When Did Evangelicalism Start to Go Wrong (or, Right)?

http://rogereolson.com/2011/05/11/when-did-evangelicalism-start-to-go-wrong-right/

by Roger Olson

May 11, 2011

By “go wrong” I mean - "go[ing] too conservative for its own good". I think I have an answer to that and I’ve been telling people this for 25 years. I’ll say it again.

The turning point was the publication and subsequent furor over the book The Battle for the Bible, written by Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell, in 1976. Of course, the book didn’t just pop out of Lindsell’s head like Athena from Zeus. It had a pre-history. Lindsell and a few other evangelicals had been sounding alarms for some years–about alleged evangelical defections from evangelical orthodoxy.

Lindsell had taught at Fuller Theological Seminary and, by some accounts, at least, was angry that Fuller did not offer him its presidency. Whether that’s true or not, and whether if it is true it played any role in Lindsell’s bitter book, we may never know for sure.

Probably, however, Lindsell’s jeremiad was caused by what he perceived to be Fuller’s defection from full faith in biblical inerrancy in the 1960s.

In any case, Lindsell was not content to present a defense of inerrancy; he named names and declared that no one can be authentically evangelical without affirming inerrancy. Few outside separatistic fundamentalist circles had said that before Lindsell. After all, one can point back to James Orr, the eminent Scottish evangelical theologian, who wrote for The Fundamentals and was a close friend of [theologian] B. B. Warfield’s. Orr did not believe in biblical inerrancy.

Again, let me repeat. The turning point in The Battle for the Bible was NOT belief in inerrancy. It was Lindsell’s claim that one cannot be evangelical and deny inerrancy. And it was the vitriolic attacks he launched on evangelical colleges, seminaries and individuals.

There were many ironies in Lindsell’s crusade–both in the book and in other writings. For example, he specifically chose Robert Mounce as one of his targets for Mounce’s very well-reasoned and balanced approach to explaining inerrancy in columns in Eternity magazine in the early 1970s. Mounce’s approach was basically that the Bible is perfect with respect to purpose; he argued that we must not impose a modern, scientific standard of what constitutes “error” on the Bible. He wrote that the biblical writers were not trying to give a “flawless performance in statistics” and thus should not be accused of error if they were not always technically correct in matters of history and cosmology.

Lindsell lambasted Mounce for this. The irony is, of course, that later, the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, which Lindsell signed, contained much the same view of inerrancy as Mounce’s! When I saw that I was dismayed. It made me wonder about Lindsell’s integrity because, to the best of my knowledge, he never apologized to Mounce or admitted his inconsistency.

I was in seminary when The Battle for the Bible landed like a bombshell on the playgrounds of the evangelicals. It was a thoroughly mainstream evangelical seminary, but it had never had an affirmation of inerrancy. Some professors professed belief in inerrancy and some did not. It was not a litmus test there or in most evangelical institutions before The Battle for the Bible.

What was especially dismaying to me was some of our faculty members’ responses when the denomination imposed an inerrancy statement and required all faculty to sign it. I saw some faculty members who I KNEW did not believe in inerrancy cave in and sign it to keep their jobs. One did not and left. I respected him for that.

The Battle for the Bible launched an evangelical heresy-hunt that reached epic proportions within just a few years. I followed it closely as I hoped to teach theology among evangelicals after my Ph.D. work. One by one, evangelical and Baptist denominations and institutions imposed inerrancy statements on their employees and faculties. Fuller is one evangelical seminary that did not give in to the pressure, although Fuller faculty members had to publish numerous defenses of their belief in the authority of Scripture to fight off the barbarians at the gates. (I call them that because many of inerrancy’s advocates behaved like barbarians. They were not interested in dialogue or understanding others’ actual views; they used the word “inerrancy” like a cudgel to beat up on people.)

I remember one discussion I had with an officer of a leading evangelical professional society that required affirmation of biblical inerrancy for membership. I told him I did not think the word “inerrancy” fit the phenomena of Scripture, but that I do believe in Scripture’s full authority. After sustained discussion we realized that, given his qualifications to inerrancy, he and I agreed on our view of the Bible! Then I asked if I could join his professional society. He said no; one must not only believe in the Bible’s inerrancy (as he defined it) but must also affirm the word.

Talk about creating a shibboleth!

I gradually concluded that that is pretty much what this whole controversy was about–a word. And the word was being used to give certain people great power. You can frighten uneducated people by saying “So-and-so doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of the Bible” when, in fact, if you explained YOUR OWN qualifications to “inerrancy” the same frightened people would reject you!

When I read the qualifications of inerrancy being made by signers of the Chicago Declaration (both in it and in their own writings) I was appalled and shocked. For example, one leading advocate of inerrancy wrote in his systematic theology that “inerrancy” is compatible with “inerrant use of errant sources” by biblical authors. In other words, the Bible is inerrant even if it contains blatant errors so long as the biblical writer who erred didn’t err in his use of sources. How ludicrous! Why not just give up on the word inerrancy once you’ve come to that point?

Now, here’s my point and my revelation. Most people think of Carl F. H. Henry as “the dean of evangelical theologians” and he was. Time magazine baptized him as such. He was the founding editor of CT and taught in several evangelical institutions. What did he think about this whole controversy over inerrancy?

Henry was a strong advocate of inerrancy–with qualifications, of course. But he DID NOT AGREE WITH LINDSELL that one cannot be an evangelical and deny inerrancy. Henry believed one cannot be CONSISTENTLY evangelical and deny inerrancy. And he said these things publicly in response to Lindsell’s book and the controversy surrounding it. (And I had personal correspondence with him confirming this.)

Henry’s final “Footnotes” column in Christianity Today was on September 9, 1977–about one year after the publication of Battle for the Bible. He made clear that he was being fired as a guest writer for the magazine he co-founded. Here’s what he wrote:

“Across the years I have had reason to remember an experience in my pre-Christian teenage days. I once lost a job as a painter’s helper when I tried to straighten a three-story ladder. Perched uneasily aloft, my boss was retouching some windows when the ladder moved disconcertingly to the right. My instinctive effort to rectify the misalignment separated me from my job more quickly than it takes to say good-bye. I thought I had learned that lesson well: don’t straighten tilting ladders, particularly not if they tilt too far right.”

There can be no doubt to what he was referring–evangelicalism leaning too far right. It has continued to do so ever since. The Battle for the Bible was the crucial turning point–when evangelicalism began to return to its fundamentalist roots.

In a forthcoming book about evangelicalism a leading seminary dean declared me not truly evangelical, in part, at least, because I do not affirm inerrancy. (Although I insist that my view of the Bible is the same as what at least SOME conservative evangelicals believe about the Bible and misleadingly call “inerrancy.”) And that seminary dean is out of touch with Carl Henry, one of his heroes.

Ironically, on the same page of CT where the Henry quote appears, there is a large advertisement for a “Super Conference” at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, featuring lead speaker Jerry Falwell–who had until then been known as a separatistic fundamentalist and not an evangelical in the postfundamentalist sense. The times they were a changin’!

Love Is Not Weak

http://rachelheldevans.com/love-is-not-weak

by Rachel Held Evans

May 11, 2011

"Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (I John 4:7-8)

The problem with love is that it can’t be systematized.

It can’t be explained, controlled, regulated, or legislated.

It’s something you know, but can’t exactly teach; something you experience but can’t contain.

Love both inhabits and transcends our religious categories. It’s wild and unpredictable and prone to showing up in places we’d rather it not be.

Love defies expectations.

I think perhaps that’s why I keep bumping into theologians and religious leaders who turn their noses up at the suggestion that love is the most fundamental element of Christianity. “Well what do you mean by love?” they demand. “Because it’s not very loving to let people walk around with bad theology, now is it?”

I encounter such people at conferences and in radio interviews, in local churches and online, and I understand their concerns. They are worried that a new generation of Christians is slipping into a sort of feel-good faith devoid of conviction, reason, and doctrine.

In some cases their fears are justified, but in most I think they’ve just confused the idea of love with the idea of niceness. They seem to think that because love is so elusive and hard to define, it must be weak— the ideological crutch for those who don’t want to offend.

But when I consider the love that Jesus showed and that I am commanded to imitate, the last words to come to my mind are “nice” or “weak.”

To love as Jesus loved requires more strength and conviction than a human being without the Spirit can muster. It requires giving without expecting anything in return, forgiving enemies, witholding judgment, assuming the position of a servant, looking after the forgotten, and caring for neighbors. It requires living counter-culturally by resisting the temptations of indulgent wealth and self-serving power. The kind of love that Jesus taught and exemplified crystallizes on the cross, where looking down on those who had put him there Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

That. [Kind. Of. Love.] Is. Not. Weak.

Love is good theology because God is love. According to both John and Paul, a life devoid of love is a life devoid of good theology. Without love, we are clanging cymbals, useless noise. Without love, all our carefully-crafted apologetic arguments mean nothing.

That said, I hope that those of us who keep talking about love avoid sabotaging our efforts by failing to embody it, both among the “least of these” and among our brothers and sisters who raise thoughtful concerns about how all this talk of love will affect our doctrine.

...I think sometimes we just forget that we’re actually talking about the same thing.

Being Human 2

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/05/12/being-human-2-rjs/

by RJS

May 12, 2011

On Tuesday I began a series on Joel B. Green’s book Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Over the course of the next few months, once or twice a week, I will work through the questions raised by Green on the nature of humanity in the context of scripture, theology, and modern neuroscience.

The view that humans are composed of a physical material body and a separate immaterial soul is the default position for most Christians. This dualist view is increasingly difficult to reconcile with improved understanding of biology, biochemistry, and neuroscience. I’ve posted on some of this before. The posts can be found through the Science and Faith Archive on the sidebar – scroll down to the heading Science, Faith, and Being Human. Dr. Green gives definitions for some of the important concepts and terms at play in the discussion of the nature of humanity. The two extreme positions are:

Reductive Materialism has it that the human person is a physical (or material) organism, whose emotional, moral, and religious experiences will ultimately and decisively be explained by the natural sciences. People are nothing but the product of organic chemistry. (p. 30)

and

Radical Dualism advocates the view that the soul (or mind) is separable from the body, having no necessary relation to the body, with the human person identified with the soul. … in this view the soul acts apart from bodily processes and the body is nothing more than a temporary and disposable holding tank (or shell) for the soul. (p. 31)

I’ll give some intermediate options after the jump.

Where would you put your position on the continuum between these two poles? Closer to reductive materialism or radical dualism?

There are a number of positions between the extremes of reductive materialism and radical dualism.

Wholistic dualism … a form of substance dualism, but posits that the human person, though composed of discrete elements, is nonetheless to be identified with the whole which, then, constitutes a functional unity. (p. 31)

Various forms of monism are also defended from a Christian perspective.

…the monists with whom I am concerned argue that the phenomenological experiences that we label “soul” are neither reducible to brain activity nor evidence of a substantial, ontological entity such as a “soul,” but rather represent essential aspects or capacities of the self. (p. 31)

These four terms form a basis for the discussion that will come in future posts. There is another important aspect of human existence that we should consider before moving on though.

Individual vs Community. The witness of the bible in both the Old and New Testaments is to an embodied existence of humans, humans always considered as in relationship to God, and humans who are always considered in the context of human community. The cultural blinders like those that impact interpretation of body and soul in scripture also impact interpretation of the communal nature of personhood.

Given the strength of Cartesian categories and the experience of many since the Enlightenment, it is perhaps not surprising to see the degree to which humanity has come to be understood “one person at a time,” so to speak. This is not biblical faith however. Although biblical faith would naturally resist any suggestion that our humanity can be reduced to our physicality, it also challenges those, past and present, who insist that the human person can ever be understood on individual terms.

Thus a consideration of the nature of humanity in the bible in the context of modern neuroscience must deal with both the embodied nature of humans and the relational nature of humans. This impacts the understanding of eschatology, salvation, and mission. As a people we are much more than a collection of individuals.

Dr. Green considers poses several questions that highlight the relational nature of humanity and this impact this may have on our understanding of the biblical view of humanity. These questions can help shape the discussion today.

How should we understand salvation? Does salvation entail a focus on the inner state of individual human souls?

To what extent should the mission of the church focus on the soulish needs of persons, on society-at-large, or on the cosmos?

*********

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Being Human 1

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/05/10/being-human-1-rjs/

by RJS

May 10, 2011

About a year ago I promised (and intended) to read and post on Joel B. Green’s book Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Other topics and time constraints interfered and this book was pushed further down the line. This summer, however, provides a good opportunity for digging into the book. Over the course of the next few months, once or twice a week, I will work through the questions raised by Green on the nature of humanity in the context of scripture, theology, and modern neuroscience.

The view that humans are composed of a physical material body and a separate immaterial soul is the default position for most Christians. This dualist view is increasingly difficult to reconcile with improved understanding of biology, biochemistry, and neuroscience. I’ve posted on some of this before. The posts can be found through the Science and Faith Archive on the sidebar – scroll down to the heading Science, Faith, and Being Human. The challenge to the dualist view is not simply scientific though. Study of the context of the old and new testaments suggests that the dualist view of humanity is foreign to the text, coming in large part from the Greek context of early Christians.

Joel B. Green is Professor of New Testament interpretation and Associate Dean for the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. Before that he served on the faculty and administration of Asbury Theological Seminary. When Joel Green became interested in the questions of body and soul he responded by pursuing the topic from biblical, theological, philosophical, and scientific directions. Although trained in New Testament, he began graduate work in neuroscience at the University of Kentucky. While I don’t believe he completed a degree before moving to Fuller, he has a more complete perspective on the topic than many theologians or philosophers. In order to engage the topic fully it is necessary to understand the arguments from a variety of different perspectives.

From the product description:

Exploring what Scripture and theology teach about issues such as being in the divine image, the importance of community, sin, free will, salvation, and the afterlife, Joel Green argues that a dualistic view of the human person is inconsistent with both science and Scripture. This wide-ranging discussion is sure to provoke much thought and debate.

The question here is not does science undermine the Christian understanding of persons? but rather what is the biblical view of persons? This leads to a corollary question: how do we integrate the biblical understanding of persons with the scientific understanding of persons? Dr. Green’s book provides an excellent starting point for this discussion.

What is the biblical view of persons?

Do humans consist of a separable material body and immaterial soul? What does this mean?

The first chapter of Body, Soul, and Human Life lays the ground work for engagement with the questions involving the nature of humanity.

Dr. Green begins with a sketch of recent developments in theological thinking about body and soul, the use of the Greek words soma and psyche in the NT, and traditional theologies of the soul beginning with the early church fathers. In the late second century, ca. 200 AD, there is clear evidence for a theology which separates body and soul. Green gives evidence for the early understanding of the church by citing the The Epistle to Diognetus (late second century) which contains statements like “the soul lives in the body, but it does not belong to the body” and “the soul is imprisoned in the body, but it sustains the body” and Tertullian in his Treatise on the Soul (ca. 203 AD).

On the other hand, it is not clear that this idea of a duality to human substance is present in the New Testament and it seems virtually certain that it is not an Old Testament concept. As a result modern theologians and biblical scholars have been moving away from the traditional dualist position. It is necessary to carefully consider the biblical texts to determine what is taught and what is presumed about the nature of human persons.

Why Science Matters.

Dr. Green then moves into a discussion of the relevance of science to the discussion of body and soul. Some Christians will deny that science has anything to contribute to our understanding of the soul and the nature of persons. If science is opposed to the existence of a soul, then science must simply be wrong. Christian understanding trumps science. Many bristle at the idea that modern science could or should have a place at the table serving as a source for development of a Christian theology of persons (or creation, or anything else). Dr. Green suggests that this results from a poor understanding of the development of Christian thought in the first place. “Science” or more precisely cultural understandings of the nature of persons has always shaped Jewish and Christian thinking about the body and the soul.

The most simple reply is that science already informs exegesis; it is only a question on which science or whose, good science or bad. (p. 21)

And a little later he lays this out quite clearly:

Epistemologically, we cannot bypass the reality that, whether acknowledged or not, natural science is and has always been part of our worldview – recognizing, of course, that “natural science” takes forms and follows protocols today that in many of its particulars would hardly be recognizable to Babylonian, Egyptian, or Greek scientists and natural philosophers. The question is not whether science will influence exegesis (or vice versa) since the two, science and religion, have interacted and continue to interact in a far more organic way than is typically acknowledged. As a consequence, from a historical perspective, it is virtually impossible to extricate one influence from the other, or chronologically to prioritize on vis-à-vis the other. This is true in regard to the science presumed of the biblical writers. It is also true of the science presumed of biblical interpreters and theologians from the second century onward. We have before us a long history of interpreters of biblical texts who have engaged those texts on the basis of "scientific views" of the human person pervasive in the worlds of those interpreters (irrespective of their currency in antiquity or today). (pp. 24-25)

We cannot separate bible from culture.

It is not possible to separate extrabiblical and biblical sources for understanding and teaching in the church. These are always intertwined. There is also no reason to assume that God’s revelation, in relationship with his creatures, reflects a more perfect or a less perfect understanding of the material nature of human persons localized at any one ancient point in time. Rather, to return to a framework that came up in our discussion of Denis Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation, many aspects of the cultural context, including the understanding of “natural science”, is incidental to the purpose of the text. We err when we allow a particular scientific rendering of the text, whether that of the original human authors or that of later interpreters, to, as Dr. Green puts it, masquerade as “timeless truth”.

Awareness of the situation of both biblical texts and biblical interpretations in time and place, cultural context, provides an important insight into the message found in the text.

Hermeneutically, then, my point is that deliberately locating our interpretive work in relation to science does not necessitate our reading contemporary science back into the ancient texts in a gross form of anachronism, nor that it subject biblical interpretation to the ebb and flow of scientific discovery. We have no need to imagine that the ancients, even the biblical writers, had it right with respect to the role of cerebral spinal fluid or the ventricular cavities. (They were wrong on both accounts.) Rather, doing exegesis in an age of science increases our awareness of the scientific assumptions of the third or fourth or even eighteenth centuries that have already shaped the history of interpretation – and that have the potential to set artificial parameters for our own reading of the biblical texts. (p. 28)

Dr. Green suggests that reading the text with an eye toward science, particularly in the case relevant to this book the neurosciences, as with reading from other specific perspectives (poverty, injustice, persecution, suffering, calvinism, sovereignty of God, freedom, etc.) can allow questions to surface that would have otherwise remained unasked and unanswered. We must take care not to allow some pet perspective to dictate all we find in scripture, but looking at the text through new eyes, from a different perspective, can be illuminating.

In this context Dr. Green poses the question:

What is the effect of studying biblical anthropology in today’s context of scientific inquiry?

This is a good place to stop and start a conversation.

What do you think? Should science inform our understanding of the nature of human life?

How do we distinguish the role played by presumptions of culture – either ancient near eastern culture or the culture of later interpreters – from the revelation of God in scripture?

*********

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

The End of Evangelicalism 4

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/05/11/the-end-of-evangelicalism-4/

Scot McKnight

May 11, 2011

What happens, then, to the doctrine of Scripture if David Fitch is right? What happens to what he calls “the Inerrant Bible” model — the model that speaks a polemical and ideological language game as it flows out of the modernist-fundamentalist debate and speaks against the liberal model? In his new book, The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions), David Fitch proposes a view of Scripture that is both evangelical and missional.

Fitch’s influences on how to comprehend Scripture in the new model, in a model that gets beyond the ideology of evangelicalism and back into the missional model that Bible seeks to create.

His primary influencers are Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kevin Vanhoozer and Christopher Wright. I can’t summarize all [that] he says with any particularity, but he gets:

• the Trinitarian and Christological emphases from Barth — Scriptures extend the incarnation into the church.
• Balthasar focuses on Scripture as part of Christ himself (135) and our need to embody Scripture.
• Vanhoozer, known for his extension of Balthasar’s “theo-drama” into the Scripture being both revelation and in need of performance as a script in order to be seen and proclaimed.
• And Chris Wright’s emphasis is that Scripture is designed to serve the mission of God in this world.

But this is where Fitch is headed: “These theologians prod us to leave behind the Bible as ‘inerrant according to the original autographs’ to instead understand it as ‘our one and true story of God for the world — infallible in and through Jesus Christ our Lord’” (138).

Here’s the primary model — and this is my idea — of classic evangelicalism: the order is God, revelation, inspiration, inerrancy, authority… and this model of Scripture becomes the epistemic foundation and the first article of theology.

But there is room here to move without denying the value of these concepts to see God as Trinity, God as having a mission, God as revealing God in Christ in definitive and final form, and then Spirit as surrounding all of this and then Church as flowing out of the incarnation and pneumatic guidance and seeing Scripture as the primary — prima scriptura — form of expression. Scripture then is the primary “script” of the mission of God in this world.

This leads in Fitch’s view to a major shift in preaching: from expository preaching (which he sees as modernity and also as part of the ideology) to proclaiming the mission of God in Christ through the Spirit and inviting others into that mission. Bible reading is not just inductive and personal but corporate and narratival.

continue to -

 

The End of Evangelicalism 2 & 3

 

The End of Evangelicalism 5

 

 

 

 

 

Pluralism, Tolerance and Accommodation: In You, the Kingdom of God Has Come

"I hear today for the first, the river in the tree." - Poet Emily Dickinson

In You, the Kingdom of God Has Come

I am beginning a new section of inquiry which will be titled loosely under the themes of "pluralism, tolerance, and accommodation" and will intentionally cover the intersections of religious belief as it touches upon personal comportment and sociological behaviors and groupings. Usually this experience has resulted in the death, genocide, and enslavement of major minority people-groups as evidenced by ethnic Jews in Europe and Russia, the American Indians in America, the Russians, Chinese and SE Asian peoples under Communistic rule, ethnic African tribes in despotic African governments, the Indian cultures of Central and South America, and sadly, this list may go on and on in historical review. And yet these are the more recent historical occurrences either witnessed in our lifetimes or recently occurring in the near past resulting in dominating sociological cultures that have organized their societies around their own dominant ethics, laws and self-identities.

Curiously, one of the most recent major cultural clashes we are witnessing is that of Western civilizations adjusting and accommodating non-Western Islamic societies in a series of regional wars and conflicts, legal re-positionings and decrees, cultural adoptions and recognition. Each is separately stubborn in their own beliefs, religions, idealisms, goals and duties, while reluctantly recognizing the pluses and minuses of the other's systems and politics, economies and structures, strengths and weaknesses.

Positively, some assimilation and accommodation has begun to occur but not enough, and most probably never will, because the distinctions between both cultures are so wide and deep. Which presents the perplexing paradox to each culture as to how to co-exist one with the other in a non-interfering, "peaceable" stand-off while attempting to recognize the rights and liberties, or non-rights and non-liberties, of each culture's dominant belief systems. One side professes (however poorly) personal democratic liberties and freedoms, will the other professes (from this Westener's viewpoint, I admit) a more rigorous application of enforced religious law upon its masses creating sociological caste systems, poverty and gender-based personal inequalities under a dominating sectarian body administrating strict sectarian rule.

Consequently we have an uneasy tolerance between one culture with the other with the latter being more easily recognized by socialistic governments than by their democratic counterparts except for the alienating religious overtones that separates Islamic governments from usurping communistic regimes. Previously, Christian liberation theologies have been adopted by unempowered, undeserved, neglected, abused and misused, impoverished minorities to address many of the ills of majority rule, whether black vs. white in America and elsewhere, or ruling South American regimes over their less-empowered Catholic masses. But this biblical theme or principal does not apply to the current conversation between Christian and Islamic groups within their separate religious spheres of influence, each being the dominating and empowering people group within their own societies and from differing religious foundations.

Furthermore, religiously tolerant governments that are built upon the ideals of ethnic, cultural and gender equality (to name a few) can only be at best agnostic in their rulings, laws and ethics, and will require of its citizenry an "agnosticism" on their own part, so that, (i) a dissimilar minority group's religious beliefs and ethics are not denied, and, (ii) the majority group learns to welcome and not to alienate competing (or adoptive, or assimilated) newer religious and ethnic groups into their more tolerant and pluralistic forms of society. Usually these more urbane societies are organized around the centralizing themes of equality, liberty, freedom after being severely suppressed and discriminated against themselves and having experienced poverty, enslavement, loss of freedoms, rights, and hopelessness. Which, in the case of America, was true of many of its adoptive citizenry when immigrating from British colonial Europe (Scotland, Ireland, Wales); the Scandinavian countries; then Italy, Australia, Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe (WW1,2); the SE Asian countries of China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia under communism; the Mid-East Arabic countries from its turmoil and unrest; the Bosnians fleeing the deadly Serbian massacres of their former country in Yugoslavia; the suppressive and oppressive states of Mexico and Central America; and a plethora of displaced African tribes seeking refuge from gross feudalism and rampant tyranny. Each immigrating people group has brought its own tales of horror and woe, and each hunger for peace and freedom from oppression, violence, disharmony, hate and injustices.

In America we call this form of governmental agnosticism the "separation of Church and State" which is a poor descriptor to employ but a necessary and true conveyance of what must be a factual truth. To use the term "agnosticism" is not to imply the denial of our religious heritage so much as to imply that its citizenry expand their understanding of their religious heritage to cover all forms of faiths and beliefs within our Americanized system of juris prudence. Perhaps a better term can be found, but for the purposes of this document it is a good term to use describing the "neutrality" and "abeyance of suppressing indoctrinations" by a ruling majority people group.

And with every reception of a newer people group to the shores of democracy (regardless of country) comes the reciprocating power of dissolution of governance upon that country or fiefdom that is losing its fleeing masses; thus compounding that country's further loss and destabilization of power by want of exodus upon its masses still imprisoned within their own country. This has recently been witnessed in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The results can be seen plain enough in formerly Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan which have necessarily "democratized" their cultural institutions and adopted state policies of tolerance, freedom and liberty. And in the overthrows of dictatorships and unrest in countries without governing principles of democracy like Russia, China and the Middle East.

All this has been said to state that it is my conviction that a democracy cannot thoroughly succeed without having an "enjoined" (accepted, wanted, scrutinized) Christian foundation. And though non-Christian democracies may attempt this form of rule by its masses by copying varying forms of capitalism, it will ultimately fail (just as American governance can fail) should its citizenry no longer continue to assimilate and expand their Christian understanding of life, liberty and freedom gained from the Scriptures and through Christ. Consequently, democracies will always be faced with the fact of spiraling towards some form of socialism or towards dissolution and anarchy should they drift from the centralizing cornerstones found in Christianity. But to the degree that they do accomplish this through mass acceptance and inward social re-structuring then will those people groups succeed in the task of re-discovering, promoting and maintaining liberty for all peoples of all faiths, beliefs, cultures and heritages.

The basis for my assumption is that only in Christ, his cross and his resurrection, can be found the spiritual power for love and understanding, peace and tolerance, that can overrule our wicked and sinful hearts so soon to violence and destruction of others human beings rights and prerogatives. Moreover, it is in the hope and reality of God's coming kingdom and through the power of Christ's resurrection that any of this may be true and possible. And it is uniquely for us as Westernized Christians to learn to disseminate the Gospel of Christ to all the realms and nations of the world in a missiology that does not enforce westernization, nor promote westernizing culture, because the gospel belongs to every man, to every woman, and to every culture as much as it has belong to our own personal heritages. It must be discovered and adopted by another's inasmuch as it must be de-linked from our own cultural experiences. In Carl Raschke's words, "Christianity has no culture [to] itself but belongs to all cultures” (see GloboChrist review further below in this same section).

And though I could despair that this task might overwhelm the Christian church in schisms and fear, it is my hope that in this era of postmodernity - as evidenced by the newly arisen branch of "emergent" Christian churches - that it might be accomplished as we release our prejudices and biases, our hatreds and unloving acts and "steel ourselves" to the task of presenting Christ to the nations, his atonement, his love, his kingdom that will reach beyond all of men's kingdoms, to that of God's itself. Whose kingdom may be found enriched by all the historical diversity and pluralism that is found in man's life-and-death histories on this planet we call earth, which will someday be called a "New Earth" located in a "New Heavens" under God's Trinitarian and Holy rule of love and justice. Thus it can be said that the Kingdom of God is trans-formative, trans-national, trans-cultural and trans-temporal, making it an "eternal" kingdom. That, in Christ himself, has come the Savior of the world to live with us - his lost humanity and creation - to be re-claimed and resurrected by his holy personage, will and love.

It is to this rule that we wish to submit and to non-other as we try to interpolate God's will and holy law of love and re-create an equitable earthly rule for all mankind by whatever democratic or non-democratic governance that is operative. For the kingdoms of man must someday bow all knees, heads and hearts to a grander rulership, a more exquisite lordship, to that of our Creator God, our Sovereign, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus. It is to his reign of love that we must embrace and commit ourselves to with a servant's heart of humility, willful obedience and submission in a selfless, sacrificial service that only God's love can demand.

RE Slater

May 10, 2011

What "Love Wins" Tells Us About Christians

by Scott McKnight
Monday, 09 May 2011 



10 things we can learn from one of Christianity's biggest controversies.

Everyone knew in advance that Rob Bell’s next book, Love Wins, would surely raise eyebrows and create some debate. But no one, including the author and his agent, expected what did happen. From the moment Justin Taylor uttered that opening warning and John Piper tweeted “Farewell Rob Bell” until many of us had a week or two to read it, Rob Bell’s book was at the forefront of American Christianity’s sensational tabloids. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it may well be a one-of-a-kind brouhaha for the next generation or two.

But what can we learn from what happened? I want to suggest we can learn 10 lessons.

First, social media is where controversial ideas will be both explored and judged. We no longer read books patiently, type out letters to denominational offices, find common agreements and then summon the Christian leader behind closed doors to ask questions and sort out concerns. It’s all public, it’s all immediate and everyone weighs in because social media is about as radical a form of democracy as exists. To be sure, this means the uninformed heavy-handed can weigh in as easily as the patient, careful, critical and balanced reader. But social media is not going away, so we should realize what we are getting into before we walk into the room.

Second, megachurch pastors are being watched closely. “Who says what” has always mattered. But because of social media, the who-says-what takes on new significance: megachurch pastors—and this applies to Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Andy Stanley and Rob Bell—are being watched, and their critics only need one off-line comment to stir into action. John Piper has been hammered for some of his comments, Bill Hybels has weathered criticism and Rob Bell is in the same world. Robin Parry, a skilled and careful scholar, wrote a book called The Evangelical Universalist. He was an editor at an evangelical publishing house. His book barely drew attention, but when Rob Bell said even less than Parry, Bell was scorched by many.

Third, tribalism pervades the American religious scene. On my blog we went through Love Wins patiently chapter by chapter, and daily I observed both in the comments and in private email exchanges (and telephone interviews) that some thought everything Bell said was wrong while others wouldn’t admit he had said one thing worth worrying over. Call it groupthink or call it tribalism, but such divisions will emerge especially over controversial ideas said by well-known leaders. Tribalism produces imbalanced and fuzzy thinking. I was (probably not) surprised by how few noticed it was an eternity of further chances that really separated Bell from the thinking of others in the history of the Church, and I was also surprised by how few really know what universalism means or what Rob Bell’s commitment to “libertarian free will” means for universalism. If humans can both choose God and not choose God, and if universalism ultimately says God will win over everyone, then it makes little sense to call Bell a universalist—since he’s so committed to that sense of libertarian free will.

Fourth, hell remains a central Christian conviction and concern. There are some topics that are either taboo or almost taboo, and hell is one of those. Defending traditional views that are almost taboo is a game few want to play because the defender senses he or she is about to be called a bigot. Which illustrates why hell is one of those taboo topics that lurks behind many corners and simmers just below the surface of major theological topics. If Bell’s book does anything, it drives the issue of hell to the front of some serious theological topics. Teaching college students for 15 years has shown me time and time again they care about this topic and want to talk about it, but they want some clear-headed thinking and not fuzzy hopes.

Fifth, Christian views of hell are both incomplete and in need of serious examination. The problem for many today can be seen in what Mike Huckabee said about the world’s leading terrorist: “Welcome to hell, bin Laden.” Fair enough, I can’t think of many traditional Christians who think eternity will be paradisal for bin Laden. But then just saying that can both make many feel uncomfortable and ask the question, “Who do you think you are to judge someone?” or, “We really don’t know what he thought in the moments he was dying.” But all of this drives us back to what we think about hell, and what we think about it—and many suppress the thoughts—deserves careful exploration of what the Bible says and what the Church has taught, and we need to do both very carefully and patiently, and we need to present our conclusions both sensitively and faithfully.

Sixth, pressing questions require serious thinking. I said above that Bell’s not a universalist, but I want to nuance this by saying Bell’s prose is not always clear. He thinks he can get off the hook of precise thinking by saying he’s not a theologian but a pastor, and I’ll come right back and say: “You may be, but you wrote about the topic and this topic has generated fierce discussion and fine distinctions for more than 1,700 years. Anyone who enters this discussion needs to know the lay of the land before uttering a published word.” I want to cut to the chase here: universalism and hell are extraordinarily important issues for the Church today, but to write about these topics requires years of Bible study, theological reading and public discussion. Rob Bell’s book left too many questions unanswered about too many topics to carry the discussion forward.

Seventh, missiology remains the center of gospeling in our world. You can talk all you want about eschatology and about atonement theory and about evangelism and about worship, but the moment you cross a line others perceive to be too far in the wrong directions, you will be called out on it. The essential line in Christianity is the Gospel, and all theology is measured by its fidelity to the Gospel or its denial of the Gospel. Why? Because the Church’s message is one about salvation and how we get saved and who gets saved and what one has to do to get saved. The Gospel is more than salvation, but anything that softens salvation or hardens salvation is in for immediate debate. Frankly, Rob Bell’s book called into question the Gospel essence evangelicalism has defended since the Reformation. That is the fundamental reason why this book caused such a storm.

Eighth, low church, non-denominational evangelicalism, of which Rob Bell is an exceptional representative, carries its own dangers. As I was reading Love Wins the first time, one thought kept coming back to me: This book could not have been written by a traditional Presbyterian or Methodist or Lutheran or Southern Baptist … or by anyone who is accountable to a stable and long-standing theological tradition. Rob Bell is a stand-alone pastor, and Mars Hill is a stand-alone church. While it may have some responsibility to its mother church, it is more or less on its own. When pastors are celebrity and charismatic and competent communicators, as Rob Bell clearly is, they can take risks (and I applaud that at times) and they can also easily wander from the great tradition of the Church. This book makes me rethink what mechanisms need to be put in place to manage the potential zaniness that stand-alone pastors in stand-alone churches can produce. Some publishers will put the stop to some ideas, but others won’t. We need to think about this.

Ninth, we are still asking a big question: What is the Gospel? Time and time again Bell mentions the Gospel, and it appears to me that Bell defines the Gospel as God’s utter love for us. How odd, I muse at times, that so many claim “gospel” for what they think but at the same time don’t recognize that the word “gospel” seems to be a contested term and category that demands careful words and definitions. I believe reducing Gospel to God’s utter love for us is inadequate, however true. One group wants to define Gospel through the lens of a kind of Reformed theology, another group wants to define it through the lens of the term "kingdom," while yet another—Rob Bell included—through the gracious, unstoppable love of God for us. Well, which is it?

Tenth, what is evangelicalism and what is orthodoxy? I heard Rob Bell say in an interview that he is evangelical and orthodox to the bone. What do these terms mean? I have a stake in both terms because I’m a professor and I’ve studied these terms, and think the former [term] refers to a group that emerges from the Reformation through the American revivals and is now connected to the historic reshaping of American religious life in the career of Billy Graham. Essentially, evangelicalism is a movement that believes in the necessity of personal salvation and personal conversion now in order to inherit eternal life after death. Rob Bell, to put it mildly, shows little tolerance for that way of framing salvation and one has to ask what he means by the term “evangelical” and whether he fits the term as defined by the best thinking on this term in our world. And what does “orthodoxy” mean? Ask the best church historians and theologians and they will point you to the classic creeds, from Nicea on, and that means orthodoxy defines and articulates the Trinity. An orthodox person is someone who believes those creedal formulations. But I’m encountering a generation of young thinkers who really don’t care what these terms mean.

What we have learned from the heated debates and conversation about Love Wins should not be ignored. The vitality of our movement and the need for goodwill are at stake in these sorts of debates. When the next controversial book comes out, I hope we pause long enough to read the book, ask the author for clarifications and only then go public with our concerns and criticisms. What we can learn to do is model how to listen, how to disagree and how to express dismay with one another—before the watching world. If we choose to repeat what happened with Love Wins, we will [continue to] damage the Body of Christ.

Scot McKnight is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University and author of One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.

Mars Hill: Water: 20 Liters Campaign

Water is elemental. A part of us.

Without it. We would not survive.

In the United States, however, the need for clean water is something we rarely think about. We turn on the faucet, and it comes out. Yet around the world, there are one billion people without access to clean water. That’s seventeen percent of the world’s population.

That is not right.

Over the past ten years, Mars Hill has developed a partnership with World Relief Rwanda, to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters there. Through engaging village counsels, we have learned that their biggest need is simply clean water.

Whether it’s participating in water awareness activities and fundraisers, becoming a vocal advocate, or reaching into your pocket to help purchase and install more filters and cisterns—there is a place for you in this work.

Visit our partner, 20 Liters, to hear stories, watch videos, and learn more about how you can engage with this issue, and make a change for good.

If you have further questions, access our FAQs for more information.

http://marshill.org/serving/water/

Let's Continue to March for Dis-Unity

Here's a little bit of tongue-in-cheek cynism that I hope drives home the point that the house of God, the family of Jesus, his Church and Bridegroom, should show love and unity to one another over everything else that would get in the way. Many thanks to Rachel Held Evans and the many others who have participated in this campaign of "LOVE WINS". Who have taken a stand over the ridiculousness we can get ourselves into when "fighting for the faith" rather than "loving one another" as we dialogue about our faith. Who strive to live the Jesus-life before a lost world as a loving community of God's children seeking to serve and to share God's love.

skinhead

**********

http://rachelheldevans.com/rally-to-restore-unity-day-5

The Origin of the World & the New Creation

http://kylearoberts.com/wordpress/?p=423

Creation tells the story of a very good -- and yet incomplete -- world awaiting its redemption in Christ.

Kyle Roberts

April 25, 2011

With Easter just behind us, Christians have turned their attention to the narrative of Christ's resurrection, reflecting on themes of new creation, forgiveness, and redemption. It's worth remembering our original creation stories too, because only in their light can we fully appreciate the significance of Easter. The most prominent "origin" texts in Christian theology are found in Genesis 1-3. While they comprise two distinct perspectives on creation, together they are rich with theological insight into the meaning of creation, our human condition, and the God who brought it all into existence.

Genesis 1 is poetic cosmogony, presenting the 'six days' of creation along with the seventh as the day of God's rest. It is lofty and ethereal, cosmological and ordered, poetic in form. Genesis 2-3, the story of humanity's rise and fall at the central place in creation, is gritty and earthy and set in narrative form. (See William Brown's The Seven Pillars of Creation.)

Both texts assert the significance of human beings in God's creation, though in Genesis 1 they emerge at the end of creation on the sixth day (along with other animals), while in Genesis 2 they arrive first on the scene. Both narratives have profoundly influenced Christian theology and Christian understanding of origins: including the roles of God and the nature of God's interaction with creation. In what follows, I offer a small sampling of theological themes which, emerging from ongoing reflection on these texts, have deeply influenced Christian religious understanding—in particular as they relate to a theology of Easter.

1) Creation is very good, but not perfect.

In Genesis 1-3, creation is neither complete, harmless, nor tame. In creation, God brings order from disorder and beauty from chaos, through his Spirit, word, and wisdom. However, neither pain, suffering, nor danger is excluded from what God calls "good." Douglas John Hall, in God and Human Suffering, suggests the creation narratives make room for constructive forms of suffering: loneliness, limits, temptation, and anxiety. This is because "struggle is necessary to the human glory that is God's intention for us" (62).

The desire to provide an answer to the problem of evil and suffering sometimes tempts Christians to want to read Genesis 1-3 as laying the blame for natural suffering (and death) on original human sin. In so doing, they elevate the role of humanity's burden for what originally happened in the natural world to a height (or depth) the scriptures never accord them; it is worth pointing out, however, that humanity has greatly—and sometimes disastrously—impacted the modern, natural environment. The logic of Genesis 1-3 suggests that natural disasters are part and parcel of a dangerous but beautiful world. The recognition that creation is "very good," but not complete, provides motivation for human involvement in the preservation, cultivation, and ongoing care of the earth.

2) Human beings are significant, but sinful.

Human beings play a prominent role in both creation accounts. The "image of God," presented in Genesis 1, is concretized or grounded in Genesis 2. The adam, or "groundling" (note the play on words: adam springs from the adamah, the earth) is animated by the breath of God. The human being is created through a synthesis of divine breath and dirt. As one of my students recently noted, the creation of human beings from the ground raises a interesting question for anti-evolutionists: is it less dignified to have primitive, "ape-like" creatures as our ancestors or to be made from dirt?

No Pleasure in the Death of the Wicked

http://kylearoberts.com/wordpress/

Kyle Roberts

May 1, 2011

Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live? – Ezekiel 18:23

When I heard the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death and saw the jubilant celebrations, I was reminded of this verse. God is a God of justice and righteousness and so he calls evil and sin what they are and holds people accountable accordingly. But God is also a God of mercy and love, and desires that all people — even the most sinful and wicked among us — repent and “turn from their ways.”

So, when the wicked do not repent and turn, God takes no pleasure when they experience the consequences of their wickedness in death. I am sure that many people who lost friends and loved ones on 9/1 rightfully feel a sense of justice on this day. I wouldn’t deny them that. But there is a difference between feeling a somber sense of justice and celebrating the death of one of God’s creatures — however wicked, sinful and evil they may have may become.

At the heart of the Christian Gospel stands the truth that not one of God’s people deserves salvation – his covenant love and reconciliation – and not one of God’s creatures stands outside of the intentional reach of His love. Paul tells that God desires that everyone be saved and to “come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). I take “everyone” to mean literally everyone — even the most evil among us — even those who have done us personal, communal or societal harm. There’s no doubt God’s expressed desire for the salvation of everyone in Christ is difficult to accept, especially when confronted with the most radical of possibilities: namely, the salvation of even Osama Bin Laden. But that simply underscores the radicality of God’s grace. No one is outside of the potentiality of reconciliation with God.

What Ezekiel seems to be saying here is that every violent death is a sadness. But when a violent death signifies that a temporal life has reached its end, that dust has returned to dust, in what is very likely a state of unrepentance and of rebellion against God, then our response as Christians should not and cannot be exuberant joy or triumphalism. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked; nor does he withhold his justice and righteousness. In the face of evil and unrighteousness, our ultimate hope is in God and God alone. And our response to the “death of the wicked” should be modeled after his as well.