Emerging Church and Evangelicals Inevitable Enemies?

***Must evangelicalism and emerging churches be enemies?

Thomas Oden views modernity as the dying intellectual and cultural framework beyond which postmodern believers may move for the recovery of ancient, orthodox and yes, evangelical Christianity. He defines modernity according to the following four substantive or ideological commitments: (1) autonomous individualism (Sartre, Nietzsche, Hemingway) or in the East, (2) autonomous collectivism/utopianism (Marx); (3) narcissistic hedonic assertiveness (Rousseau, Shelly, D.H. Lawrence, Madonna), (4) reductive naturalism/historicism (Bultmann/Freud, Skinner); (4) absolute moral relativism (Dewey, Bultmann, Feuerbach) and one methodological principle, modern chauvinism according to which old ideas are viewed as necessarily inferior to new ideas.

Oden has this to say of two interpreters of postmodernism preferred by some emerging church (EC) leaders: “Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty have led us into a cult of subjectivism and sentiment that reduces truth to subjective preferences.” Oden views evangelicalism (as a whole and as a distinguishable historical movement) as a refuge of sanity and faithful Christian memory where ancient, orthodox, Biblical Christianity has been comparatively preserved and where the dying and retrograde convictions of modernity have had to contend with Biblical truth and the Spirit of God.

Could it be that the strong protest-element against evangelicalism driving the thinking of some EC leaders is based largely upon idiosyncratic, historically and geographically misinformed and so distortive comprehension of evangelical Christianity? Could such distortive conceptual lenses pre-dispose some to an unnoticed and undesired drift into what Oden recognizes as ultramodernity?

Prospects for reconciliation within mainline denominations between increasingly dissatisfied and disgruntled evangelicals and increasingly discredited, dysfunctional and de-funded liberals will be reduced, says Oden, to the extent that bureaucratic ecumenism remains emotively fixated on (a) ultrafeminist rhetoric, (b) the romantic idealization of secularity, (c) an accommodation to syncretism in world religions that disavow witness to Jesus Christ, and (d) fantasies of rational redistribution of wealth by political planning elites who always plan their own interest first in any plan, as we have learned the hard way.

Will EC leaders settle increasingly into predictably politically correct convictions on one issue after another? For example, will renewed zeal for social justice coincide with liberal democratic recipes for improvement? Will EC exegesis exhibit increased confidence in extracting storied meanings from Biblical narratives that appear oddly novel against the backdrop of two millennia of orthodox exegesis while experiencing intractable befuddlement and ambiguity regarding say, teaching on homosexual behavior that has enjoyed remarkable consensus across those same millennia? Will interest and protectiveness wane with regard to the exclusive claims of Christ, or the distinction between witness as message that draws persecution and good works and service within and without the believing community, the substituionary dimension of Christ’ atoning work?

However things develop, Thomas Oden’s voice will help to sharpen our understanding of the issues involved.

C.S. Lewis: Mythologically Speaking

***Lewis modeled the retention of myth and story as fit instruments for Christian expression, entertainment, inquiry, and instruction. He did so against the backdrop of the deadening, spirit-evacuating tendencies of the higher critical approaches to history and the Bible so dominant at the time. Lewis did so earlier, more impressively, and with more faithfulness to orthodox Christianity than some of those influenced by the Yale-based Narrative School shaped by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck more than three decades after Out of the Silent Planet appeared.

For example, where some students of the Narrative School sit loose with regard to the historicity of the resurrection and its necessity for orthodox Christian confession, Lewis could not. Partly because, as Lewis himself put it in Surprised by Joy, “ I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths.” Appreciation for the uniqueness, power, and beauty of story as an indispensable vehicle for Christian expression, instruction, and worship need not and ought not to require either the neglect or the despising of doctrine. Retention, acknowledgement, and enjoyment of propositional truth and the recovery of Biblical narrative are not mutually exclusive quests. Just ask C.S. Lewis.

Geminids Meteor Shower Tonight!

***Do not miss the Geminids Meteor Shower tonight. They are better than the Perseids that show up every August. Yes it will be cold. But we are talking between 60 and 120 meteors per hour and they move slower than the Perseids, resulting in a thicker tail and longer viewing time. So, if it is clear where you live, bundle up, get some distance from city lights, lie on your back and brace yourself for astral stimulation. P.S. Don't forget to apply lip balm.

C.S. Lewis: Aversion to Conversion?

***Well not exactly, but, like Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and many others across the centuries, Lewis’ subsequent reflection upon his own conversion included punctiliar, durative and progressive dimensions. He may have been Surprised By Joy in 1931 but, as George Sayer has put it, Lewis “began to believe in a nebulous power outside himself” in 1926. Warren viewed his brother’s conversion “as no sudden plunge into a new life but rather a slow steady convalescence from a deep-seated spiritual illness of long standing.”

Some leaders of the emerging church movement advocate a “belonging before believing” approach to spiritual seekers and non-believers alike, partly as an acknowledgement that God’s dealings with those he draws to himself involve discernible divine activity often over very long periods of time. Reduction of divinely wrought conversion to the narrow confines of a Damascus Road like event may fail to do justice to the full scope of God’s providential redeeming activity.

But surely openness to more durative conceptions of conversion fails to justify the “belonging before believing” mantra of some. Merely being human and/or curious does not a Christian make. Until Lewis gave a clear, credible confession of his faith in Jesus Christ, he had not yet legitimized his reception into full communion with a body of believers called Christian.

Recognition that God’s converting activity takes place over time, even over many years, need not weaken confessional standards for church membership, but it should free us to speak differently about conversion and ease the pressure applied in some quarters to nail down ones conversion to time and place with great certainty. Indeed, might not one view conversion as punctiliar and divine converting activity as durative without expecting exacting perception and tracking of these things by believers themselves? Our comprehension of God’s hand in our own lives and in the lives of others remains proximate and provisional, and that’s OK. For Charles Spurgeon, the ability to nail down with certainty the timing and nature of what happened to ourselves or others back when was less pressing than the presence of discernible evidence for regeneration today.

Emerging Church: Learning From Gibbs and Bolger 2

***“Standing up for truth… has no appeal to emerging church leaders” (Gibbs-Bolger, p. 124).

Dan Kimball objects to the stereotyping of emerging churches and who can blame him? Effort to understand before critiquing is common courtesy; it is an act of doing unto others as we would have done to ourselves. In particular Kimball counters charges of emerging church doctrinal latitudinarianism: “All the emerging churches I know believe in the inspiration of the Bible, the Trinity, the atonement, the bodily resurrection, and salvation in Jesus alone.” The above quote from Gibbs and Bolger, while not justifying some of the more rash generalizations that one encounters, does help explain why concerns are being raised.

Scott McKnight says that Gibbs-Bolger “show that the center of the movement is about ecclesiology not epistemology.” It may be true that Gibbs-Bolger’s impressive marshalling of primary source material shows this and, more importantly, it may actually be true. But Gibbs-Bolger also tell us that the movement was shaped “at a time when there was growing ferment that not only the methods but also the message needed to change.” Then Todd Hunter is quoted thus, “We got the gospel wrong” (p. 49). Not epistemological? Pages 69 and following argue for epistemologically significant narrative approaches to scripture texts and single out foundationalism for special critique. Even in the introduction, an emerging church leader impatient with the generational focus of some church growth leaders is quoted thus, “I couldn’t really figure out why people were obsessing about a subgroup when an enormous epistemological shift was occurring.”

To my ears at least, Kimball and McKnight strike a very different notes than much that I am reading in Gibbs-Bolger.

The Nativity: The God Who Stoops

***The Nativity did not disappoint, even though after habituating the audience so thoroughly to words of comfort and warning from angels and through dreams, the producers inexplicably departed from the Biblical witness and had the Wise Men think better of returning to Herod with the location of the child King on their own, unaided by divine messengers. Go figure.

But the movie captured a fundamental message of the Biblical narratives: our God delights to bestow special favor on the poor, the aged, the disenfranchised, and the world’s rejects and to take his place beside them. It has been his way from the beginning. The history of God’s dealings with humanity is replete with such upside down divine dealings. He makes Israel; not a people, a people. He chooses younger despised brothers—Jacob, Joseph, and David to represent him.

Are we healthy and wealthy? By global and historic measures, most Americans certainly are wealthy. Are we popular and powerful? If so the word of the Lord shouts, “Watch Out! Do not be deceived.” What do we have that is not a gift? And if a gift, why do we boast? God’s blessings confer favor but also responsibility.

Are we poor, sick, despised, and without influence or status in the estimation of the world? The word of the Lord shouts, “Watch Out! Do not be deceived.” Our God resists the proud and lifts up the humble. When God took own humanity in Jesus, he came in low indeed, and stayed low for a long time. When he was finally lifted up, it was on a cross that we deserved. But the grave could not hold Him.

This is the way of our God. He stoops to us to help us but also to model what he expects from and empowers in us, his children; that we would think soberly, humble ourselves and serve the poor, the sick, the outcast, the aged and the prisoners. By so doing, we show acquaintance with the ways of the only God and knowledge of what it cost him to make us ours. Our imitation of him does not make us his, but it does please him and because he causes us to fall in love with him, his pleasure is ours as well.

See The Nativity at a theatre near you.