Missional Communities

Yes, it really is that easy to start missional living right where you're at. Here are some testimonies that will inspire you and show how missional communities for Jesus are created by God through ordinary people. People who have a heart for others, who wish to disciple and proclaim Jesus as Savior and Lord, who are burdened to plant living fellowships and multiply workers to reap and harvest for the Kingdom of God. These may be as simple as creating new fellowships within your own church's outreach or as bright and new as starting a completely new fellowship where none exists.

Secondly, know that within your local community may be other emergent and evangelic Christian fellowships which might be helpful to your burden of raising and multiplying disciples for Christ - for you are not alone in this task of discipling. Moreover, you might share your burden to those sister fellowships who you have found to be like-minded with you in this same task of church growth and expansion; who may be able to offer mature Christian guidance and counsel while welcoming an infusion of "new blood" and "missionary energy" they may have lost many years ago.

Finally, pray for discernment in this task of being true teachers of the Word of God as you testify of Jesus with a broken heart for those of his sheep lost without a shepherd. The Internet has given God's people a powerful tool to help in searching and knowing the Scriptures, of discerning Christian groups and fellowships, of discovering who is a wolf and who is truly sent from God. Be wise and do the hard work of discernment.

Thus follows below missional links illustrating missional communities seeking Jesus in the very neighborhoods that they live and work. May these links prove inspirational and helpful to those gifted "missionairies" among us who are called to seek the lost, called to begin new fellowships where they are none, called to seek those who have been forgotten in the mainstreams of life. Bless you. Our prayers go with you. And to the rest of us, be mindful to know your spiritual gift and to use it for God's glory, whether of evangelising, pastoring/teaching, serving with hands and feet, encouraging, giving guidance, counseling, or the service of helps, seek to glorify God in all that he calls us to do. For each one of us are called to make disciples... and to this task will we commit ourselves to do.

- skinhead

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Missional Community:

Soma Communities | FILMS

Posted May 9th, 2011

 

Jeff Vanderstelt and his Missional Community at Soma Communities share their heart

for wanting to see Jesus glorified in their neighborhood and all of Tacoma.

 

 

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Alan Hirsch and Verge Network  summarize some of the things that they think makes the church missional in the video below. In essence, this will require newer missional communities where none now exist. Newer fellowships, newer church plants, into forgotten segments and streams of humanity living among us in our cities and suburbs, rural areas and towns.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbECksZnTk&feature=player_embedded

 March 3, 2011

 

 

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Missional Community: Renovation Church | FILMS

Posted May 2nd, 2011

 

Leonce Crump and his Missional Community at Renovation Church talk about

the joys and challenges of planting a church in a diverse neighborhood in Atlanta.

 

 

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7 Questions Series | RECAP

http://www.vergenetwork.org/

Posted April 29th, 2011

 

We spent the last few months with leading thinkers and practitioners to answer 7

of the most frequently asked questions about missional communities. All of the

folks we heard from were featured speakers at Exponential 2011: On The Verge.

 

 

 

Click the links below to join the conversation going on about Missional Community!

__________________________________________

 

 

 Question 1: What is a missional community?

 

Contributors: Neil Cole, Hugh Halter, Mike Breen, Alan Hirsch,

Felicity Dale, JR Woodward, & Jeff Vanderstelt

 

 

 

 Question 2: How is missional community different from bible study?

 

Contributors: Jeff Vanderstelt, Caesar Kalinowski, Hugh Halter, JR Woodward, & Matt Carter

 

 

 

Question 3: How do you transition your church to be more missional?

 Contributors: Dave Ferguson & Hugh Halter

 

 

 

Question 4: How do you transition your small group to missional community?

 Contributors: Matt Smay, Dave Ferguson, & Hugh Halter

 

 

 

Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?

 Contributors: JR Woodward, Jason Dukes, Dave Ferguson, Matt Carter, Reggie McNeal, Hugh Halter,  Lance Ford, & Rob Wegner

 

 

 

Question 6: What do missional communities do?

 

 Contributors: Rob Wegner, Hugh Halter, & Matt Carter

 

 

 

Question 7: Which churches are doing this? What are some of the success? Struggles?

 

 Contributors: Rob Wegner, Hugh Halter, & Jo Saxton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew Harding - "Let Us Dance!"

Let Us Dance!
by Matt Harding

2008





2012

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' " (Rev 21.1-4)

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"This is now an older video but it works still, for me, as a powerful visual metaphor for the 'new heavens and new earth,' the biblical notion that this whole earth will be restored and renewed under God’s eschatological loving care.

To be fair, it wasn’t the original intention of the video, which is pretty cool all on its own (apart from the analogical connection to eschatology), but set it alongside the vision of Rev. 21 and you have a picture of: Dancing. Joy. Happiness. Reunion. Health. Solid, beautiful earth. Reconciliation and Peace. The 'coming of God.' The New Jerusalem joining the present world. The coming Kingdom. Of Christ who is all in all. Maranatha! "

by Kyle Roberts, Bethel College

http://kylearoberts.com/wordpress/?p=446

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When I first saw this video I didn't know what to expect and the longer I watched it the more my heart was moved by its incredible vision. It brought tears of joy to my eyes, and my heart just wanted to burst with its beauty, as I thought of God's love for us and this wonderful life made so beautiful when we all join in. Come, let us Dance! Let us Celebrate t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r in this thing called Life!

R.E. Slater
May 15, 2011

The Kingdom of God as PreMillennial

http://rogereolson.com/2011/05/09/premillennialism-revisited/
Premillennialism revisited

by Roger Olson

posted May 9, 2011

This is an addendum to my recent post “The Kingdom of God as critical principle.” Some have asked me to elaborate on the millennial kingdom.

There is no single premillennial view of the details of the thousand year reign of Christ on earth. For the most recent discussion of historic premillennialism that compares and contrasts it with dispensational premillennialism see The Case for Historic Premillennialism: An Alternative to “Left Behind” Eschatology edited by Craig L. Blomberg and Sung Wook Chung (Baker Academic).

I grew up premillennial and dispensational. I still have my mother’s Bible which was on her bed when she died at age 32 when I was 2 years old. It is a leather bound Scofield Reference Bible. I sometimes joke that we (my family and church) tended to regard the study notes of that study Bible as equally inspired with the text.

Here are the words to a song we sang at church. I doubt most of you have ever heard it. I don’t think I’ve sung it since I was 10 or so. It’s called Our Lord’s Return to Earth:

I am watching for the coming of the glad millennial day,
When our blessèd Lord shall come and catch His waiting bride away.
Oh! my heart is filled with rapture as I labor, watch, and pray,
For our Lord is coming back to earth again.

Refrain

Oh, our Lord is coming back to earth again.
Yes, our Lord is coming back to earth again.
Satan will be bound a thousand years; we’ll have no tempter then,
After Jesus shall come back to earth again.

Jesus’ coming back will be the answer to earth’s sorrowing cry,
For the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth and sea and sky.
God shall take away all sickness and the sufferer’s tears will dry,
When our Savior will come back to earth again.

Yes, the ransomed of the Lord shall come to Zion then with joy,
And in all His holy mountain nothing hurts or shall destroy.
Perfect peace shall reign in every heart, and love without alloy,
After Jesus shall come back to earth again.

Then the sin and sorrow, pain and death of this dark world shall cease,
In a glorious reign with Jesus of a thousand years of peace.
All the earth is groaning, crying for that day of sweet release,
For our Jesus shall come back to earth again.

I long ago discarded the dispensationalism of my church and family, but I’ve never found good reason to discard the premillennialism (of the faith of my childhood and youth). It seems rooted in Scriptures such as Isaiah 11 and 65 and Revelation 20. Most of the so-called “minor prophets” also make some reference to an earthly millennium during which the messiah will rule and reign over “peaceable kingdom.”

Now, some have tried to argue that Isaiah 65 (for example) is about heaven, not about an earthly messianic kingdom at the end of history. However, that doesn’t work because verse 20 refers to people dying during this time.

Second century church father Irenaeus wrote much about this earthly millennium in Against Heresies, Book V, chapters XXVII-XXXVI. He steadfastly rejected any allegorical interpretation of Revelation 20 or the prophets’ descriptions of the kingdom of God on earth. He clearly distinguishes between the earthly kingdom of God AFTER Christ returns and the “supercelestial” kingdom of the new heaven and new earth after that. Irenaeus traces this teaching about an earthly kingdom of God with Jesus reigning as messiah on earth to John the Apostle through Papias and Polycarp whom he knew personally.

Now, the details of this millennial reign of Christ on earth are sketchy both in Scripture and in the church fathers. Some of the description may very well be figurative. But THAT there will be such an earthly millennium of peace and justice seems clear–both in Scripture and most of the church fathers before Augustine (with the exception of Origen). It was Augustine who overturned premillennialism and influenced the church to adopt what has come to be called amillennialism (no earthly, visible, political rule and reign of Christ except in the church).

Reinhold Niebuhr famously quipped that we should not want to know too much about the “furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell.” I would say the same about our knowledge of the millennium. We have to be satisfied with what is given in Scripture and, perhaps, in the earliest church fathers such as Irenaeus. The rest is speculation.

It seems like reverent speculation, however, to suggest that the righteous and unrighteous will both be citizens of that kingdom of God on earth with the unrighteous serving Christ unwillingly.

For me, belief in the millennium serves two purposes. First, it tells me that God’s salvific concern is not just for souls but for society. Second, it gives me what I call the critical principle for deciding what I can be comfortable with now and what I cannot be comfortable with now–in terms of social conditions.

Some have argued in the past that premillennialism encourages quietism and otherworldliness among Christians. I disagree. If understood correctly, premillennialism does just the opposite. IF poverty, injustice, oppression, cruelty, etc., will not be part of Christ’s messianic reign on earth, then my task as a Christian, as a citizen first and foremost of that kingdom, is to do my best to abolish those things here and now in anticipation of that future. Also, if God plans to establish his kingdom on earth, then he cares about the whole world including nature. That gives us motive to be “keepers of the garden” until he comes.

Personally, I cannot see any reasons to discard historic premillennialism, rightly understood, except anti-supernaturalism or otherworldiness. German theologian Jurgen Moltmann has recognized this and the political advantages of premillennialism and adopted a version of it for his own eschatological theology. This is made clear especially in his book The Coming of God.

Justice in the Kingdom of God

http://rogereolson.com/2011/05/07/the-kingdom-of-god-as-critical-principle/

The Kingdom of God as critical principle

by Roger Olson
posted May 7, 2011

Underlying everything I wrote about the distinction between “justifiable” and “just” in my previous post is my belief that the coming Kingdom of God on earth is the Christian’s and the churches’ critical principle for discerning whether something (such as a violent act) can be celebrated.

I have adopted Isaac Watts’ 1793 hymn as my anthem for the coming messianic Kingdom on earth:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

Behold the islands with their kings,
And Europe her best tribute brings;
From north to south the princes meet,
To pay their homage at His feet.

There Persia, glorious to behold,
There India shines in eastern gold;
And barb’rous nations at His word
Submit, and bow, and own their Lord.

To Him shall endless prayer be made,
And praises throng to crown His head;
His Name like sweet perfume shall rise
With every morning sacrifice.

People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His Name.

Blessings abound wherever He reigns;
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains;
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blessed.

Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more:
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.

Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud amen!

Great God, whose universal sway
The known and unknown worlds obey,
Now give the kingdom to Thy Son,
Extend His power, exalt His throne.

The scepter well becomes His hands;
All Heav’n submits to His commands;
His justice shall avenge the poor,
And pride and rage prevail no more.

With power He vindicates the just,
And treads th’oppressor in the dust:
His worship and His fear shall last
Till hours, and years, and time be past.

As rain on meadows newly mown,
So shall He send his influence down:
His grace on fainting souls distills,
Like heav’nly dew on thirsty hills.

The heathen lands, that lie beneath
The shades of overspreading death,
Revive at His first dawning light;
And deserts blossom at the sight.

The saints shall flourish in His days,
Dressed in the robes of joy and praise;
Peace, like a river, from His throne
Shall flow to nations yet unknown.

Now, I might quibble with a few lines in the poem, but, in general, I think it well describes the coming millennial reign of Jesus Christ on earth. (I do not know whether Watts was a premillennialist, but the poem definitely implies a millennium on earth ruled over by Jesus Christ which would make it before the New Heaven and New Earth. I would argue it is a premillennial vision whether Watts explicitly embraced premillennialism or not.)

The poem seems to me to bring together the imagery of the messianic Kingdom scattered throughout the prophets and apostles. For a systematic theological explanation and defense see the many writings of George Eldon Ladd especially The Presence of the Future.

My point is this: I cannot be comfortable with or celebrate something unless I can envision it being present in the earthly millennial Kingdom of God in the future. And I think the church is called by God to prefigure that Kingdom in the present as much as possible.

Will there be violence in that Kingdom? If so, it will be God’s and not humans’. Watts writes about God treading the oppressors in the dust. I don’t know exactly what that means. I would interpret it as God forcing oppression to cease. I don’t take it as necessarily referring to violence. But even if it does, and even if God himself does violence, I cannot be comfortable with or celebrate human violence. I can only condone it as sometimes the lesser of two evils here and now–before the Kingdom comes.

The same is true of poverty. I cannot imagine why any Christian is comfortable with poverty (by which here I mean a condition in which people lack what is necessary to live a fully human life) as it will clearly be abolished in the Kingdom of God on earth.

So, for me, at least, the Kingdom of God on earth, Jesus Christ’s messianic reign at the end of history, serves as the critical principle for determining what social arrangements, conditions and practices I can celebrate. I celebrate them only when I see them as foreshadowing something about that messianic Kingdom.

Now, someone will no doubt argue that America’s killing of bin Laden is a foreshadowing of God’s treading the oppressors in the dust. But America is not God. True, God has given the “sword” to the state to hold back evil, but I can’t imagine that will be true in the Kingdom of God which will be a “peaceable Kingdom” and not one of violence. IF there is violence there it will be carried out righteously by God himself. That is God’s prerogative. I do not recognize any human violence as God’s own violence. And I’m dubious about whether violence will be present in the Kingdom of God at all. I prefer to think of God’s treading the oppressors in the dust as God’s making them stop their oppression. But if he uses violent means to achieve that end, that is his business and not mine to judge.

The Meaning of Love and Justice, Part 2

http://rogereolson.com/2011/05/06/the-difference-theologically-between-justifiable-and-just/

The difference, theologically, between “justifiable” and “just”

by Roger Olson

posted May 6, 2011

Several people have asked me to clarify what I mean when I say that an act may be “justifiable” but not “just.” The background is my post about the killing of bin Laden which I suggested might be justifiable but not just. Someone said that it is okay to celebrate bin Laden’s death (something I denied) so long as one is celebrating the justice in it and not the killing per se. I cannot bring myself to celebrate something that is less than just. Hence the question.

I agree with theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr who argue that true justice is inseparable from love even if, in our sinful world, it is often at best an approximation of love. And in this sense, “love” is being defined by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13 (etc.) as selfless benevolence to the other.

In Christian tradition, going back at least to Augustine, love and justice are the twin and inseparable Christian ethical principles. Well, that raises the question, what about when there is a conflict between them? Ultimately, they cannot conflict in reality because they are both rooted in God’s character (from a realist, not a nominalist, perspective). However, from our finite and fallen perspective there does sometimes seem to be tension between them.

Niebuhr helpfully distinguished between “perfect justice,” which would be love in action (e.g., tough love) and “proximate justice” which is love compromised in the face of the reality principle. For example, in this fallen world there is such a thing as the “lesser of two evils” that must be done–at least by governments. (A difference between Niebuhr and Yoder is whether Christians can rightly participate in this practice. Niebuhr said so and Yoder said no.)

When I say that something can be “justifiable” but not “just” I mean in Niebuhr’s terms. A war can be justifiable but is never truly just in the highest and best sense of just. The highest and best sense of justice must be restorative and not retributive–if it is indeed inextricably linked to love. War is rarely restorative. Restoration may come after war (e.g., the Marshall Plan), but during the bombing one can hardly call it restorative.

I simply wish to preserve the distinction between true, perfect justice, which is, for example, tough love, and proximate justice which is something less than perfect love. It is love accommodated and may even be love approximated but not achieved.

I cannot call a killing “just” because when I think of something being or not being “just” I think of love as the norm. However, in this sinful, fallen world some killing may be justified–e.g., when it is absolutely necessary to preserve innocent life.

I cannot celebrate any killing or death. I can’t even celebrate the justifiable nature of it because that is, at best, a necessary evil. I can only celebrate true justice which I see achieved, for example, in rehabilitation of a criminal or restoration of a broken relationship.

I can think of one possible exception, but I’m not sure it’s really an exception to my rule. That is when someone lays down his or her life to be killed to save someone else’s life. But then it is not so much the actual killing I celebrate but the act of selfless love that was involved in it. So, for example, I celebrate the cross of Jesus Christ as the Son of God’s selfless sacrifice for us, but I don’t celebrate the act of the executioners. I realize that’s a fine distinction. Some will no doubt call it a distinction without a difference, but it makes sense to me. Even Jesus prayed for his executioners’ forgiveness, so he must not have thought their act was a good thing in every sense.

Now, having said all of that, the theologian in me kicks in and I have to say something that is not obvious but may be necessary: that there is really only one ultimate ethical norm and that is love. Since perfect justice is normed by love, it is not really a separate ethical norm. Love is God’s nature. Scripture says (in 1 John) “God is love.” It does not say “God is justice.” Justice, then, is always at best some manifestation of love. I conclude that restorative justice is love in action in the social realm whereas retributive justice is a necessary evil because of the fallenness of the world. Christians should always aim at restorative justice because of Jesus. When they have to participate in retributive justice (e.g., in the violent defense of a weak neighbor under attack), assuming that is ever the case, repentance rather than celebration is called for because of the “new law” Jesus delivered of indiscriminate, selfless love that includes non-resistance.

Where I find myself caught is between Niebuhr, who argued that Christians must not always avoid compromise of the law of love (because that would require withdrawal from society) and Yoder who argued that Christians ought always to keep the law of love even if it means a certain withdrawal from society (not geographic or physical withdrawal but social non-engagement). Yoder seems right ideally while Niebuhr seems right realistically. So far, anyway, the only way I can see to mediate this difference is to advocate and practice repentance when involved in doing the lesser of two evils to avoid withdrawal from social responsibility.

The case study is, of course, Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer himself, apparently, did not think killing Hitler was a righteous thing to do. He saw it more as a necessary evil and was conflicted about it. I cannot imagine him celebrating Hitler’s death if the conspiracy had been successful. I can only imagine him repenting while at the same time experiencing a certain satisfaction that a terrible evil had been removed.

The Meaning of Love and Justice, Part 1

http://rogereolson.com/2011/05/03/should-christians-celebrate-death/

Should Christians celebrate death?

by Roger Olson

posted May 3, 2011

I realize I’m treading on dangerous ground here. And everyone who knows my Anabaptist tendencies will not be surprised. Nor will those who know my Niebuhrian tendencies. That’s right–I’m a person caught in a paradoxical mindset torn between John Howard Yoder and Reinhold Niebuhr! I tend to think every reflective Christian ends up there. 

One thing Yoder (Anabaptist) and Niebuhr (Christian realist) would agree on is that Christians should never celebrate killing–however justified it may be. Anabaptists like Yoder probably think no killing is truly justified. Christian realists like Niebuhr probably think some killing is justified, but no killing is righteous. I find myself leaning toward the Christian realist view on this, but when I read the Sermon on the Mount and think about what Jesus would do I have trouble believing a Christian ought ever to kill.

However, even Anabaptists believe God gave the sword to the state and so some killing is justified even if it is sin. But it is never justifiable for the Jesus follower to kill. It is not God’s will for his people to kill.

Christian realists believe sometimes God’s people must hold their noses and kill. But even when killing is absolutely necessary (e.g., in the case of Bonhoeffer participating in the plot to kill Hitler) the Jesus follower must not celebrate. The appropriate response is instead to repent and trust God for forgiveness.

These last two days America has been in a frenzy of celebration over the killing of one of our and humanity’s worst enemies (Osama Ben Laden). Personally, I’m glad he’s dead IF that is the only alternative to him engineering more horrendous deaths through terrorism. Apparently it is. But I can’t celebrate. And I can’t understand Christians who do celebrate death–especially when there is “collateral damage” as in the case of the woman used as a human shield.

What I can celebrate is the end of terrorism, but I don’t see that coming just because of this one death.

Now, the Niebuhr in me wants to pat the Navy Seal on the back who killed and say “Good job!” “Now let’s pray for forgiveness.”

The Yoder in me wants to say “Now let me talk with you about being a peace maker instead of a killer.”

I live in a city where the majority of people consider themselves serious Christians and where I see lots of bumper stickers that raise doubts about whether all who think they are really are. One that I see a lot says “Thank God for our soldiers–especially the snipers.” I would prefer one that said “Thank God for our soldiers–especially those who do non-combatant alternative service.” (I guess that would make for a big bumper sticker or else print too small to read!)

A few years ago I attended a “God and Country” Sunday morning “worship” service at a large evangelical church. The whole service was devoted to celebrating the military. They sang the “hymns” of the various branches of the military and had people who served in those branches stand as the congregation sang and as an honor guard marched down the center aisle carrying the military flags.

I wondered when they were going to have conscientious objectors who performed alternative or non-combatant service stand to be honored. They didn’t. I can only call that “service” an orgy of militaristic, nationalistic jingoism. There was no hint of sorrow for innocent lives lost in war or repentance for our numerous military incursions into non-combatant countries to defend our “national interests.” (The US has, without invitation by legitimate governments, militarily intervened in Latin American countries about 150 times.)

In conclusion, while I’m glad the snake has been decapitated, as a Christian I can’t celebrate any violent death. I can only breathe a sigh of relief and pray “God have mercy.”

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?

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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?

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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.