetitive Jesus we were looking for at the beginning. If historians assume Jesus was a politically profound peasant, then that's usually who they discover. As Wright points out in the book, all we have today is the Jesus of faith because that is the only Jesus the Gospels tell us about. Nevertheless, the work historical scholars have done in helping us root Jesus back into the historical, political, and sociological context is invaluable. Too much teaching and preaching decontexutalizes Jesus which easily turns into a form of idolatry on our side of history as we assume the words and actions of Jesus are decontextual and therefore easily translated and recontextualized into the twenty-first century. The truth is, the more we discover Jesus in his historical and social setting the more we are able to discover his radical kingdom message for our day.
3. Even though I sided with Wright's perspective in the debates, I left the book deeply moved by Borg's own personal sense of Christian faith. And there are even parts of Borg's articulation of faith that I found not only informative but significant for my own faith. What I appreciated most about this book is the ability of Borg and Wright to dialogue with Christian civility about their differences. There should be more of what Richard Mouw calls "Convicted Civility" or "Uncommon Decency" that marks our conversations with one another as followers of Jesus (both the one of history and the one of faith). For that alone I am thankful to have read The Meaning of Jesus.

Desiring the Kingdom

It has been fun to teach a couple of sections of Practical Theology this semester. Often in the church we practice faith without a whole lot of theological reflection or we do theological reflection without figuring out what impact that theology has on day-to-day Christian living. So it has been fun to mess with students a little bit and get them to reflect on how good theology gets put into practice.

The class just finished reading together a great book - Desiring the Kingdom: Worshp, Worldview, and Cultural Formation - by James K. A. (Jamie) Smith.

In the book Jamie is concerned about Christian education - really Christian formation - and how that formation takes place in both the academy and the church. He argues that much of education (in both the school and parish) has moved away from the idea of formation to the distribution of information. It is not surprising in that shift that there is often a focus on the development of a "Christian worldview" in students and disciples.

The problem, argues Jamie, is that the rhetoric of a Christian worldview is connected to information and thus becomes centered in thinking differently about the world. Smith believes this tendency to focus on the rational aspects of the gospel radically misunderstands the nature of how we are formed as humans. Although thinking and rationality is an important quality of humanness, Jamie proposes that we are not so much homo sapien (man/woman the thinker) but homo liturgicus (man/woman the worshiper or the desirer). In other words, human action is not oriented toward our thoughts as much as it is oriented toward what we love. Our lives are always pointed or oriented toward our ultimate loves and those loves or desires are formed in us through habits and practices that shape those desires.

"Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it's a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly - who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the primacy of that love. We are made to be such people by our immersion in the material practices of Christian worship - through affective impact, over time, of sights and smell in water and wine" (p. 32-33).

To say that ultimately we are what we love is an incredibly profound idea. But central to the thesis is the idea that our loves or desires are formed through practices and habits - both intentionally and unintentionally. Jamie spends a good deal of time pointing out how most social and cultural practices are not value-neutral but carry within them pictures, ideas, and visions of the good life.

The students' favorite section of the book was when Jamie analyzes what he calls the liturgies of the mall, of nationalism, and of higher education. I think his description of an alien athropologist's analysis of the mall as a place of worship is incredibly profound and worth the price of the book alone. Smith does an amazing job of helping the reader think critically (and apocalyptically) about how our desires are shaped by practices that are very different from the kingdom of God.

I couldn't help as I read the book to think about Kierkegaard's story of the town of ducks that waddle everywhere they go. Each day they waddle to and from the store, the school, places of work, and home. But every Sunday they waddle to the duck church, sit in the duck pews, and hear a sermon from the duck pastor. Each Sabbath the duck preacher proclaims from the duck bible about God's gift of wings. The preacher passionately orates how ducks have been given wings so that they can fly above the earth and see things from a different and untethered perspective. As the sermon about wings flows on the congregation of ducks get blessed and quack their "amens" loudly. But when the sermon is over they simply stand up and waddle home.

The point being that if the church (and the Chrsitian college) tries to do formation through information then congregations and students may give their mental ascent - and might even quack an "amen" - to the ideas about the kingdom of God, but having been formed in their bodies by habits and visions of the good life informed by the market or the nation, they (we) will simply go back to the actions framed by desires formed in the practices of the culture. (We will quack "amen" to the kingdom, but waddle home to the empire).

What is required therefore is a church and academy that recognizes how to create counter-practices that shape in worshipers and students the desire for the kingdom of God.

So my favorite section of the book is Jamie's description of the various practices of worship and how they can become counter-formative in the lives of believers. I especially like his description of what a Christian university should look like. (Although I find it troubling how little local churches and Christian universities actually look like his description).

One of Jamie's gifts is his ability to interact with film, literature, and popular culture. Not only are the frequent illustrations in the book helpful for the reader but they also help form us into people able to exegete the culture and the way that it shapes us toward and away from the desires of the kingdom.

I think this is a book every pastor and Christian college professor or administrator should read. And not just because I am referenced in a footnote on page 91. Although that doesn't hurt.

 

25 Books Every Christian Should Read: St. Athanasius - On the Incarnation

An editorial board from Renovare - led in particular by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard - came up with a list of "25 Books Every Christian Should Read." So I downloaded the list and decided since I would like to be considered part of the "every Christian" group, I should read the 25 books. You can find the list here:

http://bit.ly/jDgXHZ

Thankfully, I have read several of the books on the list. (One would hope a seminary education would be good for something). But I decided to revisit some that I have read in the past with hopefully fresh eyes and a maturing perspective.

So I started with the first one on the list - On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius. I have the edition done by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press which is a wonderful little volume that includes a preface by CS Lewis and a brief history of the life of Athanasius (both well worth reading).

On the Incarnation has both historic as well as theological significance. Athanasius was born around 298 in Egypt. He was raised primarily in Alexandria in a wealthy and educated family. The last - and in some ways the worst - persecution of Christians was by the emperor Diocletian beginning in 303. The persecution in Alexandria was especially severe. Among those martyred were many people that Athanasius knew and from whom he had been taught the faith. The persecution ended in 313 with the Edict of Milan. 

But this period of fear had led many believers to flee to the desert for safety and refuge. It was in the desert that the spirituality that formed monasticism was born. During that time the person many consider the first of the great monastics came into prominence - St. Anthony. Anthony is usually depicted in art with demons tugging and pulling at him in many directions. He lived a solitary life in a ruined fort on the banks of the Nile. Athanasius wrote a biography of Anthony and it is believed that the parents of Athanasius may have sent him to live in the desert for safety during the persecutions in Alexandria. Although Athanasius always admired and envied the life of the hermit, he always felt drawn back into the battles that leadership brought to him. (I identify with him and deeply admire him on that point).

Six years after peace was finally established (319) an Alexandrian presbyter named Arius began to teach about the person of Jesus that "once He was not." In other words, he taught that because Jesus Christ is described as the begotten of the Father, and the first of his creations, there was a time when he did not exist as part of the Godhead. It was this controversial teaching that led to the first ecumenical council in Nicea in 325. Although Athanasius was present at the Council of Nicea, he was at the time only a voteless deacon. Three years later he became the Bishop or Patriarch of Alexandria - a role he fulfilled until his death in 373.

Although what we would think of as traditional Trinitarian theology won the day at Nicea, the conflict with Arianism continued for several decades. The history is quite convoluted, but it is fair to say that the years of leadership for Athanasius were turbulent to say the least. For example, he was exiled and then brought back from exile five times during his time as Bishop of Alexandria. (Can you imagine being voted out of and then back into the same church five times)?

Through the turbulent theological upheaval of the early fourth century Athanasius was committed to what became the orthodox understanding of the incarnation of Jesus. He believed - and perhaps rightly - that the very existence of the Church was at stake. Although he did not write it, later one of the primary articulations of Trinitarian doctrine - the Athanasian Creed - was named in his honor.

CS Lewis writes about him, "His epitaph is Athanasius contra mundum, 'Athanasius against the world.' We are proud that our own country has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, 'whole and undefiled,' when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius - into one of those 'sensible' synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away."

The work On the Incarnation is powerful and well worth wresting with. My copy was already marked up in many places. What struck me as I read it again was Athanasius' commitment to the goodness of creation and God's covenantal determination to restore the creation to what it was intended to be. God, in other words, would not and will not allow humankind's corruption to be the end of the story.

Athanasius proceeds to not just give reasons for the incarnation but also, as best he can given the limitations of language to express the inexpressible, to talk through its theological and philosophical intricacies. But what I always take away from Athanasius is the dual purpose of the incarnation. In the incarnation of Jesus we see two things: we see what the character of God (the character of love) looks like as it walks among us, and we see what - by his grace - humankind was intended to be and can become again. In other words, God became man so he could reveal himself to us and so we could also see what he wants to recreate us to become. "He became like us, so that we could become like him."

One of my favorite illustrations from Athanasius pictures God as a painter:

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost." This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew..." He was not referring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.

There are a few things I'd like to wrestle with Athanasius about. There are issues surrounding the fall of humankind that are extremely challenging for contemporary theologians and I'm not sure Athanasius helps us get through some of the complexities. Also, I think Athanasius overlooks important political aspects of the death of Jesus in the section where he addresses why Jesus died on a cross. His answers are so cosmic and spiritualistic in nature that I'm not sure they help us make sense of what it means for disciples to take up their own cross and follow Jesus. But those critiques are shaped more by my questions in the twenty-first century than by his concerns in the fourth.

Nevertheless, I find that he is enormously relevant for today. I kept wishing that some of the college students I hang out with could grasp from Athanasius the importance of what they do with their bodies. Jesus became like us, so that we could become like him. He did not come to show us how to escape our bodies (which you think a Greek like Athanasius would emphasize) or to make what we do with our bodies irrelevant. Because he became a body, Athanasius believes, Jesus sanctified our bodies. And therefore, we must now glorify God with our bodies, because by entering into the creation, God has redeemed it from its corruption.

This is the good news. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. Thanks, Athanasius. And praise be to God.

The Great Giveaway

I have a new favorite book. This fall I have had my class reading David Fitch's book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. Apart from the distinction of having one of the longest subtitles in history, it is a masterful synthesis and analysis of a number of concerns shared by theologians and scholars such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, George Lindbeck, John Milbank, and many others. Whereas those scholars can often be fairly inaccessible to the average reader, Fitch does a great job of making their constructive critiques of modernity's impact on Christianity more accessible to pastors, students, and lay-people.

The basic thesis of the book is that during modernity, while science under the guise of complete obejectivity was dismantling the older narratives and metanarratives that gave people moral frameworks and existential meaning, the church acquiesced to the modern impulse by giving away much of what made the church the church. Or as Fitch puts it, "The thesis of this book is that evangelicalism has 'given away' being the church in North America. Simply put, evangelical churches have forfeited the practices that constitute being the church either (a) by portioning them off to various concerns exterior to the church or (b) by compromising them so badly that they are no longer recognizable as being functions of the church."

What postmodernity offers the church is a way of recovering its unique existence. Postmodernity (in particular the postmodern critique of individualism and the complete objectivity of science) is not itself the hope. It is certainly possible for postmodernity to lead people to complete relativism and despair. But the postmodern critique of modernity opens the space for traditions of interpretation (like Christianity) to re-enter the conversation of meaning and moral purpose.

It is here where Fitch takes my favorite ethicist - Alasdair MacIntyre - and uses MacIntyre's articulation of "traditions" as socially embodied and historically extended arguments for Truth as the framework through which the existence of the Church as the socially embodied historically extended Body of Christ makes sense.

But for the church to make sense in postmodernity it has to live out its claims in ways that make its truthfulness evident in life and practice and not just in speech. In other words, Fitch believes that postmodernity has offered the church the opportunity it gave away in modernity - the opportunity to once again be the (capital C) Church.

That's the complicated part of the argument. And so if you didn't understand any of that, don't despair. What Fitch does is flesh out that argument using various practices of the church as examples.

He describes the way that the definition of success in the church has been shaped by modern quantitative values such as effectiveness (meaning numbers) and efficiency, rather than qualitative values of faithfulness and Christ-like living.

He exposes the modernist assumptions behind apologetic and "seeker-sensitive" forms of evangelism; opting instead for an evangelism that is dependent upon the community of Christ as not just the bearers of the message of Christ but the embodiment of the message of Christ.

He critiques the use of CEO models of leadership in the church as shaped by modern values and not by the kingdom of God.

In my favorite two chapters he demonstrates how most of what the church does in worship is oriented around an informational view of preaching (rather than a formational one) and an emotive/experiential view of worship (rather than a transformational one). In other words our worship tends to ask if people enjoyed it or learned from it, rather than ask if people were shaped to be like Christ through it?

The most challenging - but also richest - chapters are the final three where Fitch deals with the way the church's work in justice, spiritual formation, and moral education have been co-opted by democratic liberalism, psychotherapy, and capitalism. His critiques in these areas are powerful if we have the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it.

I will likely buy copies for the church staff so that we can walk slowly through it and wrestle with how we as a church can recover the practices necessary for us to be shaped as God's unique people in the world. There is much in this excellent book to take in but the value of this book is for groups of believers to read and wrestle with together. We have given away too much of what it means to be the Body of Christ in the world, with the help of the Spirit perhaps the next volume can be entitled The Great Rediscovery.

 

Get Radical

As I have been preaching through the Gospel of Mark this year I have been reminded repeatedly how often Christians divide the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus from his life and teachings. I hope no one would articulate it this way, but at times I have a feeling that some Christians view the point of Jesus' life as his death on the cross ("he came to die") and his life and teachings were a nice bonus that he gave us on the way to his true purpose.

So it's wonderful to come across a book - written for everyday Christians - that encourages believers to take seriously the full gospel of Jesus. Dr. David Platt is the lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills, a four-thousand-member congregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Cynically one might expect a mega-church pastor to be writing books about self-actualization in order to draw in more Christian consumers. But Platt has written a wonderful and challenging book calling believers to be Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.

Platt wrote the book after realizing that he "was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings." The problem for him was that the Jesus he encountered in the Scripture "actually spurned the things that my church culture said were most important." And so he had to decide whether or not he was going to take Jesus seriously. And he is hoping the reader will wrestle with the same dilemma. As he puts it, "...this is where we need to pause. Because we are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind our materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have... A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are."

The strength of Dr. Platt's book is its accessibility. This is a perfect book for a Sunday school class or a small group to wrestle with. There are two things I especially like in what he does. First, he forces readers to consider if American Christians have merged the "American dream" with the gospel - thus giving into a form of idolatry. As he states, "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God."

Secondly, Platt exposes the way in which all of us tend to think that the hard claims of the gospel are for someone else. The call to "go into the world" with the gospel is not just a call upon those called to be missionaries. It is a call for the entire Church. As a pastor and preacher I especially loved his section on "receivers and reproducers." Platt argues that all believers are called to be reproducers of God's Word in the world but we tend to be receivers. Here is the difference:

Imagine being in Sudan. You walk into a thatched hut with a small group of Sudanese church leaders, and you sit down to teach them God's Word. As soon as you start, you lose eye contact with all of them. No one is looking at you, and you hardly see their eyes the rest of the time. The reason is because they're writing down every word you say, "Teacher, we are going to take everything we have learned from God's Word, translate it into our languages, and teach it to our tribes." They were not listening to receive but to reproduce.

Now journey with me to a contemporary worship service in the United States. Some people have their Bibles open, while others don't have a Bible with them. A few people are taking notes, but for the most part they are passively sitting in the audience. While some are probably disengaged, others are intently focused on what the preacher is saying, listening to God's Word to hear how it applies to their lives. But the reality is, few are listening to reproduce.

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God's word, we still listen from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking, "What can I get out of this?" But as we have seen, this is unbiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God's Word? What if we began to think, "How can I listen to his Word so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?"

This changes everything. All of a sudden the pen and paper come out...

As a pastor and preacher, I loved this! What if the congregation came to understand that they were not there to be receivers but were there to learn what they needed to become reproducers of the gospel in the world? I can't imagine how fun it would be to preach if people believed that they would have to in turn teach this same material to others.

Dr. Platt has a Ph.D from New Orleans Baptist Seminary and my one complaint with the book is likely just a Wesleyan one. Although Platt does a nice job calling Christians to take seriously both the cross and the teachings of Jesus, I don't think he connects them together very well. His description of Christ's work on the cross is entirely substitutional in nature. (On the cross Christ becomes our substitute and bears God's wrath against sin). Although this is an important aspect of the cross, it is not they only work Christ accomplishes there. The cross is also Christ's victory over sin and death and it is the very way of the kingdom. Let me give you three examples of how this narrow view of the cross hurts the book.

First, although Platt does an amazing job of taking seriously some of the hard claims of Christ's teaching, he ignores the one that I think is central to the gospel - "If any want to become my disciple, they must take up their cross daily and follow me." This is the central claim of discipleship but it's essentially ignored in the book. If the cross is only the means by which Jesus took on God's wrath, then I'm not sure what it would mean for a disciple to take it up. But if the cross is the way of the kingdom and the central means by which Christ overcomes evil with good, then the disciple's cross makes sense.

Second, although he mentions the kingdom of God in several places it is usually associated with heaven or the life to come. The more I wrestle with the four Gospels in the New Testament, the more I am convinced that the primary message is that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." I think Platt leans a little too far toward associating the good news with going to heaven when we die. The good news is not that we go to heaven, the good news is that heaven has come here (and we can live in it now and for eternity). For example, when Platt talks about the death of Stephen he is primarily described as an example of how the blood of martyrs (ancient and contemporary) is seed for the Church. But I think it is equally important to recognize that when he dies that Stephen sees "the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father." That is kingdom language. Stephen lives as a member of the kingdom now and therefore he can pray a prayer of forgiveness upon those killing him because they don't (or won't) see that the kingdom of God is already at hand.

Third, I wish he took more seriously the redemption of creation. He has a very interesting reading of Romans that rightly calls all believers to be instruments of the gospel in the world. But I think he ends before getting to the "groaning of all creation" as it waits for redemption. Platt rightly calls people to enter into places of poverty and brokenness in the world, but more often than not he thinks we should do that because Jesus calls us to be compassionate and because we need to help the lost get to heaven. I just think Platt would be better served with a more robust understanding of the presence of the kingdom and God's desire to redeem all of creation. The result would be the same. Believers would be going to every corner of creation. But we would go not just to obey a command or to get people to heaven, but we would go because God's kingdom has claimed every inch of the creation and where God's kingdom is, his justice and righteousness must be also.

I think these issues are more than just nit-picking. (It's not a good thing that the resurrection is only mentioned twice). But I don't think any of these critiques invalidate how helpful this book would be for groups of Christians to wrestle with.

The best, and most unique, part of Platt's book are his five suggestions at the end of the book for believers to dare to live out. I won't tell you what the five are, because I think you ought to buy the book and read it. There are other books out there that call Christians to live out the radical claims of discipleship, but most of them end in somewhat idealistic and impractical places. I really appreciated Dr. Platt's suggestions for believers who want to take first steps toward radical discipleship and I think you will appreciate them also.

If you are looking for a wonderful book that will create some exciting, lively, and important discussion in your Sunday school class or small group, get Radical.