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Monthly Archives for February 2008

Webber: The Divine Embrace 7: What now?

Part three of The Divine Embrace is entitled “The Challenge: Returning Spirituality to the Divine Embrace,” which is an excellent encapsulation of Webber’s point: we don’t need to find anything new, we simply need to recapture the church’s original understanding of spirituality, rooted in God’s Story, in God’s Divine Embrace of us and the rest of creation. Crucial to this understanding is the concept of the Incarnation, of God fully embracing humanity. This is a 180-degree turn from much of the evangelical church today. Webber states

… Christian spirituality is not an escape from this world, rather it is the discovery and the experience of spiritual purpose in this world.

This morning I was reading a magazine devoted to church planting issues, and as is typical, the issue of being missional was addressed. As I read the discussion, it occurred to me that the reason that the issue of missional is such a hot topic today is that much of the evangelical and emerging church does not have a clear understanding of God’s story. If our lives are merely focused on “getting saved,” getting others saved, and getting to Heaven, we’re missing the big picture. This is something that the liturgical, confessional traditions have not forgotten. As Richard commented the other day, the liturgy is “the enactment of the story of God, of creation, incarnation, and re-creation, and of the reality of God’s kingdom, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” This is also what we, the Church, are all about.

Spirituality, or our mission, is to reenact God’s story of creation, incarnation and re-creation. This is “what the Father’s doing” as it’s put in the gospel of John; it is rooted firmly in our understanding of God’s incarnational embrace of us. This is God’s story.

The Bible presents 3 clear types or images that demonstrate God’s story:

  1. creation & re-creation: Jesus makes all things new
  2. 1st Adam & 2nd Adam: Jesus, God incarnate, did what we could not do
  3. exodus event & the Christ event: “The ultimate restoration of the whole world is pictured in the Exodus event.”

God’s incarnational embrace recapitulates the human condition; He is re-creating us, and will re-create his creation. He is making all things new.

As we can see, the central concept of the Incarnation, of God fully embracing humanity, without any implication that the physical is in any way less holy than the “spiritual,” is essential to understanding not only God’s story, but our story.

So how do we respond? In Acts 2, Peter preaches 1) repent, 2) be baptized and 3) receive the Holy Spirit. Setting aside the common transactional interpretation, both repentance and baptism reflect a rejection of an identity with the world, and an ongoing identification with the story and purposes of God. Receiving the Holy Spirit, as we know, is the seal, or guarantee, of that identity. As opposed to a typical evangelical understanding, even our repentance – our identifying with God and his purposes – is a response to God’s embrace. Baptism, then, also is not a testimony of our action, but a testimony of the Incarnation, of God’s embrace.

This, then, is our part of the story. God embraces his creation (us), and we respond daily, continuously to that embrace. In this ancient (pre-modern) understanding of the Gospel, the focus is not on us, but on God. If you have been raised with a modern Evangelical worldview, you can perhaps see that this way of thinking changes everything. As Webber states,

… the baptized life has a mission in the world. It is not life-denying or life-escaping. Rather, living the baptized life is a participation in God’s vision within the life of the world.

Written on 29 February 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with No Comments

Bourne again?

I heard yesterday that they are planning a 4th Bourne movie. The article I read questioned what they’d do, since Robert Ludlum only wrote 3 Bourne novels. However, if that author had ever read any of the novels, they’d have known that that wouldn’t matter, as the 2nd and 3rd movies had nothing whatsoever to do with the books.

I never could figure out why they used the book titles for the movies – even rereleasing the books with new covers that said “soon to be a motion picure!” – when they completely ignored the book plots. In fact, they managed to kill off 2 of the main characters of the latter 2 books in the first movie, and Bourne’s arch enemy, Carlos, the Jackal, never appears at all.  They could have come up with new, unrelated titles, like Bourne to be Wild, or something. How about a little creativity?

Now, I really enjoyed the first movie, and thought the 2nd movie wasn’t too bad, either. It was after seeing both movies that I decided to read the 3rd book (thinking, stupidly, that they had at least stuck to the same general plot).  I then went back and read the 1st two books.  Ludlum isn’t my favorite author, by a long shot, but he did create some very interesting characters, and very tight, extremely complicated plots. It’s too bad that the movies ignored them.

The changes that they made in The Bourne Identity, such as the different items in Bourne’s safe deposit box, were good. However, killing off Alex Conklin (who becomes Bourne’s best friend in the later books) was stupid. The major change in Bourne’s real identity and the nature of his original mission (which really comes to play in the 3rd movie) really bugged me. And, killing off Marie in the 2nd movie was, in my opinion, a major mistake.

I had heard from a number of people that The Bourne Ultimatum, the 3rd move, was the best of them all. However, I was very disappointed in that it didn’t really have a new plot… it was just a continuation of the same un-plot. And, what they revealed about Bourne’s past, as I mentioned, was a 180 from his character in the book. I just didn’t think it was good.

A 4th Bourne movie could now at least borrow parts of the plots of the original books, since they haven’t been used yet. Or, they could use a plot (or at least a title) from one of the 2 (soon to be 3) Bourne novels written by Eric Van Lustbader, which as books go, are pretty lousy.  Lustbader is a hack, who took a decent character, and stripped him of everything that made him interesting. First, he didn’t know how to deal with Marie (Bourne’s wife in the 3 original books) so he ignored her in one book, while he killed off 2 other main characters that he didn’t know how to deal with. Then, he simply kills off Marie. Overall, everyting that made Jason Bourne a good, complicated character is gone. They are a couple of the more underwhelming action novels I’ve read, and I will resist the temptation to read the next one when it comes out.

So, we’ll see what is next for Jason Bourne. Maybe he’ll find out that Marie isn’t dead after all. Or, perhaps he’ll finally find the Jackal. Let’s hope he at least finds a plot. That would be a really nice surprise.

 

 

Written on 28 February 2008 by me under Reviews with No Comments

Webber: The Divine Embrace 6 – Modern to Postmodern

In the opening paragraph to Chapter 4 of Robert Webber’s book, The Divine Embrace, Webber writes:

Spirituality has become situated in the narrative of the self. In this privatized spirituality evangelicals look to themselves for the confirmation of their spiritual condition. The self-focused spiritualities of the twentieth century have not emerged willy-nilly but are deeply rooted in the historical movements that separated spirituality from the vision of God… The problem of these dislocated spiritualities has been compounded by the current antihistorical, narcissistic, and pragmatic nature of evangelical Christianity.

In the 20th Century, three main forms of spirituality developed: legalism, intellectualism, and experientialism. The early century saw the rise of fundamentalism, which developed a legalistic mentality, a spirituality based on what a person does not do. These lists of don’ts is what separated one group from another, creating and us/them mentality. A doctrinal legalism also was developed, as fundamentalist groups defined their theology, adding extra, more defined articles of faith that one had to believe to be “orthodox.” For example, it was not good enough for the Bible to be inspired, you had to believe it was “inerrant.” As Webber states, legalism undermines the Gospel, and actually makes grace the enemy.

An intellectual spirituality also began to develop, grown out of a rationalistic, modern world-view. Spirituality became proof-oriented, a fact to be believed and argued. From this intellectual spirituality we saw the rise in apologetics. For liberals, who saw many of the Biblical stories as not fact-based or provable, they became myths whose purpose was to instruct about morality.

Then, romanticism and existentialism gave way to experientialism, where feeling God became another way of knowing God. Wesley’s experience, Webber posits, was universalized into the “defining mark of spirituality” and “feeling forgiven” became the goal of evangelism. Experientialism “elevates experience as the apologetic for faith.” Webber also suggests that the requirement to have a “personal relationship with Jesus” has led to a works-based mentality and an individualistic understanding to Christianity.

The later 20th century, with the cultural revolution of the 60′s, saw the development of antinomianism and narcissism, especially in worship, which also incorporated romanticism. Worship became about an emotional relationship which has to make us feel good in order to be true. With the influence of the “New Age” religions, it’s sometimes hard to tell Christianity from mysticism.

Another impact upon the church was the secular field of psychology; the thoughts of Freud, Carl Jung, and others led to the belief that we could be “healed” through self-discovery. The impact of this thinking on the contemporary church is obvious as we walk through any Christian bookstore, and see shelf after shelf of counseling and self-help books. Introspection and focus on the self has replaced meditation on the nature of God.

Finally, of course, we have the post-modern influence, which has rejected the Modernist concept of absolute truth. This is a rejection of the secular culture as well as the evangelical culture, both of which are rooted in modernism. For post-moderns, even experience is not prescriptive. Your story is not my story. I might be a Christian and believe that Jesus died for my sins, but it’s not necessarily right for everyone. Individualism is at an all time high. The “emerging” church seems to question everything, but accept eveything. Evangelical apologetics is essentially useless.

As I consider the many current forms of Christianity – most of them distinguished not by theology, but by the extra-Christian influences that they have adopted – it makes absolute sense that the result is post-modernism, or emergentism. As they say, something had to give. It seems that this cognitive dissonance of the modern church resulted in the letting go of truth (or what passed for it).

The answer to this mess, Webber believes, is that first the church must rediscover God’s story. It is here, that we go next.

Written on 25 February 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with 1 Comment

In Memory: Larry Norman, 4/8/47 – 2/24/08

Larry Norman
Larry Norman in Concert, December 15, 2006 (photo by me)

I just heard that Larry Norman passed away yesterday morning at his home in Salem, Oregon of heart failure. He was 60 years old.

I wrote about Larry a little over a year ago, after I saw him in concert (where the photo was taken). He was very appreciative of the review, and posted a nice comment. Rather than blather any more now, I’ll just send you back to that earlier post.

Here’s a video of Larry doing one of my favorites, recorded in 2000:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQKwIUErNc]

Written on 25 February 2008 by me under Random Thoughts with 3 Comments

Lutheran worship

Today I had the “day off” from teaching my Sunday School class, and decided that I’d visit our local Lutheran Church (an ELCA church). This was my first visit to a Lutheran church since the the branch I grew up in (LCA) merged with the more “liberal” branches of the church, and probably my first such visit in over 20 years (I think the last time was for a funeral). But, as I’ve been reconnecting with Lutheran theology over the past year, I thought it was time to actually experience a Lutheran worship service.

My first impression was that I perhaps had picked the wrong church to visit. I was a few minutes early, and the place was near empty. Rather than the organ music I was used to, there was a very sad little combo playing off to the side, with a drummer who really shouldn’t be a drummer. When the service began, there were perhaps 50 people there, with an average age of at least 70. I saw one child, and 3 other people who may have been in their 20′s. The Pastors were gone (a married couple), off to their daughter’s wedding. A woman pastor from a church downtown had come to fill in. And, rather than use the liturgy in the official hymnal, they were using parts of something called the “Bonnie Drewes Liturgy” with a couple of additional modifications. The “Confession of Sins” had us confessing that we hadn’t fed the poor and were not environmentally responsible. But, I decided to be patient and see what developed.

I was glad that I stayed.

The first part of the liturgy was focused on the reading of Scripture. It was read from “The Message,” and included selections from the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Epistles. After the sermon, there was more liturgy, including the collective recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Now, many probably will not understand this, but I couldn’t wait to say the Apostles’ Creed with these people; I was actually afraid they were going to skip it (I had a hard time following the schedule in the bulletin and things were out of order from what I remember from the old days). But, I should have known better – Lutherans would never skip the Apostles’ Creed.

It was the sermon, however, that had the biggest impact. It was a tremendous sermon; typical to Lutherans, it was about 10-15 minutes long, but she said more than most pastors get across in their self-indulgent 45-minute discourses. She spoke simply of the heart of Lutheran Worship, that no matter who we are outside of church, whether we are friends or enemies, we are sinners who need the saving grace of God. She spoke of baptism, and why the baptismal font is prominently displayed, to constantly remind us of the living water which washes us. And, she spoke of communion, that brings us all to the cross to receive forgiveness and grace.

It was then that I knew that I could take communion with these people. Now, I don’t take communion in the church I attend, because what they believe about it makes it either an empty act or an act of superstition. However, I understand what Lutherans believe, and the Pastor reminded me that in church we are all equal in our need for grace. Communion, you see, isn’t about the unity of our beliefs or lifestyles (there was at least one lesbian couple there); it’s about the unity we have as sinners who have been equally forgiven.

I understand Lutheran worship now, more than I ever did growing up. It probably helps that I understand what is so lacking in much of evangelical theology and worship; coming back, I see the depth in the apparent simplicity. It’s not empty ritual, it is the enactment of the story of God, of creation, incarnation, and re-creation, and of the reality of God’s kingdom, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

I need to do this more often.

Written on 24 February 2008 by me under Church with 8 Comments

Webber: The Divine Embrace 5 – Putting it together

Lately I’ve been writing about Robert Webber’s final book, The Divine Embrace, which has been really helpful in putting together the thoughts that I’ve already been having about the state of American Evangelicalism. It’s really been a breath of fresh air, and has allowed me to finally shake off some of the unhelpful evangelical baggage that I’ve carried around. I’m sometimes tempted to feel that I’ve wasted a lot of time trapped in evangelicalism, but I am quick to remind myself that I am merely continuing my “walk around the elephant” that is God. I am now finding myself full circle, as it were, older, wiser, and more solidly appreciative of my Lutheran roots. My adventures in evangelicalism have given me a perspective that few have, and I am appreciative of that perspective.

Granted, there are areas of evangelicalism that I have never dallied in. As I surf the theological weblogs, I am encountering many mindsets and belief systems that I am glad I haven’t been a part of. I have tasted, perhaps, the better portion of evangelical thought; I am finding that there are areas of the elephant that one shouldn’t dawdle around. Of late, I have been reading and to some extent participating in a theology blog entitled Parchment and Pen, which began discussing “who is emerging?” and drifted into discussions trying to determine who is or isn’t orthodox. A few minutes there should be enough to see why Webber’s analysis is so important.

Throughout the first few chapters of the book, Webber traces the history of the church and how various heresies and philosophies impacted the church’s concept of spirituality (and theology). Before I talk about the next chapter dealing with the Modern period (1900-2000), it would seem that a brief recap would be in order.

It is Webber’s premise that for the early church, spirituality was not separate from theology, which was focused on God’s business of creation, incarnation and re-creation. First, the early heresies:

  • Gnosticism – taught a dualistic deity, a “good god” and a “bad god,” as well as a dualistic view that the physical was bad, and the spiritual was good. Through esoteric knowledge, the human spirit could be set free from the confines of the physical.
  • Arianism – denied the incarnation of Jesus, saying that Jesus was not equal to God, but was created). As I understand it, this grew from a dualistic belief that God could not have become a physical man.
  • Pelagianism – a 4th Century heresy, teaching that man through his own will could live a sinless life, or add to his spiritual achievements by doing good works. Augustine refuted this by saying that man’s free will only leads him to sin.

Non-Christian philosophies which have impacted the church include:

  • Platonic Dualism – saw the material world as separate and inferior to the spiritual world. God moved from subject (who reached out to man) to object (someone for us to reach out to).
  • Mysticism – in the late medieval period, the focus of contemplation moved from the purposes of God to man’s experience. Spirituality became separated from theology and became a “discipline.”
  • Rationalism – borrowing from Descartes, human reason became authoritative. Thinking became based on the separation from subject (“I”) and object (“it”); in other words, everything was studied “objectively.” Knowledge became preoccupied with facts, considered value-free. Anything not “objective” – such as religion – became opinion, rather than fact. As a result, theology also became rationalistic, leading to apologetics and systematic theologies. Spirituality became “right belief.” Sanctification was separated from justification and became works-oriented.
  • Romanticism – a rejection of rationalism, romanticism called for an intuitive, inner experience and sought for a more holistic, organic approach to spirituality. Knowing was through the imagination, the senses and the human will. Pietism and revivalism focused on personal experience and a human-willed conversion and “holiness.” The focus on God’s will and Christ’s experience became replaced with a focus on man’s will and experience. Spirituality originated with the self.

Now that we see the evolution of Christian thought (due to the influence of these secular philosophies) from an emphasis on God’s work to an emphasis on our work combined with a complete split of mind and emotion, the church of the 20th and 21st Centuries begins to make a bit more sense. However, explaining it does not justify it.

Next, from Modern to Emerging.

Written on 18 February 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with 2 Comments

“Frankly, my dear …”

“Frankly speaking, these are just fancy words we use to name something we do not understand.” Christian Boehmer, quoted on MSNBC, discussing dark matter and dark energy.

I haven’t spent much time at all studying dark matter and dark energy (who has time to be an expert on everything?), but I do find the concepts interesting, and mildly amusing. The MSNBC article discusses a new model, where DM and DE are actually the same – a Dark Fluid. I guess it makes sense that if matter and energy are in a sense equal, that so it “the dark side.”

I completely understand the need to create models – which we know are inadequate and inaccurate – to try to understand the unknown, as I have recently discussed. So, I appreciate it when cosmologists admit that possibly 95% of the universe is made up of something which no one as yet understands (although the common person tends to believe that if scientists talk about dark energy, it must exist). It is this parenthetical remark that I find somewhat problematic.

In a world where many people still in effect worship science – that is, take imperfect scientific models to be “fact” in a more concrete sense than do scientists – the use of imaginary particles & energies as well as relying on imaginary numbers for scientific theories has the effect of creating the near equivalent of Athen’s “unknown god” (Acts 17:23). The Athenians had, in essence, created their own “model” to fill in the “gaps” in their understanding. (Now, certainly I am approaching everything here from a theological/philosophical POV, including Dark Whatever. I am obviously not speaking scientifically.)

Paul, as we know, responded to this idol to an unknown god by saying, “Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.” He wasn’t, of course, speaking specifically about whatever they may have believed about this particular god, but more to the fact that they had admitted a gap in their knowledge. As they didn’t know about the Christian vier of God, this was something unknown to them, and so an appropriate connection was made.

Much has been bantered about by those holding to a materialist worldview about the “God of the gaps,” always derogatorily. This is not to say that they have no unknowns, but rather that they filter the possibilities for what might exist as an unknown. This, now, is not a scientific opinion, but a philosophical one. It’s like saying, “I’m not sure what color the sky really is, but I know it’s not blue, because I don’t believe that the color blue exists.”

For the Christian, however, it is perfectly appropriate to speak theologically and philosophically and proclaim the God which is unknown to materialistic science, the “God of the gaps.” However, I believe that materialists are correct in that such a proclamation is not appropriate as science, but not for the same reason. It is inappropriate, because to attempt to fit God into a scientific box is to fall into the philosophical error of thinking that God needs to be argued, explained, or proved. Absurd. As I’ve indicated in the past, materialism is a defective, inadequate philosophy, and science is limited in what it can address. The truth of the God of the gaps merely needs to be proclaimed and lived.

Is it legitimate to say, then, that the unknown force/substance which holds the universe together and keeps universes spinning faster than science says they should is the same God who created the universe in the first place? Absolutely, in the same way we can say that that the universe we do see is clear evidence of God. Is it science? No… but frankly, my dear…

Written on 11 February 2008 by me under Faith, Science & Doubt with 9 Comments

Imagine, “Christians” wrong about Heaven?

Time Magazine online jumped into eschatological waters yesterday with an interview with N.T. Wright concerning his latest book, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. An introduction to the interview states:

N.T. “Tom” Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought … and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.

It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn’t believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term.

In Bishop Wright suggesting that John Lennon was on to something when he wrote, “Imagine there’s no Heaven?” Well, not really. But, perhaps – if you believe the Dante version of Heaven. Wright explains what he means in his phone interview with Time writer David Van Biema, which actually is one of the better “Christian” interviews I’ve seen in the secular press, although the headline - Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop – is a bit melodramatic.

As my faithful readers know, NT Wright is one of my favorite theologians (definitely my favorite contemporary theologian), for a number of reasons. He is not an American Evangelical, for one thing (he’s Anglican), which is very refreshing. He is also an historian, he understands modern and postmodern philosophy, and he writes very plainly without being condescending or “popish.” He also makes a ton of sense, and is pretty consistent with traditional theology, although he does occasionally present some new approaches to understanding the New Testament.

It has been interesting that the Evangelical community has embraced him to the extent that it has; it seems to indicate that Evangelicals don’t understand their own theological positions. Unless it comes down to a “pet issue” like predestination or in this case, eschatology, they don’t seem to realize that Wright – as well as traditional, historic theology – undermines a lot of contemporary Evangelical thinking. He’s become quite a favorite with many of the “Emerging” folks such as McLaren, who try to appropriate his ideas but just muck them up as they try to incorporate in their emergent-evangelical theological stew.

I first heard about Wright’s newest book, which was just released this month, on the Jesus Creed website. Scot McNight has been providing a chapter-by-chapter peek at the book, which seems to be a perfect follow up to Evil and the Justice of God, which I have mentioned before. In Surprised…, Wright has chapters dealing with the meaning of the Cross, the Resurrection and the Atonement, but it seems it his thoughts about Heaven which have some people in a tither. Per Wright, it’s because all of that “Left Behind” thinking is wrong.

Wright seems to have this old-fashioned idea that what we believe impacts how we live. The Publisher’s blurb about the book states, “Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death.” In the interview, Wright states:

If there’s going to be an Armageddon, and we’ll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn’t matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

This, of course, is not proof of Wright’s point of view, but it is reason enough to work through what the Bible really teaches about the future. If Wright is right, the truth about Heaven could change how we want to live today.

One more book for my reading list…

Written on 08 February 2008 by me under My Own Personal Religion, Theological Musings with 4 Comments

Mission? What mission?

Here’s what I can’t figure out: How in the world did Saint Patrick evangelize all of those Druid priests and clan chieftains without a mission statement? After all, history and tradition tell us that he walked around preaching and performed an occasional miracle. But how did he know what his mission was?  Aaron D. Wolf, The Mission of Souls: When Experts Attack

Thanks to Ben at The Wittenberg Trail for pointing to the above article by Aaron Wolf at the Chronicles site. Mr. Wolf raises some interesting questions and challenges to modern Evangelical concepts of evangelization and mission, contrasting the wisdom of being “pupose driven” to the pre-marketing (pre-modern) habit of simply proclaiming the Gospel.

Wow. What a concept.

Written on 07 February 2008 by me under Church, Reviews with 2 Comments

Well okay then…

Super Tuesday is nearly over (some final counts not in yet), and one thing appears certain: our choices for President this year are a liberal, or a liberal.

Obama is in a slight lead over Hillary, which is the good news. McCain has enough of a lead to make victory for anyone else nearly impossible.  Depending on what you look at, you can argue that there’s little difference between Obama and Clinton, or that there’s little difference between Clinton and McCain.

Here are my thoughts for the rest of the race:

  1. McCain is calling for Republican party unity. Well, then, I first suggest that he actually become a Republican.
  2. Obama needs to stay on the high road, and give Hillary (who historically takes the below the belt road) enough rope to hang herself.
  3. Who I end up voting for may hinge on who the VP candidates are.
  4. This would a good year for an independent to join the fray, and really mix things up. Only an independent could really make the major party candidates deal with issues.
  5. The problem is, I don’t know of any potential 3rd party candidate with any real chance. Obama won’t break ranks, and I doubt Hillary would (though you never can tell about the Clintons… they’re only real loyalty appears to be to themselves).  Lieberman, where are you?
  6. 4 years of true liberalism (even Bill Clinton wasn’t a true liberal) and high stinkin’ taxes may be enough time to mess things up enough to cause some new voices to raise up, or at least give conservatives legislative control once again.
  7. Hang on, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. (i.e. grab your tax rebates while you can get them.)
Written on 06 February 2008 by me under Politics/Current Events with 2 Comments