Skip to content

Category Archives for Webber

Idiotic Evangelicals (and some who aren’t)

The other day I was reading something online about the Manhattan Declaration, and saw a comment stating that many evangelicals are hesitant to sign the document because it has been endorsed by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic leaders, and so they were concerned about the loss of the Gospel.

Idiots.   They haven’t stopped to consider that if it weren’t for the Orthodox and RCC churches, they’d have no gospel.  For example, fundamentalists (perhaps the most idiotic of the evangelicals) rely heavily on Augustinian concepts (that’s where Calvin got most of his stuff).  And, of course, the concept of the Trinity, our understanding of the dual nature of Jesus and the Biblical Canon all comes from the early Orthodox Church (before the RCC was the RCC).

In fact, many from liturgical churches question whether evangelicals really have the Gospel, or if they’re championing some “other gospel” (a la Galatians 1:8).  But, that’s a topic for another time.

In 1977, a group led by Robert E. Webber drafted a statement known as “The Chicago Call,” which pointed out some of the idiocies of popular evangelicalism.  This movement led to the formation of groups such as the Charismatic Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Orthodox Church (now a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Church), and to other movements within evangelicalism.  Eventually, another document, known simply as “The Call,” (I believe the long name is, “The Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future”) was developed.  Someday I plan to review both of these documents.

The Prologue to Chicago Call states:

In every age the Holy Spirit calls the church to examine its faithfulness to God’s revelation in Scripture. We recognize with gratitude God’s blessing through the evangelical resurgence in the church. Yet at such a time of growth we need to be especially sensitive to our weaknesses. We believe that today evangelicals are hindered from achieving full maturity by a reduction of the historic faith. There is, therefore, a pressing need to reflect upon the substance of the biblical and historic faith and to recover the fullness of this heritage. Without presuming to address all our needs, we have identified eight of the themes to which we as evangelical Christians must give careful theological consideration.

My favorite passage is in the following paragraph, in a section entitled, A Call to Historic Roots and Continuity:

We confess that we have often lost the fullness of our Christian heritage, too readily assuming that the Scriptures and the Spirit make us independent of the past. In so doing, we have become theologically shallow, spiritually weak, blind to the work of God in others and married to our cultures.

When I first read this in the early 80′s, it captivated me – and it still does.  It helped a great deal to keep me from becoming one of the Idiots (although I can tell myself that I am too smart to have ever become one).

I have tried to find a version of The Chicago Call online, but apparently it has been removed from it’s old site, and no one else to my knowledge has posted it.  So, I have decided to post the text on Smallvoices.net where it will remain as long as I keep paying the bills.

Enjoy.

Written on 30 November 2009 by me under Church, Exploring the Twain, The Call, Uncategorized, Webber with 1 Comment
Tagged with , , , , , ,

Do evangelicals really need a Manifesto?

I just read a post about the apparent failure of “The Evangelical Manifesto,” something I didn’t even know existed.  I guess that would support the idea that it failed.  I skimmed through the post and the Manifesto, and was left thinking, “why in the world do they think they need one?”

Everyone seems to need to define themselves, and these evangelicals are no exception.  This is not a confessional document, although it does make a poor attempt at this.  It doesn’t deal with any specific error.  Rather, it seems merely to attempt to define what makes one an evangelical, or perhaps more accurately, to define what is not an evangelical.  I still wonder why this is needed.

The document, which is needlessly wordy (obviously written by men who are used to taking 45 minutes to deliver a sermon that could have taken 10), identifies three evangelical mandates, the first of which is to reaffirm the evangelical identity:

Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (Evangelical comes from the Greek word for good news, or gospel.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God’s good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are “not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.” Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.

I wonder who they think they are leaving out?   The Manifestites, as the document explains, believes that “right belief and right worship” was restored at the reformation.  They are, therefore, excluding the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics from their definition; they also exclude fundamentalists, liberals and by inference, much of the “emerging” movement.  They claim to want to be defined theologically rather than culturally, however they do not seem to be able to so.

The problem, in my opinion, is that are trying to define a generic term in a specific way.  Martin Luther was the first to use the term to identify himself, but most contemporary evangelicals would not accept his broad definition (Lutherans aren’t usually considered protestant enough for these folks).  The Manifestites claim “Amazing Grace” as their own, which means that they accept some Anglicans as evangelical.  But then again, those they would define as liberal or fundamentalist are out.  Their intent to be restrictive is even clearer in their claim to be “the narrow way.”

Without dealing with the whole 20-page document, here are a few of my thoughts:

  1. There is a sense in the document that contemporary evangelicalism is dead or dying, and this is a last-ditch effort to preserve an ideology.
  2. They cherry-pick historic church teaching by claiming a commitment to “the central axioms of Christian faith expressed in the Trinitarian and Christological consensus of the early church” while disdaining the context in which these arose.
  3. They confess a litany of failures, and “call humbly but clearly for a restoration of the Evangelical reforming principle,” without having really defined it.
  4. They do claim not to represent all evangelicals, just themselves.  In that case, it would seem somewhat arrogant to try to define evangelicalism for everyone; perhaps they should come up with some new term, like the “emergents” did.
  5. The document is incredibly wordy, lacking specificity.

Overall, it seems like this manifesto is a shot in the dark, and looking back it seems to have missed anything worth shooting at; again, I have a sense that this was written with a sense of desperation as Western Christianity becomes more and more post-evangelical.

I remain much more impressed by The Call, a 2006 document spearheaded by the late Robert Webber, which calls the evangelical church back to more historical faith and practice.

Written on 22 September 2009 by me under Church, The Call, Webber with 5 Comments
Tagged with , , , , , ,

Webber: The Divine Embrace 9: What now?

The final chapter in Webber’s The Divine Embrace is entitled Life Together, which is, of course, where all this ends, in church. One of my repeated critiques of a contemporary church experience is that it is essentially existential, focusing on the self. Webber agrees, saying that the problem is that spirituality itself is taught as generating from the self: “It is a view that seems to permeate the evangelical culture.”

Webber proposes that when spirituality is situated in God’s embrace, church and worship then reveals that to us. We are no longer cheerleaders (my term) that have to conjur up some sense of worship and spirituality, but are rather participants who have God revealed to us as we respond to his embrace. 

Webber criticizes the modern business model of the church, which has created, as you’d expect, a consumerist mentality. This has followed a natural progression, with churches focusing on what the unchurched want, and making the church culturally relevant. As a result, many churches merely reflect not only the look, but the “narrative of culture.” Churches offer programs to meet the needs and desires of the congregation, as opposed to nurturing new converts and discipling them.

This chapter also discusses what Webber calls the crisis of worship. As I have mentioned before, contemporary worship sees God as the object God who needs to be worshipped by us, which originates worship in the self. Webber believes that a Biblical and historical view of worship is that “worship does God’s story.” Worshp proclaims God and what he is doing, and in worship we enact the story. A worship that is nourishing focuses on historical events (not emotions), uses Biblical language, and includes prayer that discloses and echoes God’s story.

Since I’ve started reading this book, I have paid even closer attention to what kind of worship happens in the churches I attend, and I think Webber is correct. The further and further we have “progressed” into evengelicalism, our worship songs have become more and more meaningless, offering little if anything of the truth of the Gospel. Even in my own Vineyard culture, the contemporary worship songs have become less and less doctrinal. No longer is the Trinity mentioned (in fact, often the Persons are confused). In fact, it’s rare to find Biblical language used that hasn’t been edited and lost among less meaningful phrases.

What now?  As I’ve probably mentioned in the past, I really don’t have a great deal of hope that the Evangelical church will stop the nonsense and realign itself with a Biblical concept of spirituality. I also don’t have hope for the emerging church, which to me is simply modernism will the lid off.  That’s not to say I haven’t lost  faith in God’s church, or his ability to pull it together.

As for what I do, I’m not sure. Next Sunday is Easter, and at the moment, I’m looking for a good church that remembers what it’s like to celebrate a resurrection. Then, I’ll go to our church with my family.

 

Written on 20 March 2008 by me under Church, My Own Personal Religion, Reviews, Webber with 7 Comments

Webber: The Divine Embrace 8: Everything must change

Some of you might recognize Everything must change as the title to a rather poor book by Brian McLaren which I reviewed some time back. While McLaren – in my opinion – failed miserably in laying out a case for why everything must change, I think Webber does just that quite well in The Divine Embrace, although he doesn’t use those words.  I am surprised, though, that evangelicals could read and say they agreed with what Webber says, but then go merrily on their way.

This post, by the way, is the 8th article in my Webber series that is discussing the book. These next 2 chapters are entitled My life in his and His life in mind. In My Life in His, he states:

The Christian life does not oppose experience of the transcendant, but the Christian spiritual life is not an experience out of this world, it is an experience of transcendant meaning here and now in this world.

This is a key, I think, in distinguishing between the spirituality of the past and that of the present. We tend to think of transcendant experience in a Platonic sense, where we leave the physical (the secular) and reach the spiritual (the sacred). However, this is to deny the incarnational aspect of God’s work.  God did not only become incarnate once; he continues his incarnational work in his embrace of us and creation. Webber suggests, in fact, that few evangelicals really grasp the concept of the humanity of Jesus. The incarnation is so contrary to our modern sense of Platonic dualism that we have a hard time really accpeting it for what it is.

In Chapter 9, Webber deals with what he sees as the common misunderstanding that spritiual disciplines as the source of our spirituality. I would agree, from my own experience in dealing with various evangelical groups, that this is indeed the basic teaching: if you want to “grow,” you must pray, read the Bible, and so on. There is a constant tension in teaching that we are not saved by “works,” but that we require works to mature, or in some cases, even to continue being saved. However, Webber says that “our goal is never to become spiritual but to live out the spirituality we have” in continuing to live in the divine embrace.

Webber, however, lost me a bit in this chapter as he spends a lot of time discussing a Benedictine approach to the spiritual disciplines. As this chapter is drawing conclusions about how to respond to everything he has said in the prior chapters, I found this suggestion to follow a Benedictine approach a bit anticlimactic and disappointing.  Even so, his points about prayer, study and so on are well-taken.

As I sat in church this Sunday morning, I was very aware of how far the evangelical church has moved from any sort of Biblical understanding of spirituality. The “worship” songs had very little worship content in them (most celebrated our emotions) and the sermon gave us ideas on things we could do to grow. There was no celebration of God With Us, no sense that God is able to do all that He has set out to do.  Not too long ago, I just would have left disatisfied, not really knowing why. Webber has been beneficial in that now I can better see and understand what lies beneath these defects. It helps to know why… I didn’t leave angry. Sad, yes… disappointed, yes… but not angry. That’s progress.

 

 

 

Written on 09 March 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with 2 Comments

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

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

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

Webber: The Divine Embrace 4 – Romanticism & Pietism

The second shift away from ancient spirituality resulted from the romantic movement and influenced spirituality toward a preoccupation with experience. -Webber, page 89

The Enlightenment (or so it has been called) resulted in a shift toward an intellectual, reasoned approach to theology, separating theology from spirituality, turning justification into a transaction of sorts, and sanctification into something to accomplish. As a reaction to this rather cataclysmic shift, romanticism arose. The Romantics rejected the analytical method of discovering truth in favor of “a more intuitive, inner experience of knowing through the imagination, the senses, passion, and the will.” Webber explains that the Romantics also emphasized a return to an organic, holistic approach to knowledge rather than the compartmentalization of science. (Sound familiar?)

While Webber says that it is hard to say exactly how Romanticism impacted 19th Century spirituality, he notes that the pietist and revivalist movements also focused on an inner, experiential knowing. Pietist William Spener in 1675 wrote that a “right feeling in the heart” was “more important than pure doctrine.” Spener also taught that a person’s faith was more than acceptance of the truth of the Gospel, it caused “Christ to dwell in the believers’ heart.” Pietism appears to be the beginnings of the emphasis on conversion as a one-time decision/experience, if not the origin of the concept itself.

Revivalism was not too far behind, connected primarily with John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, both of whom had life-changing spiritual experiences. Wesley had a need for something more than the purely intellectual understanding he had as an Anglican priest; I’m sure we’re all familiar with his description of having his “heart strangely warmed” as he listened to Luther’s preface to Romans being read. Edwards’ experience led him to the conclusion that only through what he described as a Divine Light would “bring the soul to a saving close with Christ.” It is interesting to note that both Wesley’s and Edwards’ teachings seemed to be heavily influenced – if not driven – by their experience.

These movements, with their corresponding emphasis on holiness, differed significantly from the ancient church’s understanding of spirituality, as these later movements’ emphasis was on the individual’s experience of forgiveness, not on Christ’s experience. Baptism also shifted from identity with Jesus’ death and resurrection, to “my personal testimony” of an individual decision (Webber points out that baptism, then, no longer has any meaning).

To recap a bit, Webber has pointed out how the reformers took spirituality back from the errors of dualism and mysticism to a spirituality based again on the story of God. However, the language of the Reformation lent itself to a shift from an incarnational understanding to a transactional understanding of salvation and justification, and holiness became something separate, something based on our works rather than God’s work. As the Enlightenment all but destroyed spirituality (and theology), Pietism shifted spirituality from an emphasis on living an incarnational life (focused again on the work of God) to one based on our personal experience, our personal decision, and our personal faith.

Such was the state of the Western church as we entered the 20th Century, which we will look at next time. By the way, I am doing a very inadequate job of summarizing Webber, as I really encourage you to buy the book and read it yourself. There’s a lot more in there than I am presenting.

Written on 04 February 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with 1 Comment

Webber: The Divine Embrace 3

The primary difference between the Reformation and the modern period of history is that the Reformation looked backward to regain the source of ancient church while the modern era, shaped by an anti-historical attitude, looked forward.

As Webber explains in Chapter 3 of The Divine Embrace, the Reformers considered the Roman Church from about 1300 to 1500 to have been a departure from the original faith (and, as I’ve said before, Luther referred to earlier popes for authority in arguing his position to the then current Catholic Church). Luther and other reformers keyed on 2 central issues: the inability of man to choose God, and God’s initiative to become joined to humanity. This focus parallels the Eastern Orthodox concept of theosis – the real participation of man in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. In other words, “God becomes one of us so that we may become one with God.”

However, Webber points out that the reformers were still a part of a scholastic kind of theology that went back to Aquinas and Augustine. Contemplation and Participation, the earlier focuses, were replaced by the concepts of justification and sanctification. This, Webber explains,

“set up what was to become a severe problem in the modern era – the separation of spirituality from a relational, lived theology to a spirituality rooted in a forensic justification … This turning eventually meant that justification became the focus of an intellectual spirituality and sanctification was turned toward a preoccupation with experience.”

Amen. Following the Reformation (from 1500 to about 1750) came the Enlightenment. Where the Bible was the authority during the Reformation years, science and reason became the authority during the Enlightenment. “Thinking,” says Webber, “was based on a distinction between the object and the subject.” The world, including the Bible and spirituality, became something to be studied and analyzed. Furthermore, the modern world became “preoccupied with facts.” Anything that did not fall within the realm of objective fact was opinion, including religion.

As a result, theologians started applying rules of reason and science to the Bible and theology, and apologetics was born. This was a total break from Reformationist thinking, as

“The Reformers did not seek to prove Scripture. They simply spoke out of a Scriptural worldview. For them, the story of God did not need to be proven; it simply needed to be proclaimed.“

Spirituality – the living out of our faith – changed as well. Where the Reformers saw justification and sanctification within the context of union with God, modern Christians began to see justification as something objective, resulting in our right standing before God. In essence, the incarnational understanding of Christianity was lost, and therefore sanctification became a works-oriented endeavor.

I’ll stop here, and pick up next time with the end of Chapter 3 where Webber discusses the Romantic movement – the antithetical reaction to modernism – and its impact on spirituality.

As I read through Webber’s discussion of modernism, it occurred to me that we are, in a sense, still prisoners of modernism. It is almost impossible for us to conceive of a non-modern concept. Even post-modernism – as much as some would like to deny it – is rooted firmly in modernism.  Many years ago, I remember having a missionary from Hong Kong come and speak to my Sunday School class (I was probably in Jr. High). I was upset at her comments – that we in American will never be able to understand the Bible as well as the kids in Hong Kong because we in the West have stopped thinking like the people who wrote the Bible. However, through the years I have seen that she was very right. This was true of me, even though I was raised in a Lutheran church, being taught from Luther’s pre-modern catechism. It’s funny how our modern thinking changes the way we interpret concepts.

The adventure continues …

Written on 31 January 2008 by me under Church, Theological Musings, Webber with 2 Comments

The Divine Embrace 2: heresy vs. spirituality

Webber, as I mentioned in part 1 of this series, defines spirituality as “a lived theology.” That is, Biblical spirituality is based on the core teachings of the Church, as expressed in the earliest creeds. The early heresies, such as Gnosticism and Arianism not only challenged theological ideas, but challenged those areas that directly impacted how we are to live. The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds specifically affirmed the Incarnation, the “God joined with man” concept that is essential to any understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Early Church theology, as does Orthodox theology today (and a similar concept in Lutheranism) is that of Theosis, or man becoming God (essentially, “Christ-like,” rather than equal to God). It is the principal of God becoming man that makes it possible for man to become joined to God.

Furthermore, this spirituality is solely at God’s initiative. The Pelagian heresy taught that man could achieve holiness through his own will. It was Augustine who argued that “a man’s free choice avails only to lead him to sin.” Pelagianism was rejected at the Council of Carthage in AD 407, which agreed that “our spirituality is not accomplished by our initiative but by God, who became incarnate…” It is only Jesus who can unite us to God.

Early Christian spirituality, says Webber, was a theological spirituality; that is, the theology was not meant to be merely believed, it was meant to be lived. The concept of the Trinity, for example, is essentially relational or communal; therefore, there can be no such thing as an individualistic spirituality. He quotes Philip Sheldrake as saying,

The incarnation is more than a defense of the reality … of the human nature of Jesus Christ. It is a governing principle of Christian living; of God’s way of relating to creation and our way of response.

Spirituality, then, is participating in the purposes of God in history, at the initiative of God.

Webber goes on in Chapter 2 to explain how Platonic Dualism began to distort the original concept of spirituality. Plato, as we know, saw the material world as inferior to the Ideal world, separating the physical from the spiritual. This way of thinking began to creep into the Church, causing a shift in contemplation from God as subject, to God as object. God was no longer the origin of our spirituality, the One who reached out to us, but spirituality became our way of reaching out to God. Spirituality shifted from being a gift of God’s grace to a striving after grace. That which was physical and normal to life became seen as evil, and only the spiritual was seen as good.

A second crucial shift in contemplation came in the late Medieval period, with the rise of mysticism. Where earlier contemplation was focused on the purposes of God (creating, incarnation and re-creating) of which we were the beneficiaries, now contemplation was focused on man’s experience, as he tried to grab hold of God. It was a shift of focus from God’s work toward us, to our work toward God. Furthermore, this shift caused a split between theology and spirituality, which now became a “spiritual discipline.” In man’s seeking after God, his relationship with God then started to take on a romantic aspect.

It is amazing for me to read Webber’s account and see these influences still at work in – and sometimes controlling – the church today. What really grabbed me was this comment by Webber:

… the language of spirituality moved from the “indescribable wonder of God” to the “wonderfully indescribable experience of God.” …spirituality expressed a movement away from “God’s story,” to “my story.” …

Consequently, participation in God shifted from life-affirming spirituality to a life-denying spirituality.

Webber’s correct, here, I believe. Of course, if you’ve read through this blog over the last couple of years, you’ll see that I’ve been on a similar track. But, Webber actually knows what he’s talking about, and he says things so much better than I can.

I have not done this chapter justice at all, but merely tried to pick out a few of the highlights, so you’ll be encouraged to buy the book, or at least begin to think about these things. Next time, we’ll move into Chapter 3, dealing with the Reformation to 1900. After than, he deals with Modernism in Chapter 4, and post-Modernism in Chapter 5. Then, he gets us back to the Good News. I can hardly wait.

Written on 20 January 2008 by me under Church, Reviews, Webber with No Comments