What Forgiveness Is Not (Part 1) & What It Is (Part 2)

What Forgiveness is Not

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/what-forgiveness-is-not

by Thomas Jay Oord

August 1, 2015

A series of painful events in my life have me pondering anew the meaning of forgiveness. Family and friends have also asked for help as they struggle to forgive those who hurt them. I want to share some ideas I’ve found helpful in my own efforts to forgive in the midst of pain.

An impressive scholarly literature is available on forgiveness. The field of positive psychology, for instance, offers some impressive research. And various religious and moral traditions offer wisdom on the matter.

As a Christian theologian, I’m especially interested in what the Christian tradition says about forgiveness. I like to contemplate, for instance, what it means to say God forgives. I also wonder why horrible things happen if God loves everyone and can control anything, a question usually called “the problem of evil.”

In this blog, I’ll set aside the question of why God doesn’t prevent evil. I’ve addressed it elsewhere, and I have a book coming out in November that tackles the subject.[1]

For this essay, I mostly want to ponder what it means for humans to forgive.

Forgive and Forget?

I sometimes hear that those who have been harmed ought to “forgive and forget.” Most people interpret this phrase to mean that forgiving requires ignoring or overlooking the harm others have done. We must disremember, they say.

I reject the idea that forgiveness requires forgetting the harm done. I reject the idea, in part, because such forgetting may be impossible for some people. If forgiving requires forgetting, those who cannot forget will never be able to forgive.

Forgiveness does not mean burying the pain deep inside. It does not demand we ignore the damage done. Victims must acknowledge harm was done.

In fact, forgetting the harm can be extremely unhelpful to the victim and to others. Forgetting may allow perpetrators of evil to continue their dastardly deeds. Forgetting may lead to failing to change structures that permit evil. As Nazi holocaust survivors know, for instance, we must remember as a way to resist repeating past sins.

Sometimes we must remember past evil to inspire us to prevent evil in the future.

Forgiving as Warm Fuzzy Feelings?

Some people assume that those who forgive no long feel repulsed by those who have hurt them. True forgiveness, they say, means having warm fuzzy feelings toward perpetrators of evil. Positive feelings must completely replace the victim’s pain, outrage, and other negative feelings.

I disagree with this view too. Those who have been hurt may wish to feel positive feelings. But such feelings often take time or never come at all. Negative emotional histories rarely transform overnight!

If forgiveness means that victims must have warm and positive emotions toward those who harm them, forgiveness is not possible for many people — at least not possible in the short term. Fortunately, forgiveness doesn’t require that we always feel warmth toward those who have injured us.

I’ll address later how we replace negative feelings with positive ones. But for now, I simply want to deny that forgiveness requires our feeling warmth and positivity toward those who have hurt us.

Forgiveness as Gladness?

Related to the misconception that forgiveness requires warm feelings is the misconception that those who forgive completely should thereafter feel bright and breezy. Those with a particular view of God’s blueprint for life sometimes even say God wanted the harm and pain we endure. I strongly disagree!

In reality, anger toward evil is an important part of being a morally mature person. Because evil undermines wellness, we are right to oppose it. Feeling angry is appropriate when evil is done, and we can be angry while simultaneously acting for good.

These words of Scripture seem wise to me: “Be angry, but do not sin” (Eph. 4:26). I take this to mean that we are sometimes justified in being mad about what has happened to us or to others. Injustice sucks! But we must not allow our anger to become revenge, spite, resentment, or retaliation. Besides, “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth” leaves us blind and edentulous!

What we ought to do when we’re “good and mad” brings me to…

Forgiveness as Complacency?

A widespread misconception says forgiveness requires the forgiver to accept passively what has happened, with no active response. Those who promote this misconception usually pair it with the correct notion that forgiveness does not retaliate. But they explicitly or implicitly add that in the face of harm, forgivers should be quiet, inactive, or compliant.

In my view, forgivers are activists. They have experienced injustice first hand and they are choosing to do something about that injustice. Instead of striking back, however, they mobilize to change some part of the world for good. Positive world changing involves numerous types of action. But it does not involve apathy.

Because forgiveness is not complacency, harmful institutions and individuals ought to brace themselves when forgivers respond to injustice. Forgivers don’t run away and hide. They act for the common good, often passionately and persistently, in response to the harm done. When victims forgive rightly, their righteous activism often pushes harmful institutions or individuals to make reforms and offer apologies.

The particular acts that accompany forgiveness depend on what well-being requires in each case. It may mean acting to prevent perpetrators from doing more harm. It may mean raising awareness of injustice. It may mean acting to transform institutional practices or social customs. It may mean seeking counseling for oneself and others. The ways of forgiving love are almost endless!

Activist forgivers pursue various activities to bring health and wholeness in the face of evil.

Forgiveness as Reconciliation?

Many use “forgiveness” and “reconciliation” interchangeably. But I think we would be wise to separate these two words.

Forgiveness is something one person or a group can do in response to an evil act or hurtful relationship. Forgivers act irrespective of what perpetrators may do. Those harmed need not wait for confession from those who harm them. Instead, they act to forgive despite what others may do.

Reconciliation, by contrast, requires all the estranged parties to act positively toward one another. Reconciliation requires all involved to choose positive unity and healed relationship. Reconciliation takes a least two.

Let’s be honest: Sometimes those who harm seek forgiveness and reconciliation mainly to avoid public scorn. They say they want reconciliation, but they really want something else. Their motives are not primarily to restore or help those they have injured. They mostly want to avoid some negative consequences without actually doing the work of repentance (being transformed).

Because it can be difficult to judge rightly the motives of those who harm us, bringing in third parties (e.g., counselors) is often necessary for genuine reconciliation.

Forgiving Waits for Others to Ask to be Forgiven?

The final issue I want to address here is the idea that forgiveness requires that those who harm first admit their wrong and ask forgiveness. Fortunately, victims need not wait before they can act to forgive.

If forgiveness requires waiting until evil doers confess and repent, perpetrators of injustice would maintain a kind of control over their victims. But a major reason forgiveness is so powerfully good is that it can set victims free from such control. Forgiveness does not require that those who have hurt admit their guilt.

We who have been harmed can forgive even if those who harmed us don’t care that they have injured. We can forgive even if those who harmed us are unaware of their injuring. We can forgive even when those who harm feel justified in their harmful acts!

I can’t help but insert my own situation as an example. As far as I know, no individual, group, board, or team has apologized for harming my colleagues, my family, or me. Perhaps none feels responsible and therefore thinks an apology would be inappropriate. Perhaps some worry about the legal implications if they were to admit guilt. Perhaps some feel their actions were justified, because they think NNU would be better without me. Perhaps some rationalize what they have done by saying, “Tom will end up just fine,” meaning I will find another job. I honestly don’t know all the reasons.

Whatever their reasons for not apologizing, I don’t need to wait for them to ask for forgiveness. After all, an apology may never come. But I can choose to forgive them now.

What is forgiveness, then?

I’ve spent most of this essay talking about what forgiveness is not. I thought I’d clear away some of the misconceptions before offering what I think are helpful conceptions.

I’ll explain what forgiveness is and a little about how we can forgive in my next essay, which I will soon post.

* * * * * * * * * *

What Forgiveness Is

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/what-forgiveness-is

by Thomas Jay Oord

August 4th, 2015

In my previous essay, I talked about what forgiveness is not. Now let me talk about what it is.

As I write this, I’m aware that I can’t cover all topics related to forgiveness. And I’m aware that I speak primarily from my own experience, aided by my interpretation of the wisdom found in Scripture, religious and moral traditions, and scientific research, especially in psychology. I definitely have much to learn. But I want to share what I have found helpful.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Let me begin by recapping some ideas from my previous essay, “What Forgiveness is Not.”

In that essay, I said that forgiveness does not require that we forget the harm done. I reject the idea that we must forgive and forget.

Forgiveness does not mean that we must feel warm fuzzy feelings toward those who have hurt us. Forgiveness does not mean excusing the wrongdoing. We who have been hurt also do not need to believe our pain is part of God’s plan.

I also said that forgiveness does not mean complacency or passivity. Instead, forgivers are activists. They repay evil with good. We can be angry at the harm done and yet still forgive the harm doers.

Forgiveness is not reconciliation either, because reconciliation requires that all estranged parties be united. We can forgive even when those who have harmed us think their actions were justified.

Finally, I said that forgivers don’t need to wait for those who have harmed them to express regret. If such waiting were required, those harmed would remain at the mercy of the harm doers.

Love is the Heart of Forgiveness

There is no common definition of forgiveness in the scholarly literature. But there are a number of characteristic aspects of how definition is discussed, and those can help us understand what it means to forgive.

As I see it, forgiveness is a form of love. At its core, love involves promoting well-being. It encourages flourishing, positivity, and abundant life. Love advances the efforts of healing, health, and wholeness. Simply put: Love does good.[1]

While love takes many forms, forgiveness is a form of love that means intentionally acting to do good to those who have harmed us. Forgiveness usually involves a pardoning statement of some kind and subsequent actions that treat well or wish wellness to those who have treated us poorly. It also typically involves a change from negative attitudes or emotions to positive ones.

Jesus said love does not repay evil with evil. Instead, those who love repay evil with good. That’s what forgiveness does: it expresses goodness in response to evil or harm.

Incidentally, I define agape as a kind of love that promotes well-being in response to actions that promote ill-being. Agape love chooses not to retaliate against those who have done injury. In other words, agape repays evil with good.[2]

As I see it, agape and forgiveness are closely related.

The Ability to Forgive Comes from God

I believe the power to forgive comes from God, whether we believe in deity or not. God not only calls us all to forgive, I believe God empowers us all to forgive. Just as we love because God first loved us, I think we can forgive because God first forgives us. I think some people love and forgive without consciously being aware that their ability to do so comes from God.

In recent days, I have repeatedly asked God to empower me to forgive those who have harmed my family, my colleagues, my friends, and me. Many have asked me for advice on forgiveness. My wife and I have talked much about what forgiveness requires. “Forgiveness” is a frequent topic of discussion in my house right now!

I believe that God calls me to forgive in the manner God has forgiven others and me. God is in the goodness business. And forgiveness brings the goodness of healing, wholeness, and health – in a variety of ways – to a world of hurt, pain, and suffering.[3]

Give gives us the ability to forgive. And forgiving as God forgives allows us to live life to the fullest.

How Do We Forgive?

So… what does it take forgive those who harm us?

Often the first step in forgiving is simply deciding to forgive. Deciding to forgive means acting for the good of those who have been bad to us. It means wishing them well in our thoughts and actions.

Forgiveness does not seek revenge. It does not harbor bitterness or resentment, but it deals with those negative feelings when they arise. Forgiveness is not vindictive. It consciously chooses to do right to those who have done us wrong.

Saying, “I forgive,” just once is seldom sufficient. Our thoughts and emotions often bring us back to the hurt. We must frequently say, “I forgive,” to deal with painful thoughts and emotions.

I repeatedly decide to forgive. I often say to myself and to others than I forgive those who harm me. Like an athlete who practices her sport so that the sport becomes second nature, I practice forgiveness in the hope that it becomes second nature to me.

Fortunately, the more times we decide to forgive, the more we talk about forgiveness, and when we participate in communities that promote forgiveness, the likelier we will be to choose to forgive when we are hurt. Strong habits of forgiveness make us the kind of people who find forgiveness normal.

The Emotions of Forgiveness

Deciding to forgive, in a moment or in a long series of instances, is usually also accompanied by a second step. This second step is sometimes more difficult and often not entirely within our ability to control.[4] The second step involves transforming our emotions.

Transforming our emotions rarely occurs overnight. Transformation takes time. But forgiveness research and various religious and moral traditions tell us how to replace the negative emotions we experience when hurt with positive emotions of health and healing.

Interestingly, those who forgive typically reap greater benefits – e.g., improved physical health, improved psychological health, and improved social/relational health – than the perpetrators of harm they forgive. Bitterness, cynicism, and hatred plague those who choose unforgiveness. Unforgiving people live wearisome and anemic lives. Forgiving people can live life fully.

Empathy

We can deal with negative emotions and thereby have a change of heart when we empathize with the perpetrator of our pain.[5] To empathize is to feel the feelings of others. Empathizing involves identifying with the other person’s basic humanity.

Empathizing often involves placing ourselves in that person’s shoes, thinking about that person’s own history and motivations. When we empathize, we see those who have hurt us as broken, insecure, and injured persons themselves. We also try to see the world from their perspective. This helps us understand their motivations a little, without requiring us to justify or condone when they have done.

This point is so important I want to emphasize it: When we empathize with perpetrators of evil, we need not approve or endorse the evils done. We can feel repelled, repulsed, and angry at the pain they have caused. But in empathy, our “hearts go out” to those who have been hurtful. We seek to understand them and their lives in some redemptive way.

The process of empathizing with those who perpetrate evil often involves admitting that we too have harmed others. We have also sinned. We should humbly admit that at times in our lives we have caused harm to others.

Perhaps our sins have not been as awful as the sins of others. Perhaps our victims are less hurt than we have been. But we also need to be forgiven. We all sometimes hurt others.

Helping Others Who Hurt

Finally, countless examples suggest that those who forgive well often work to help others who are hurting. Turning inward and becoming entirely self-focused often leads to depression. But reaching out to others is a powerful act that helps us and those we want to help.

I’ve been moved in powerful ways by the stories found in the book/film, Half the Sky. In fact, I have often shown the DVD in my NNU classes on love.

Half the Sky addresses the evils done to women around the world. One episode features Somaly Mam, a woman sold as a sex slave at a very young age. Mam escaped her hell on earth, however, and now rescues other young girls from the sex trade. She speaks about the pain she endured, her work, and forgiveness:

“This pain never leaves me,” says Mam, “I have lived my life day by day, with love and forgiveness, and the belief that helping others could give them voice and choice and create change.”[6]

The old saying “It is better to give than to receive” has a portion of truth in it. We can and should work toward our self-help and self-healing. But often the best way to find help and healing for ourselves is to seek help and healing for others.

Community

Forgiveness most often occurs in community. This community can come in the form of a wise friend or professional counselor. It can come in the form of a small accountability group or caring friendship. Books and other literature can channel this community that encourages forgiveness.

Some of the most powerful communities seek not just to help their own people deal with evil and pain. They help those outside their communities. They seek to cooperate with God to heal themselves and the world.

At its best, the Church are a people who forgive. They foster an environment that promotes forgiveness. At its best, the Church helps those outside it to discover the benefit of living lives of forgiveness.

Conclusion

In my own situation, I am choosing to forgive. I choose to forgive various people who have hurt me in the past weeks, months, and years.

My choice to forgive is one I repeat often. I repeat in my mind or aloud my commitment to forgive. I repeat my commitment to forgive when additional harm is done. I repeat my commitment when hurtful memories invade my mind or negative emotions press upon me.

I also try to empathize with those who have hurt others and me. I accept their humanity, complete with its ignorance and limitations. I remember the harm I have done to others. This helps dissipate some of the negative emotions I feel toward those who hurt me.

In my forgiving, I also seek to be active in helpful ways. I try to help others who have also been hurt. Forgiveness combats injustice and tries to change structures that do harm. It repays evil with good.

To forgive is to love. Among other reasons, I forgive because I want to imitate a forgiving God by my living a life of love that resembles the loving life Jesus lived. (Eph. 5:1).

I chose to forgive. And I am continuing to choose forgiveness as I seek to live a life of love.

Notes…

[1] Love is defined in various ways. In this blog, I will not take the time to defend my understanding of love. I offer my defense and definition of love in many books, but I especially recommend my book, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010).

[2] I explore in depth the meaning of agape in Defining Love and in The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice, 2010).

[3] See my book, The Nature of Love, for more on this issue.

[4] I am grateful to my NNU colleague, Joseph Bankard, for teaching me about the relative lack of control we have over our emotions when forgiving. See his current work titled, “Forgiveness as Process and Virtue: How to Overcome Feelings of Anger and Resentment.”

[5] For a very helpful book on forgiveness research and on how to forgive and seek reconciliation, see Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope, by Everett L. Worthington, Jr. This is a revised edition of his previous book, Five Steps to Forgiveness.

[6] Simon Marks, “Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking,” Newsweek 5/21/2014. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/30/somaly-mam-holy-saint-and-sinner-sex-trafficking-251642.html 

Pyro-Theology: A Place to Work Out Conflict, Disappointment, and Faith

Generations of senseless misery. High potential for the lucky. Actual miseries for the ill-fated. No one

ever seems to deliver on, the all-too-easily-forgotten-promise of, confronting and relieving suffering.

"An aim of pyrotheology is not to avoid conflict, but rather to create a space for it...

To hash things out, to be challenged and to perhaps discover that the other has

a perspective that might change you." - Peter Rollins

"The aim of pyrotheology is not to avoid conflict, but rather to create a space for it. There are real and serious issues to be addressed in every culture, and the strategies of [either the] hawk-like war mongers or neo-liberals would seek to avoid all conflict, are rarely the answer. Rather gritty, dirty salons are required where drinks can be slammed onto tables, obscenities shouted and tears shed. Spaces where the only real non-negotiable is a commitment to returning again and again to the same space and the same people. To hash things out, to be challenged and to perhaps discover that the other has a perspective that might change you. The point of embracing unknowing, interrogating assumptions and facing personal issues (the bread and butter of pyrotheology) is to facilitate a better form of life that is not only more enjoyable and enriching at a personal level, but also one that provides the basis of more healthy and effective political engagement." - Peter Rollins

"He lay listening to the horse

crop the grass at his stakerope

and he listened to the wind in the emptiness

and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere

to die in the darkness at the edge of the world.

As he lay there

the agony in his heart was like a stake.

He imagined the pain of the world to be

like some formless parasitic being

seeking out the warmth of human souls

wherein to incubate.

And he thought he knew what

made one liable to its visitations.

What he had not known was that

it was mindless, and so,

had no way to know

the limits of those souls

and what he feared

was that there might be no limits."

- Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

"If the only image of Christianity that a society can access is of a [j]esus that is intimately associated with subjugation, imperialism, colonialism; a [j]esus that articulates the language of the Domination System; a [j]esus that silences the critiques of logic, of science, of Truth; a [j]esus that reinforces exclusivism, tribalism, and nationalism as a way to consolidate its power; if that society is utterly unable to differentiate between that [j]esus and the True [J]esus, then the Prophet of our time is the Atheist.

"Pyro-theology is one of the only places that lead me to believe we are not at that desperate time yet, and that is encouraging to me, because I definitely think there is still [J]esus to be found amongst all the other manifestations of [j]esus in our world."

- anon

"I’m reading Walter Brueggemann's ‘Prophetic Imagination.’ He discusses how prophetic communities offer radical criticism of the empire through grief. On the surface, I’m wondering if this is another possible expression of pyro? Has anyone ever wrestled with his work in this regard?"

- anon

“It is the task of prophetic ministry and imagination to bring

people to engage their experiences of suffering to death.”

- Walter Brueggemann

“The prophet brings to public expression the dread of endings,

the collapse of our self-madeness,

the barriers and pecking orders

that secure us at each other’s expense,

and the fearful practice of

eating off the table of a hungry brother or sister.”

- Walter Brueggemann

“‘Jesus wept.’

Such weeping is a radical criticism,

a fearful dismantling

because it means the end of all machismo;

weeping is something kings rarely do

without losing their thrones.

Yet the lose of thrones

is precisely what is called for

in radical criticism.”

- Walter Brueggemann

"Ikon was perfect for me. A safe community at a time when no one understood me at my "church."

[Even] my own partner at the time thought Rob Bell was a demon and that I was possessed. He literally tried performing an exorcism on me.

Yes, I am still in shock years later.

So what brought me to that person and to those people and that point in life?

That is a more important question than any theological question I could have asked myself.

My recent revelation has made me so aware of questions that are far more necessary, greater, and practical than pyrotheology or questions about God.

These are the more important questions about the very physical world [than what I] can see and [touch and] test and find with a microscope.

More important questions about the reality of my brain. [That thing] which frames the God I imagine and everything else that I question. That I experience. That I think. That I feel. And that I say.

Now, more than ever, [I am] tempted to set pyrotheology itself alight with the flames of questions that challenge the place and priority of Pyrotheology - or any theology - in one's life.

With this discovery I am, for the first time in my life, truly feel [the prejudice of] what "looking down upon" minorities, [the impoverished, the castaways of life] feel like.

I've never felt a weight so heavy before of living under the dark cloud of an international ideological framework that looks at brains like mine and people like me, and sees us as "less than" human.

I quickly experienced belonging to a people that is patronized, misunderstood, made fun of, and shamed for who we are.

I never felt that in my life... ever!

I've always been in the cool group. [The dominant group.] Even in those brief times when I fell off the cool wagon I [have] never felt this kind of weight [before].

And once I realized where I belong a sense of justice rose up in me to start addressing that heavy weight of ideology that the media [and my friends] persist with. That outdated science itself has establshed [in my bible groups and church].

I now have my own "principalities and powers in heavenly places" to wrestle with as Ephesians says.

I see the dark forces of ignorance everywhere.

I look and I now know where to be a light and on what hill to shine. And I feel a sense of what gay folks and African Americans have felt in addressing a massive false perception.

And it feels good to shine.

So. So. Good.

- anon

"Now read from the bottom up"

What Is Pyrotheology?

What is Pyrotheology? It is the burning down of everything thought important to us. It is a deeply black, deeply dissettling time of life where everything is thrown out of our lives in order to begin again. To begin with a newer vision unformed and awaiting formation. A time of prophetic imagination when the soul becomes so deeply vexed that it despairs of life. It is deeply angered by the lies we've lived with and have told ourselves. It is a time where suffering and death become the same thing. Where no light exists and all is black.

It is a time of endings and beginnings. Of ending an old life overspent with old forms and ways of being to explore a new life with new forms and ways of being. It is being more wise and cautious than at first when youth was an incautious sponge absorbing everything it saw and heard from significant people and movements surrounding itself.

A time where only pain and suffering must now exist until a kind of repentance is made for being so foolish. Where peace only invades when a nothingness exists in our being holding no answers and glad for this space of darkness and void.

For myself, it was a time where I was forsaken by the God of my youth but never forsaken by the God of reality. The God that died for me during this time was the God taught to me by my culture oriented in bloodshed, violence, and politics of oppression.

A God whom inhabited an imperfect theology built upon imperfect teachings of past generations so sure of themselves and in their philosophies of Western domination. So sure of their religious destinies, their arduous lives, their societal fulfillments. Carving out a history not of God's love but God's ruthless wrath, anger, and judgment should I fail to follow in their footsteps of war, of conquest, of brow beating opponents with God's holy book and opposing unholy thoughts.

Here was a dark space that must be thankfully abandoned in order to see the God who inhabits light and not darkness. Here was a time in life that must be ripped apart by my own hands as moved by the Spirit of God's winnowing fork burning up the piles of combustible chaff of biblical idolatries. Here was a cross-current sweeping me away in mad, rushing, torrents from the turbulent seas of my past into an ocean beyond my control. Unswimmable. Unsurvivable. Without horizons. And at one time, without light.

But I knew then, as I know now, that God was there and had never abandoned me. Just my false image of Himself which needed destroying. Who needed to fall on the violence of my own metaphors so that by His own violence to my life I might find resurrection.

It is a curious thing, is it not, to speak of the God of peace and love in so violent a terminology? But this is what I still observe in this violent world we make and must break if it is to live in peace and love. of death, not to others, but to ourselves. To our every unholy thought that does violence to those that would be violent towards us - or struggles with the violence clutching lives different from mine own. Such is the way of the world if we are to survive. And so unlike what I imagine an Eden, or a renewing world, might be. A world without violence

But alas, pyrotheology says that one must argue and fight for one's faith lest it be usurped by a violence that would undo it. So that by destruction may come a new destruction. One that can be holy and burn up all things in our lives by fire so that we may be a pure aroma of sacrifice and offering to a God of war and violence and all-seeing justice.

In a world of sin and evil only a God who dies to His own violence can be resurrected to the destruction of creation's violence. Even so must the penitent sinner acknowledge his or her own death before resurrecting against the oppressions of this wicked world full of spiritual delusion, political lust, greed, and selfish desire.

Against a world that sees itself and not the other. Which would kill all unlike itself lest despairing of its own motives to fall into a pyrotheology destined for its own future. A future that will come if not now, then later. A fire that must come. Must burn. Must destroy if we are to become a renewing people of God resurrected into a holy fellowship.

A fellowship which is at peace with those struggling with their own peace. Steadfast in its love for the other refusing God's winnowing fire. Martyred upon the cross of its making once realizing that the cross is the end of violence and the start of violence and the beginning of renewal.

Pyrotheology is an unusual thing. It is unlike so much else I have been taught and hold dear. But it is a good thing when it is the real thing and not the substitute thing we give it if so fortunate to travel upon its hardness. For at the last, the substitute thing is the thing that may have to die as well. To burn once is not to burn again. Death in God is a continual death even as it is a continual resurrection. And hopefully, with each new death and resurrection we may inch forward closer and closer to this thing God calls us too in our lives. A call to life and light and fellowship with one another measured by love and forgiveness and peace.

I will be the first to say I have begun on this journey. But I have not ended my journey in the Spirit of God. It may be a journey long and hard where failure is as constant as mine own stubbornness to resist evil and oppression. But perhaps God has given me the sword and shield as much as the breastplate of righteousness and forgiveness. To act as warrior and priest, lover and accuser, in the same breath as the space I live within.

Not a Moses. Nor a David. Not a Christ. Nor a Paul. I am a prophet by God's own calling. And a priest to the testimonies of God's own revelation. But through this may His healing hand bring balm to all. And if not to all, then to my own soul desperate for His winnowing fire and steadfast love.

R.E. Slater

August 8, 2015

Phyllis Tickle Leaves a Legacy that is Seen, Read, Heard, and Felt

Emergent Christianity had its sociological birth in the 1990s through to the early 2010s. It was a church movement seeking to ingest a renewing spirit of faith in God that was asking all church goers to re-examine their lives, their bibles, their faiths, in conjunction with what Christianity might mean to the church today as well as to the contemporary global society of tomorrow.

It sought to re-write all forms of doctrine, church history, and church endeavor through the lens of the Spirit of God at work in new-and-strange ways during this present age. And in many of its platforms and speeches the emergent church sought to bring enlightenment to the crisis of the traditional church struggling with its identity in the postmodern 21st century. A century committed to de-constructing (not necessarily destroying) all past works and secular foundations across all institutional lines of society (including the church) before re-constructing those examined institutions in light of its newer postmodern understanding.

Much of emergent (or emerging) Christianity has been helpful in causing greater Christendom to re-examine all that it was and had preceded itself. Lengthy articles have been written here at Relevancy22 as to what-and-how emergent Christianity has been helpful to yesteryear's church of the 19th and 20th century. Mostly, Emergent Christianity sought a new expression of the Christian faith against the fundamental and evangelical church's message of condemnation and judgment upon all things not itself. It stepped out away from the traditional church and said, "No, your Jesus is not my Jesus." It broke the canker absorbing the church's liturgies, podiums, and dogmas to bring the beauty, love, grace, and forgiveness of God through Jesus in new and refreshing ways. Especially to those people excluded from the more traditional church congregation grown use to meeting with each other along culturally defined lines.

As a result, blogs went up like this one here to examine what proper church doctrine could-and-should mean by examining church history, church dogmas and creeds, its leadership, movements, philosophies, and attitudes. Throughout all of this endeavor Emergent Christians were asking of their evangelical heritage to consider what it was saying and doing rather than allowing it to push back into the folds of anger, despair, and exclusion.

No, the story of Phyllis Tickle is not that of a historical scholar, a critical academic, nor that of a rigorous theologian. But yes, she wrote as one impassioned to re-speak by re-envisioning the message of God to a broken world excluded from the life of the Divine by a fundamental-evangelical culture too interested in protecting its dogmatic borders with religious folklore gained by a more recent evangelical tradition built upon the newer doctrines (1910s and 1980s forward) of biblical inerrancy, neo-Calvinism, rejection of higher criticism and science, rejection of society, exclusionism, and mystical/magical endeavor to mention a few.

With a vigor, humor, and strength of spirit, Phyllis, as an older Christian, asked the evangelical church to re-examine its orthodox faith by returning to an orthodoxy that could ring truer in the postmodern, post-Christian times of the 21st century than the older forms that the church was clinging too. To no longer be content in living with a classical form of itself inhabiting the older forms of Greek Hellenism, Medieval theology, Protestant scholasticism, Enlightenment thinking (fraught with all of its structural and reformed underpinnings), nor 1950s modernised visages of its secular self. No, Phyllis' spirit sought to re-express the Christian faith in a language that would be readily grasped by all - both within the church as well as outside of its hallowed, polished walls.

Phyllis was the pleasant side of a vanguard of Christians asking the evangelical church to examine itself and reconsider just where it was against its knee-jerk reactions to the political, societal jargons washing across its churchly bows sailing on a sea of change lively with tempest and storm. Phyllis spoke vigorously to the emerging church of the 21st century to not lose faith, despair of change, nor give up. But to welcome brokenness, despair, and change into the Christian faith that it might break it of all that was wrong with it; to allow God to change our faith to all that must be changed in it by giving up the idols of one's youth, dogmas, and churchly traditions for the outreaching Spirit of God instead.

Phyllis' message was in its way a hard message made harder by her disciples (as shown here in the picture below). Disciples who spoke with fervor and strove for change because they knew the gospel's truths to the lost and the perishing. Wishing no longer to hold God's Spirit back however difficult it would be on the more traditional church. It was a timely message that has now provoked today's contemporary church with better questions; a larger rubric to see its Christian faith; and an expanded view of the possible when met by the impossible.

In the end, to those Christian groups which resisted the change Emergent Christianity was asking of itself within postmodern society, Phyllis was a curiosity who was tolerated but not heeded. One who wished to usher the church of Jesus Christ into a new plane of spiritual awareness and understanding of itself in relationship to its missional gospel outreach to a post-Christianal society. To offer a new attitude of hope in Christ and not fear. An attitude that allowed emergent Christian usage of their gifts-and-talents in the presence-and-power of the Spirit of God who had brought each one of His despairing disciples out of the miry pit into a land of rejoicing.

True, the trolls of an older faith do even now live and speak destruction to the faith of Jesus Christ, his message of reconciliation, and peace with one another. Who use the sacred image of the cross as a place of war and discrimination rather than as an atoning place to bury the ugliness of mankind's divisive spirit of sin. These are the ones who would surprise and attack the brokenness of the church lying upon the burning ash heaps of an Emergent faith living on through the inhabitants of a postmodern, world-wide, global church. But each generation in its turn must give an account. Both old and young.

But to today's youth (and to those "youthful in spirit") this time is now to live the grace and forgiveness, mercy and peace, healing and balm, come to you through Jesus. Let His peace become yours, and by your presence within this world of woe, even as you offer up Jesus' message of reconciliation, redemption, renewal, rebirth, and transformation, as a burnt sacrifice pleasing to the Lord of all grace, mercy, hope, and forgiveness. Be at peace then and know that God lives on in the broken things of this world. He has not abandoned it but is even now enlivening its brokenness towards His ends. It is a Godly work. A work we, as the living church, may participate in, to the praise and glory of our Almighty God. Amen.

R.E. Slater

August 6, 2015

We have been so blessed to have Phyllis as our friend. The Cathedral, Memphis, TN, "Embracing Emergence Christianity: The Church's Next
Rummage Sale." Pictured: Brian McLaren (left), Phyllis Tickle (center), Nadia Bolz-Weber (top center), Tony Jones (kneeling), unknown (far right)

“Phyllis Tickle brings so many gifts to the table that it is sometimes hard to believe there is only

one heartbeat behind them all. She is a seer, a scholar, a spiritual guide, a literary and cultural

savant, a walking encyclopedia, and a mentor to more people than there are seconds in the day.

Above all, she is a faithful lover of God and all to whom that love relates her. Reading her is

second best to knowing her, but read her you must.”

- Barbara Brown Taylor

Website - http://www.phyllistickle.com/

List of Writings - http://www.phyllistickle.com/books/

Wikipedia

Phyllis Tickle (born March 12, 1934) is an American author and lecturer whose work focuses on spirituality and religion issues. After serving as a teacher, professor, and academic dean, Tickle entered the publishing industry, serving as the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, before then becoming a popular writer. She is well known as a leading voice in the emergence church movement. She is perhaps best known for The Divine Hours series of books, published by Doubleday Press, and her book The Great Emergence- How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Tickle is a member of the Episcopal Church, where she is licensed as both a Lector and a Lay Eucharistic Minister. She has been widely quoted by many media outlets, including Newsweek, Time, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, The History Channel, the BBC and VOA. It has been said that "Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle."

Religion Press Release Services

Literary Trust Established to Manage Estate of Phyllis Tickle, Author, Authority on Religion in America, and Founding Religion Editor of Publishers Weekly

July 27, 2015

The Farm in Lucy, Tennessee, July 24, 2015 —Tickle, Inc. announces the establishment of the Phyllis A. Tickle Literary Trust for the purpose of managing the literary estate and copyrights of Phyllis Tickle. Serving as Trustees are Joseph Durepos, Executive Editor of Loyola Press, Jon M. Sweeney, Editorial Director of Franciscan Media, and Samuel M. Tickle, Jr. of Millington, TN.

Phyllis Tickle announced in May that she has been diagnosed with inoperable stage four lung cancer.

Tickle was the founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, the international journal of the book industry. She is an authority on religion in America and has been a much sought after lecturer on the subject for two decades. In addition to poems, lectures, and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, she is the author of over three dozen books in religion and spirituality, most recently The Age of the Spirit; Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters; The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why; and The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord. She is also the author of the notable and popular The Divine Hours series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer.

A collection of Tickle’s writings were added to the “Modern Spiritual Masters” series of Orbis Books in 2015 under the title Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings, selected with an introduction by Jon M. Sweeney. Sweeney is also now researching and writing a biography, Phyllis Tickle, to be published sometime in 2018.

The Phyllis A. Tickle Literary Trust may be contacted by writing: Tickle, Inc., 3522 Lucy Road South, Millington, TN 38053-7817 or rt.tickle.inc@gmail.com.

* * * * * * * * * *

A review of Phyllis Tickle's Emergence Christianity

Viola Larsen

January 7, 2013

Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters

By Phyllis Tickle, Baker Books, 237 pages

History, religious movements and ideas do not come in neat packages. As a young student going to a one room country school my understanding of the past was idealistic. That is because the text books I hoisted onto my lap, as I placed my feet on the oven door to read, were written from an ideal perspective. The authors used the ‘great men’ version of history writing. But no matter, my teacher, Bessie Stevens, tall and looming, with her gray hair in a bun, after morning devotions, read us Marxists stories of the new Russia, with a bit of historical flavor. 

Historiography, the study of historical theory or how history is written, is for the history major generally a required subject. And it breaks apart most idealism including conservative and Marxist histories.

There is the method of using ‘great men,’ mentioned above—which is great reading; there is the Annals school which has great documentation but is often boring. Try reading four-hundred pages of weather cycles, crop loss, deaths and births in the Mediterranean region. There is also cyclical history writing. That is the idea that history is made up of great cycles of events that often, in some way, repeat themselves. Phyllis Tickle in her book, Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters, is forced into a cycler mode because she sees church history, in the western world, moving in circles of renewal.

By this Tickle means that events begin to accumulate which change culture to the degree that eventually the church is forced to look again at such things as beliefs, worship, authority and structure—with an eye toward discarding some of its supposed baggage.

In both this book and Tickle’s last one, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, she points, among other events, to the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation and the “disestablishment of slavery” as cultural or social events that caused the church to begin remaking itself.

In this latest book Tickle spends some time pulling in what she sees as changing events including recent events which she believes are changing the Church. Next she looks at various groups that she now believes can be seen as members of the Emergence community. The middle section of the book is filled with photographs with explanation of various groups participating in Emergence activity. The latter part of the book deals more with what Emergence Christianity believes.

I want to look at two of Tickle’s assumptions: her inclination to subsume everything under Emergence Christianity, and the theology that Tickle believes is emerging from the movement.

In my review of Tickle’s earlier book, The Great Emergence, I pointed out that Tickle had attempted to tie a parochial movement of the United States and Great Britain to the global community by connecting it to such events as the Reformation and the Great Schism. In Emergence Christianity, Tickle seemingly corrects this by pulling in a wider girth of participants. In the earlier book on Emergence she failed to see other movements within the United States that were more apt to bring renewal and change. In Tickle’s new book she simply subsumes them under emergence by referring to them as “push backs.” In other words Tickle places all Christian movements under Emergence Christianity.

Calling it peri-Emergence times and pulling in the global community, Tickle uses Vatican II and its attending bishops who came from differing continents. She refers to Liberation theology and black theologian activist James Cone; she also mentions, in the same breath Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, their Catholic Worker and hospitality houses. (72-76)

The priest Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino along with Martyr Oscar Romero also become members of the peri-Emergence times. Then feminist and LGBT rights activists get added to the mix. While some of these historical figures certainly fit with a lot of Emergent ideas some are simply strains of Christianity as it has always been, living in poverty, caring for the poor and needy and suffering in the process. Tickle’s emphasis on Romero’s death and her placement of him in the mix of peri-Emergence means she fails to understand Romero’s self-identity. He once stated:

The Church will always have its word to say: conversion. Progress will not be completed even if we organize ideally the economy and the political and social orders of our people. It won’t be entire with that. That will be the basis, so that it can be completed by what the church pursues and proclaims: God adored by all, Christ acknowledged as only Savior, deep joy of spirit in being at peace with God and with our brothers and sisters.[1]

Certainly Vatican II, although offering some reforms, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin as well as Oscar Romero, given their theological foundations, would have nothing to do with the idea that they were peri-Emergence. They were all orthodox in their Christology and all pro-life in their worldview. One cannot simply gather up every Christian religious movement and person and claim them as spiritual ancestors. A gatherer of rags starts with rags, but when one gathers various materials, some shining in their reflection of light, others diminished by their inability to reflect, and suggest that they all belong to the same category—all are diminished.

In Tickle’s proclivity for gathering all Christian religious movements under her heading of Emergence Christianity she does recognize the rise of Calvinism in our own day. But failing to recognize them in their own right, Tickle identifies them as push backs against Emergence. Tickle, after writing of what Calvinism is, states:

None of this is new, of course, but neither is it revival. Rather, it is, as we have said, push-back. It is the application of one integrated body of orthodox, Latinized Christian teaching to Great Emergence circumstances. It is resistance to Great Emergence in many ways, while at the same time sharing Emergence’s etiology and essence. As such and because of its sheer size, it will be a participant in, or at the very least a potent influence upon the events and decisions that, during the coming decades, will determine the shape of Emergence Christianity in its full maturity. (189)

Tickle names Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City as one of the new Calvinist. One wonders if Keller would be surprised to find out that his identity is as a push-back to Emergence. (See note 6, 190)

Tickle attempts to explain somewhat the beliefs of those she sees directly involved in Emergent Christianity and Emerging Christianity. Yes, she does split Emergence Christianity into two movements. This is important information because it does change how one might view one group of Emergence Christianity as opposed to others. Tickle writes that there are emerging Christians and emergent Christians. Of the difference she writes:

Emergent Christianity/Village Church/Christians are aggressively all-inclusive and non-patriarchal. They are far more interested in the actuality of Scripture than its historicity or literal inerrancy. … By and large, Emerging Christianity, Church, Christians could not differ with these positions if they tried.[2] (142)

Tickle also points out that although several well known members of Emergence Christianity, Scot McKnight and Mark Driscoll, at first referred to themselves as emerging/emergent, they changed to simply emerging after Brian McLaren published his book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. The point for me is that there are some who reside closer to orthodoxy than others. Tickle’s theological explanations often do not resemble orthodoxy. (143)

In explaining Emergence Christianity’s theological outlook, Tickle sometimes tends, toward a monarchial view of the Trinity, the persons are simply the actions of God during various ages. After referring to the Trinity as It and explaining many of the Trinity’s actions throughout the Bible, Tickle writes:

The Trinity comes now near to the promised realization of its intention. It comes, as It said it would. And What we saw and feared in the image of the Father, What we saw and embraced as Savior-Brother, we now know as Spirit and cling to as Advocate, even as It has said of Itself from the beginning. Now, without need of image or flesh, It comes, and we receive It as in the last of creation’s ages.(208)

One of the misunderstandings here is what is implied when one speaks of the Trinity. Trinity is always Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so one cannot refer to God as Trinity without including each person. In the same way the persons are not parts. They are each fully God. They are of the same essence. The Trinity is a mystery worth understanding—which is truly paradox.

At other times in her book it is fairly clear that Tickle understands the distinctions within the Godhead, as when she writes about perichoresis, but even here she refers to the distinctions as parts.[3] (172-73) The problem for Tickle is that she sees the ages divided into different manifestations of the Trinity which is itself an old heresy. And the emphasis in the heresy is always on the time of the Spirit which is always contemporary with whichever particular person or group is promoting the theology.[4]

As in The Great Emergence the authority of Scripture is also questioned in this book in several places. Tickle first of all suggests what is needed for authority—which in itself is scary, in another place she offers what she believes will be the authority. Her idea of what is needed is:

… Emergence Christianity, hopefully in conjunction with other communions within the faith, is free to discover and acknowledge an authority based on the paradigm of the kingdom of God on earth. At the same time, however, it must also discover and acknowledge an authority, if possible, that provides for Christians a peaceful cohabitation with the political or secular authority that frames the physical life … (193)

Tickle believes that Emergence Christianity has and does use both Scripture and story as a “code.” They will also use community, in prayer, as the “agency” for finding authority within the code of Scripture and story. Tickle asks “what shall animate the union of those two and make of them a sacred authority.” (206)

The final big doctrinal issue that is addressed by Tickle as it relates to Emergence Christianity is the atonement. She calls it the bitterest question. Tickle, like some before her, writes as though Scripture has nothing at all to say about the atonement. But this is also a misunderstanding. Atonement theories are theories about how the atonement works—not about whether the atonement is true or not. And all of the theories if understood properly work together.

But evidently Emergence Christians, alongside feminist theologians and progressives consider the death of the Son child abuse. Tickle writes:

For Emergence Christianity—and here there is more unanimity than in some other areas of belief—the concept of an omnipotent and omniscient God who could find no better solution than that to the problem of sin is a contradiction of the first order . Even more repugnant is the notion that, if penal substation as it is popularly and colloquially understood today is indeed the correct understanding of what happen at Calvary, then Christians are asked to accept as Father a God who killed his only Son. (197)

Tickle is quick to explain that those who believe in substitutionary atonement would reply that it is God who sacrifices himself. But she believes that most would not understand and perhaps the better way would be to follow the views of Greek Orthodoxy. But there is a bit of misunderstanding in all of this. While Orthodox theology is more concerned to align salvation with the incarnation and the Christian's union with God, and protestant Christianity is more concerned with atonement there are overlaps. And Orthodoxy would not say that Christ did not die for our sins, however they would, wrongly I believe, insist Christ was not a substitute for us.

But the more important position is the biblical text—which includes Jesus’ death for our sin as well as our union with Christ.

For while we were helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. … But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5: 6, 8-11)

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. (Gal. 2:20)

Here and there Tickle’s information is interesting and some of it is new. The pictures in the middle of her book with written explanations about their meaning are helpful as is her annotated bibliography. But there is so much misinformation including a rigid, twisted view of church history, that Emergence Christianity is more problematic than helpful. Church history is sad yet good, bitter with sin, joyous with saints, bloody with martyrs, glad with charity and gloriously full of the work of the Trinity. And it’s foundations, essentials and faith will not change.

[1]Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love: The Words of Oscar Romero, trans., James R. Brockman, forward, Henri Nouwen, reprint, (London: Fount Paperbacks, Collins 1989). 10 Quote found at, “Liberation Theology and whippoorwills.”

[2] Tickle places all those involved in Village Church, www.emergentvillage.com as belonging to Emergent rather than emerging.

[3] Tickle states that the idea of perichoresis, the understanding of the communal relationship between the persons of the Trinity, belongs to the Greek Orthodox; perhaps it does but I first learned of this term from an excellent Reformed professor, James Torrance.

[4] See for instance, Phyllis Tickle: The Age of the Spirit

* * * * * * * * * *

Sorry, 'Emergence Christianity' Still Isn't the Reformation

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/november-web-only/sorry-emergence-christianity-still-isnt-reformation.html

Phyllis Tickle's investigation into the varieties of "emergence Christianity" is insufficiently skeptical about "this new thing that God is doing."

Stephen J. Nichols/ NOVEMBER 9, 2012

OUR RATING

BOOK TITLE

Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters

AUTHOR

Phyllis Tickle

PUBLISHER

Baker Books

RELEASE DATE

September 1, 2012

PAGES

240

PRICE

$8.98

Through a series of vignettes and a 32-page photographic essay, Phyllis Tickle, former and founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, takes readers on a journey through the world of what she calls "emergence Christianity." No stranger to this terrain, Tickle's Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters(Baker) is her fourth installment on "this new thing that God is doing," her own descriptive tag from the preface. Building on her previous books, such as The Great Emergence(2008), this book offers another interim field report.

I for one am grateful for Tickle's work. Getting a handle on the present is no small task, and when that present includes something as amorphous as the "emerging church" phenomenon, the difficulty only increases. As one endorsement of the book notes, Tickle has a way of seeing and making connections among varying pockets of emergence Christianity. She weaves these divergent stories into a larger, unified one. In other words, this book helps us see emergence Christianity. The photographic essay makes that description more than a metaphor.

Tickle's historical discussions of both the distant and more recent past significantly shape her sense of the present. She starts the book by noting that significant changes tend to come every five hundred or so years, including the coming of Christ in the first century, the era of the consolidation of the church under Gregory in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Great Schism of the 11th century, and the Reformation of the 16th century. From this historical trend, Tickle deduces that, here in the 2000s, we're poised for another such seismic change. She also offers readers a handy take on the more recent past, that of the last few decades and the emergence, if you will, of emergence Christianity. Those new to the party will appreciate her back-stories in chapters one through twelve.

In chapters thirteen to nineteen, Tickle takes us along on her travels to emergence outposts in both words and, as already noted, pictures. Her travels through these "fresh expressions" of Christianity cross geo-political boundaries (though the book mostly talks about the West and Latinized Christianity) and ecclesiastical boundaries, as Anglicans and Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and more come into view. She even crosses the boundaries of concrete existence as she looks at cyber-world manifestations of emergence Christianity, such as 1PSL (First Presbyterian Church of Second Life), which congregates in the world of "virtual reality."

The final chapters offer an assessment of these trends and a bit of prophecy, as Tickle attempts to decipher where emergence Christianity may go. She raises two theological issues as her book draws to a close. First comes a problematic treatment of emergent attitudes toward atonement. She begins by declaring that "Christianity, in its early days, had no theory of atonement or of its mechanics." She then proceeds to note the remarkable unanimity of emergence Christianity in rejecting the view of substitutionary atonement, seen by her as the most recent of theories. She rejects this "repugnant" theory of "God as cosmic child abuser," and adds, "Substitutionary conversation in any form is in error." And Tickle makes all these pronouncements without ever referencing or discussing a single biblical text.

But she also rather acutely lands on the question of authority, a telltale issue for emergence Christianity now and to come. Tickle envisions authority, in the emergent world, as a union between the "primacy of Scripture" as an authoritative text and the "primacy of community, of the body together in prayer" as the instrument through which Scripture's authority gets worked out. What shall animate the union of Scripture and community? In posing this question, Tickle has identified an important question on the horizon.

Emergence Good, Traditional Bad?

Though Emergence Christianity deserves appreciation for helping make sense of the current horizon, the book does not stand above some objections. First, the book offers no real criticism of emergence Christianity. Though she admits to certain failures on the part of emergence leaders and undertakings, she pulls back from more full-throated criticism. Tickle has the opportunity to ask hard questions of emergence leaders, but she doesn't. She assumes their motives are pure and, as a general rule, accepts what they say and do at face value. Conversely, she has no problem decrying the traditional church, as with her treatment of tithing and reference to the "strong odor of institutional self-interest." Her take on the emergence approach to the subject of monetary giving? "Laudable indeed." Also, she has a rather surface-level take on the cyber versions of emergence: "Church in virtuality is to church in corporeality as banking in virtuality is to banking in corporeality." Just as "the banking gets done either way," church, apparently, can get done either way. But that's way too simplistic an analysis of both virtual reality and the doctrine of the church. In general, Tickle tends to accept, if not applaud, rather than question.

My point is not that the traditional church was or is pristine. Quite the opposite. Nefarious motives and practices, and even abuses, may be abundantly found. But what is gained by the stark contrast Tickle presents of emergence good, traditional bad? Does that approach truly assist emergence Christianity to become biblically faithful? Also, while it is one thing to say emergence is a new tributary in the kingdom of God, it is quite another to call emergence Christianity "this new thing God is doing." Much like any country claiming "chosen-nation" status will act according to its own predilections under the cover of its "divine mandate," so any church movement that assumes the blessing of God will lack the necessary traits of self-reflection and self-criticism. Emergence Christianity, like any and all forms, needs an assessment that asks hard questions.

This slides into my second criticism, that the present is simply too privileged. We are simply too close to emergence Christianity to compare it to the Reformation. (Not to mention: Comparisons of Brian McLaren to Martin Luther simply need to stop.) We have no way of seeing what its legacy may be, and we should refrain from giving it a status it might not deserve. It strikes one as a rather modern idea to think so highly of the present moment and one's own significance.

More substantially, the privileging of the present affects not only the way Tickle views emergence Christianity, but also the way she reads Scripture. This gets to the heart of the matter, the question of authority. Tickle articulates the consensus view of Scripture held by emergence Christianity when she describes Scripture as "received, during discernment, prayer, and teachings, into their own beingness." This goes back to her understanding of the question of authority—the twin factors being Scripture as the authoritative text, and community as the authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

Tickle is not calling for a union of equals; she wants to give Scripture a higher place than community. But isn't she risking the opposite outcome? After all, Scripture, on her account, does not stand over or above emergence groups; it is always within the community and subject to the community. How does that not lead to Scripture on our own terms?

Of course, the people of God do participate in Scripture. It is the Living Word, and we do—or at least we should—enter into it. But how do we enter in? How do we delineate that relationship? The church cannot afford a fuzzy answer to that question. Nor can it afford a wrong answer. I'm not being an extremist here or committing the slippery slope fallacy. I'm honestly asking: How does the emergence view of Scripture not lead us to accepting Scripture on our own terms?

Of course there will always be a difference between our interpretation or appropriation of—or more importantly, our obedience to—the text and the text itself. But to do away with any distinction, to always and only see the text as in conversation with the present, is problematic.

Tickle offers a helpful description of emergence Christianity, and in that task she succeeds rather nicely. But once her book moves beyond description, she misses some opportunities to raise important questions. No one likes hard questions, but where would we be without them?

Stephen J. Nichols is research professor of Christianity and culture at Lancaster Bible College and the author ofWelcome to the Story: Reading, Loving, and Living God's Word (Crossway).