If you still don’t understand the emerging church, or tend to think it will be a brief, passing trend in church history, this video might help.  Everytime you hear the word “jazz” just replace it with “christian belief” in your mind.  Sit through the first (unnecessary) 40 seconds of introduction and you may just find this helpful.  Not a perfect correlation, but there are some very neat parallels.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:24 (NIV)

Many in the church are warming up to this idea.  Some in the nineteenth and twentieth century, especially liberal theologies, used the concept to set forth a humanistic agenda of world peace which stripped away any notion of supernatural salvation or atonement theology from the Christian message.  It is also used by some to propagate socialist political theory.  More recently, it is used by charismatics as grounds for a theology of healing and reconciliation.  While some of these may be aspects of evangelical options, kingdom theology serves as what is referred to as theology’s integrating theme.  Some consider it the most basic theological theme that gives meaning to all other doctrines.  That being said, it was surprising to see John Franke and Stanley Grenz offer such little treatment of it in Beyond Foundationalism, especially in light of Franke’s other work The Character of Theology in which he continues this pattern but does use the term at various points in his work, rather affirmingly.  While I considered the idea that it was not within the scope of Beyond Foundationalism, as it turns out they propose community as theology’s integrative motif.  So, there is an obvious intentionality and thoughtfulness put into it, and they even offered a few brief paragraphs as to why kingdom as an orienting motif falls short.  The reasons they provide are (p. 234-235):

• The kingdom of God is hard to define.  But there have been satisfactory, technical definitions.  Also, community itself is not without controversy.
• It lends itself to individualistic theology, even in the hands of liberal theology.  Actually, kingdom theology probably provides the most social motif while retaining the individual responsibility of persons.  Of course they would probably resist the need for such a move in the first place, since he takes seriously that we do not have meaning or identity without the reference of community.  Still, the individuality of persons is retained in Scriptures, so there is no need to fear where kingdom theology only may lead, even as Franke grants.
• Kingdom theology is a pervasive but not a basic theme in the Bible.  While this may be true if looking for explicit references, this is not true if one understand the concept as implicit.  Community, though also convincingly pervasive, falls short in a similar manner.

“In fact, the concept of community forms the content of the kingdom of God.  The divine reign consists of God at work redeeming, reconciling, and transforming creation into God’s intended ideal and thereby constituting the world as God’s realm.”

I don’t know if they realized what they just did here—they resorted to God’s realm as being more basic than community.  God’s realm is his kingdom.  What community as an integrative motif misses out on is all the dimensions of creation that is beside humans; big-picture ecology is gleaned over.  God’s kingdom plan extends to the destiny of creation, and has a wider scope than that of community.  Since the subtitle of Beyond Foundationalism is “Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context,” it makes sense that community is at the core of their proposal.  Not to mention, it is incredibly helpful and useful.  Still, since postmodern theory admits that the words we use actually shape our experience, I think it would be wonderful to see works that treat theology’s task, nature, or method take seriously the term Jesus used to define his ministry.  I am curious as to why they decided to go in a different direction.  The one reason I understand, though still have my reservations about, is that it is an outdated model in a post-monarchical world.

Yesterday was a big day for the Southern Baptist Convention.  They voted on some important motions, including the Great Commission Resurgence which was pretty controversial, though it did pass.  Read about that here.  Recently there also continues to be a lot of controversy surrounding calvinism in Southern Baptist churches and seminaries.  Calvinists are still the minority in this denomination.  Apparently the SBC isn’t favorable to the Acts 29 network—a calvinist church planting network—so pastor Joshua Shank decided to propose a motion to widen its support…in the form of a rap.  It was light hearted and the convention seemed to welcome his motion.  The only question I’m left wondering is if, ”Teamwork will make the dream work,” then why is Acts 29 exclusively calvinistic?  With such a young, talented, and visionary network of church planters, it would be great to see it open up to better relationships with those who are outside this particular theological camp.

“Bart [Ehrman] is quite an angry man.”

“I do think that the Gospels intended to refer—and succeeded in referring—to Jesus himself and not simply to the community’s faith about Jesus.” (on Barthian heritage)

“If you are a theologian that believes you ought to wait for the biblical scholars to sort stuff out before you can then use their material in your own work, then you might sometimes feel like you have to wait forever.”

“The bible doesn’t use the phrase afterlife—that’s a modern term.  Let’s talk about the robust Christian hope.”

“The role of postmodernity is to preach the doctrine of the fall to arrogant modernity.”

“If we read the gospels and say our prayers, we should be able to do it.” (on how to move into a post-postmodern world)

“The unity of the church for him [Paul] is a symbolic thing as well as an actual thing.  It is the symbol which says, this is is the new humanity—don’t accept any cheap, man-made substitutes.”

“If you imagine a church that stops doing theology, you are imagining a church that is about to split.”

And here he recalls a quote by Crossan which he considers to have been a subtle, though friendly, jab at Wright’s journey in biblical studies.

“If you read Paul first you’ll read Jesus wrong; if you read Jesus first you’ll read Paul differently.” John Dominic Crossan

Relational Intelligence: The Disproportionate Investor – Erwin McManus

Talk on 2 Timothy 2:1-7
-You can only know what you have embraced.  You become what you give away to others.
-Invest in people who aren’t trying to define boundaries but find opportunities.
-On character vs. achievement: We want the indulgences of a general with the responsibilities of a civilian.
-Invest in those who understand there needs to be an integration of character and achievement.
-People with good stories and successful ministries are those who refuse to be victims.
-The wrong intention: When I know everything you know and everything I know I will be more powerful than you.

Community of Jesus – Timothy Keller

Talk on Luke 6:12-36; The Beatitudes as a reversal of values

-Four worldly values: power, comfort, success, recognition
-Four kingdom values: weakness, sacrifice, grief, exclusion
-Michael Wilcock: “Prize what the world calls pitiable, and suspect what the world considers desirable.”  At this point Keller humorously asks “Who wants to join?”
-Christian ethic: Draining yourself of ill will towards people, especially enemies.
-To those who have been burned by the Church: Remember the church is not made up of natural friends, it is made up of natural enemies.  The Christian community is not bound together by any other commonality.  The church is therefore a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.  Be patient while relationships are transformed.

Sexuality and Christian Hope – Timothy Keller

-Sex is not self gratification or self expression, it is radical self-donation.
-To give yourself to someone so deeply that it results in personal transformation and completion.
-Never have physical oneness without whole life oneness.
-Never get physically vulnerable without becoming vulnerable in your whole life.

Culture – Timothy Keller

-Cultural activity is arranging raw material for the flourishing of human beings.  Christians do this for the glory of God.
-On missions: To charge Christianity with colonial and imperial prostitution is to declare that Christianity belongs only to one culture.  Jesus Christ belongs to Africa, Asia, as much as it does the West.
-Lamin Sanneh, African Scholar who teaches at Yale, wrote Whose Religion is Christianity and comments:
Secularism’s scoffing of “African superstition” is cultural totalitarianism … Jesus did not mock their [Africa's] respect for the sacred … [so] they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies.
-View Keller’s notes on this sermon here.  Extremely insightful.

Recently, especially from postconversative and progressive voices, systematic theology as an enterprise has been called into question (following the pattern of Anglicans and others?).  But since long ago systematic theology and biblical studies have existed in somewhat of a tense relationship.  Serious biblical scholars and theologians recognize the importance of understanding the original context of a passage when working through exegesis–extracting meaning.  But the difference lies in where each field places its emphasis.  On the one hand we have the systematic theologian who specializes in inference and developing theoretical constructs. Often times they create or apply philosophical categories to bring clarity to a concept (think back to the debates surrounding the nature of the Eucharist during the Protestant Reformation).  On the other hand, biblical exegetes tend to focus on the particular meaning of a text by drawing on as many contextual clues as possible.  In this way, they become experts in historical, literary, cultural etc. studies necessary for understanding a particular passage.

Where the tension lies.  The systematic theologian is vulnerable to accepting categories, concepts, and definitions of words that have been passed on down through a specific tradition.  Sometimes they are modern traditions, sometimes Protestant traditions, sometimes Roman Catholic, and other times very early Christian.  The danger is in applying certain embedded categories—things taken for granted—to a biblical text. It may just be the case that our received traditions are completely foreign to a passage’s original meaning.  This happens when we are not familiar with the original context.  So what we have are theologians who shallowly search the Bible for proof of their embedded theology. This is called proof-texting. Sometimes it is intentional and dishonest.  Other times it is due to ignorance. Both instances are mistakes and need to be carefully avoided.  The exegete, on the other hand, is vulnerable to not following the logical consequences of their literary conclusions.  What seems to happen is they claim what we can know from a text but then throw their hands up, admitting that to go further is speculative and unfounded.  But on most occasions, applying categories to texts offers clarity of meaning. Syllogisms and philosophical categories have proven to be useful, even in biblical theology.

Still, there are some issues or doctrines, important as they are, that the Bible is not clear on.  Or to go even further, sometimes tension exists between what two passages appear to say on a matter.  Here, the systemizer will make every effort to reconcile and harmonize the texts.  They do this by advancing sophisticated theories in an effort to demonstrate that what the text seems to say on the surface is not really what it means.  On the other hand, biblical exegetes tend to be at peace with living in this tension. What they afford is admitting that any apparent contradictions appear as a result of varying literary conventions far removed from the modern reader.

The present dilemma.  Will you focus on biblical studies and be vulnerable to not answering modern society’s most important questions?  Will you focus on systematic theology and be vulnerable to doing violence to a text?  Both fields have seen capable men and women who consider their conclusions with honesty, humility, and excellence.  Nonetheless, we’ve also witnessed greater fidelity to tradition than biblical authorial intent, and been offered simplistic answers from exegetes who discount the value of philosophical method.  Let’s try to participate in the best work of both worlds.

1 Corinthians 1:10-13a (NIV)

At first glance you figure Paul saves the best group for last; those who say they “follow Christ” are the ones who really get it.  But that’s not what he’s doing.  His rebuke is for those who say they follow Christ as much as it is for those who follow another.  This is clear by the words “still another”, and Paul’s lack of positive approval.

So why did they get it wrong too?  I believe it’s because their proclamation was encouraging continued division. You see, it’s one thing to say of yourself “I follow Christ”, it’s quite another to help someone discover that they too should be following Christ.  The spiritual party in Corinth considered themselves right, and they were.  They were supposed to be following Christ.  But once you figure that out for yourself, you need to take that message to the world!  And if you haven’t taken it to your church yet, don’t try to take it to the world.  When someone in the church is following someone else, you only fuel division by not helping them discover that their identity is in Christ also.  Those in Corinth were all in Christ. What a mistake it was for one group of people to horde that truth to themselves, i.e. claim it for themselves and not for others as well.

Spiritual pride is huge today– we’re all victims of it at some point.  One of the ways to overcome it is to realize that what’s ours in Christ isn’t just a personal keepsake.  Don’t sit complacent in your discipleship as those around you are following something or someone other than Christ.  Stop pointing your finger, share your spiritual gifts, and help your church discover that we’re all created to be followers of Jesus.  This is key to unity in the church.

Hansen, Collin. Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.  Wheaton: Crossway, 2008.

The title reveals that the movement is characterized by a younger generation who has grown restless with the various forms of Christianity that supposedly now lack appeal.  Allow me to say from the beginning that I really enjoyed the read–it helped bring clarity to the growing trend many in the church have already noticed.  Generally, Hansen–an admitted Calvinist–merely sought to report what was happening, so this kind of work shouldn’t upset anyone on the other side of the spectrum (notice the subtitle, “A journalist’s journey with the New Calvinists”).  Still, at some parts in the work it was hard to tell whether the point being made was an objective presentation of a fact or a wonderfully composed paragraph to persuade its readers.  Whatever his intention, in the end the ambiguity may simply further demonstrate his ability as a writer, i.e. very sneaky work!

Some of the points I would like to focus on are the following:

1. Certain characteristics presented as unique to Calvinism which in fact are not, misleading the reader to believe Calvinism/Reformed theology has a monopoly on “sound doctrine.”
2. Provide a very brief critique of some Calvinism’s main points.
3. Emphasize the implications of some of Reformed theology’s points, which will impact how you do ministry.

I won’t cover it all, or offer a full review.  I want to focus on just some of the points that are significant.  Here it goes.

• Pg. 15-17: John Piper’s famous quote “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him” is not unique to Calvinism.  Neither is his point that the glory of God is the ultimate theme of preaching and the focus of worship music, nor his point that God’s glory and sovereignty should be the subject of worship songs.  All evangelicals affirm this.  There is simply a different understanding of what God’s sovereignty entails, and how God receives glory.  Worship songs that praise God for what he is doing in the lives of his people is just as much God-glorifying as those which treat the Godhead more directly.  This comports well with the picture we have in the Psalms.
• Pg. 22: He quotes Joshua Harris who talks about how some Christians who discover Reformed theology like to speak of experiencing a type of second rebirth.  Let’s be fair—if this is true about those people, it’s probably because they never understood the Gospel or were never saved to start.
• Pg. 22-24: He speaks of “moralistic therapeutic deism” in American evangelicalism as if its the only alternative to Reformed theology.  This is a terrible false dilemma.  Consider the theology of John Wesley, pentecostalism/charismatics, Free Will Baptists, various Pietist, Holiness, and mainline Protestant denominations and what you’ll discover is that these are no pop-psychology type theologies.
• Pg. 29: J. I. Packer is quoted speaking on John Piper’s ministry saying, “He gives them the sense that passionate thinking is at the essence of real life.”  This would be an unfortunate concession.  I thought the essence of real life is love.  I’m surprised that those in such an anti-humanistic ideology (Reformed theology) would have such high praise for thinking.
• Pg. 35-37: Hansen gets into an exposition of sorts on the doctrine of total depravity.  Unfortunately, his presentation suffers from inconsistencies, jumps in logic, and quotes from Calvinist pastors that might rightfully be considered offensive to non-Calvinists.  His treatment of Ephesians 2:1 doesn’t answer what we’re incapable of doing while dead in our trespasses.  Gen. 6:5, Gen. 8:2, and Rom. 7:18, which describe man’s depravity are pieced together with passages like Isa. 64:6, and then concludes that man is incapable of doing any good.  Even the quote used from Isa. 64:6 states that man can perform righteous acts.  Does Scripture contradict itself then?  This goes to prove that often times we read Scripture very shallowly, ignoring contextual and literary complexities.  Finally, consider the assertion made by Andrew Knight (a minister at Bethleem Baptist Church): “You may never feel the weight, you will never feel the wonder of grace until you finally relinquish your claim to have any part in your salvation.  It has to be unconditional.”  Arminians must be deceived then!  I think it rather presumptuous to make such a statement, as if a person can measure the awe for God another Christian stores in her heart.
• Pg. 42-44: He quotes a young lady, “…Never, ever in the Bible do people initiate a relationship with God.”  To be fair, never, ever in Arminian theology do people initiate a relationship with God either!  ”It was the most freeing thing to realize that their salvation is not dependent on me spending enough time with them or me explaining the gospel in the best way or me being an expert in the language.  It freed me up to love being there even if I wasn’t seeing fruit.”  However you feel about such an approach to evangelism, do realize the implications it has.  Unfortunately, this is a complex issue and we would have to clarify what we mean by “salvation being dependent on,” so we can’t do justice to it here.  But do notice that in the ministry of both Jesus and Paul “salvation was dependent” on how they presented the Gospel message. See Acts 17:2 “As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures” and 2 Cor. 2:4 “For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.”  This doesn’t sound like what the person Hansen quotes is celebrating.  Consider especially the strenuous, persistent, passionate, often tense relationships Paul had with the churches he planted.  To deny this is to fall into a relaxed approach to evangelism and shrug off our moral (spiritual) duty to fulfill the Great Commission.  Granted, the connection between unconditional election and evangelism has long been explored and debated.  I am simply submitting that we should recognize how a theology can affect our approach to evangelism.  In other words, theology matters–the stakes are high.
• Pg. 73: On discussing Albert Mohler’s role in restoring the doctrine of inerrancy to SBTS, one of the ideas inserted back into the seminary’s Abstract of Principles is “God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and all events.”  The issue here is Determinism.  Calvinists have a hard time avoiding the conclusion of fatalism–which states that God caused/willed everything to happen (including evil, the fall etc.).  Here’s the problem: the way the proposition in the Abstract of Principles is constructed makes it extremely ambiguous and ultimately uncontroversial.  The conditions “or permits” and “perpetually” causes the statement to simply contradict itself at worse, and say nothing that would make it unique from Arminianism or Deism at best.  The New Calvinists want to avoid double predestination (also referred to as supralapsarianism) and fatalism, but find it hard to do so while remaining consistent in their theology.

I realize these are very sensitive and complex issues, so I don’t want the hub of this post to focus on critiquing Calvinism or Reformed theology per se.  I simply wanted to expose how the book does not fairly reflect important details about opposing viewpoints, doesn’t develop some of the logical implications of the people Hansen quotes, and fails to show the connection between theology and praxis, all the while painting New Calvinism in a rather favorable light from a considerably nonobjective perspective.

To be continued.

The Gospel transcends time.  Its relevance penetrates the soul and in its beautiful irony it puts all other ideologies to shame.  And yet God chose the church as his agent of truth.  1 Timothy 3:15 honors us while obliging us to something.  We’re called the pillar of truth–that ancient architectural element that supports structures.  We the church are commissioned to be the foundation that upholds, honors, and leads the way in the truth enterprise.  It seems the Gospel message has been entrusted to a people who are less than perfect and who are notorious for being lazy in our evangelism and missions, i.e. keeping God ourselves.  And still our greatest mistake may soon come to be not our inactivity but our complacency in how we view God.  I consider that the Gospel message will suffer most when the church has a lesser view of God than rightfully belongs to him.  Here’s the unpacking: we think we can fully wrap our minds around an infinite God who is wholly different from us.  Furthermore, we bind him in paradigm that lets us sit back in comfort as we think to ourselves, “Ah yes, we’ve sorted this matter out.  Nothing further.”  Confessions, creeds, and theologies of  a different era are mistakenly considered sufficient for engaging our world today, and our teachers crouch behind systematic theologies that are thought to settle the score once and for all.

We think the world isn’t worth exploring and that it has nothing to tell us about God, even though Scripture clearly tells us otherwise (Rom. 1:19-20).  We cower in fear as the “secular disciplines” rear their ugly heads.  Sociology, anthropology, psychology and the like are changing the way people understand the world because they reveal so much about who we are.  So it makes sense that something like anthropology and theology proper should be in constant conversation.  The design says much about the designer!  The more we understand ourselves and the world we live in, the more we should understand God.  The Gospel message suffers when theology doesn’t keep up.  The Gospel message suffers when the church retreats instead of engaging.

We live in the Information Age—an age of specialization, where Masters degrees are becoming the norm for landing a job.  The young adult freshly graduated from college can often stump the middle-aged believer with her simple palette of dilemmas she learned in certain 101 classes.  Part of the reason is because the church has created a ghetto for itself, one based on a misunderstanding of what it means to be a people of faith.  And this happens in Christian academia as well, largely due to the problem of fear or slippery slope arguments.

What I’m submitting is that the popular understanding of sola Scriptura is not enough (and itself not found in Scripture).  A contextual study of Luther’s circumstances will reveal he never intended it to be so narrowly understood either.  He demanded that Canon Law be considered null in the soteriological debates of the time because the truth taught in the Bible and stood in clear contrast to it.  For us today, while Scripture should remain primary in our theological method, it is a naive myth to think it is the sole source for our theology.  Our assumptions influence our worldviews so much that when honed properly and submitted to the primacy of Scripture, the scientific disciplines can help us ferret out our presuppositions and offer context, clarity, and correction to our beliefs.  When an apparent contradiction between our sources surfaces, it is due either to our misunderstanding of a particular Bible passage or to our misunderstanding of nature.

We render ourselves irrelevant when we become illiterate.  Let us engage the developments of the secular sciences.  Let us be learned.  Let us not so narrowly understand the gift of Scripture that we miss the beauty and usefulness of God’s general revelation.

1. Institutional learning challenges the assumptions we often bring to our understanding of God and our world as individuals. We can’t escape the conditioning which shapes our worldview, but learning from others and following tracks set for us is a way to ferret out our presuppositions and discern if they are worth hanging on to.  This factor increases exponentially if you study at a school with a  tradition different from yours.
2. Formal Bible training, in its simplest form, is merely a highly concentrated effort for students to learn God’s word. Energy, time, and money is offered as a sacrificial act of worship to God in an effort to familiarize oneself with God’s truth.  Lest the word “formal” turn someone off, consider the nature of what was happening in Acts 19:9.  This is the first Christian seminary!
3. Studying on your own often results in following pathways that aren’t worthwhile. Higher learning institutions that are accredited have qualified professionals who mentor your learning process.  They know where good places are to begin and can shield you from wasting time in books or topics that are not going to be as effective in training you for your ministry.  This makes your growth more efficient and helps ensure good stewardship of time.
4. Going to school helps you discover, rather than re-invent concepts. Studying without the aide of a tutor will often result in you spending an unjustifiable amount of time “re-inventing the wheel.”  You’ll spend an unwise amount of time in exegesis, systemizing theology, or philosophizing if you don’t have the right reference points.  Others have gone before you–use this blessing God’s provided you with!

To be continued (maybe).