on January 25 2012

Are “The Neo-Reformed” Reformed? Or Are They Puritans? And Does it Even Matter?

As a follow-up to the post last week on Mark Driscoll’s escapade with Justin Brierley on his British radio program, Unbelievable, I’d like to respond to two substantive objections voiced in the comments (typified by Scot McKnight’s comments in the post). The objections were: 1.) It’s time to stop calling the Neo-Reformed people Reformed. Call them Puritan because they are not Reformed (Kuyperian) in the purest sense. 2.) Mark Driscoll is an outlier in the Neo-Reformed movement (er Neo-Puritan) that, in his excesses regarding sexuality and crude language and behavior,  does not represent the Neo-Reformed/Puritan movement.

1.) Are The New-Reformed Reformed?

I don’t know if I agree with Scot on this one. The fact is that the group as a whole has dubbed themselves as “Reformed.” By and large, they have not been challenged by their purist brothers and sisters in Grand Rapids or elsewhere. Why then should I not continue to use this nomenclature? Collin Hansen perhaps began the nomenclature when he wrote about the movement for Christianity Today (see here) and then wrote a book with the same title as the CT article, The Young, Restless and Reformed. Then Time magazine did a cover story basically lopping them into one group named the “New Calvinism” (see here). Since then the great majority of their organizations including the Gospel Coalition, various bloggers (for instance Tim Challies has “Reformed” in his blog title), and speakers accept the moniker. I recognize there is a difference between the Neo-Reformed and the purist Reformed, but isn’t who gets to garner the name an in-house squabble? Isn’t it up to the purist Kuyperians to defend their turf? If the more purist Calvinists (or less narrow culturally) do not want to be associated with this movement, isn’t it up to them to challenge them instead of ignoring them? Until there is some clarity, then, most people know what I am referring to when I say “Neo-Reformed” and it’s a term I have to use. Right?

Secondly, is not the alternative name Neo-Puritan confusing? Is not Puritan family a member within the Reformed family? In fact it is at times hard to distinguish the Puritans from the Reformed because they do overlap (the emphasis on the depravity of humanity for instance). Tim Keller seems to be of the Reformed camp and Don Carson of Puritan camp and yet they speak together here for the Gospel Coalition (one of the main forum sites for the Neo-Reformed bloggers/pastors etc.). Again, isn’t it picayune to differentiate? And if it isn’t, and it is important, isn’t this a job best left to those inside the camp? Please, work this out (Kuyperians from Grand Rapids and the Neo-Reformed), come to an agreement so I don’t have to worry about his any more :) . What say u?

Third, despite the differences between Reformed and Puritan camps, I would like to propose a linkage that I think is undeniable and also illuminating. As I and others have argued, there is a linkage between European Reformed theology shaped under the Majesterial Reformation in Europe and what now appears as this kind of Puritan Evangelicalism in N America?

As I see it, when Reformed theology was uprooted from its cultural moorings in the Majesterial Reformation and transported to N. America, it lost what it was “reforming.” It’s reason to be – reforming Catholic Europe- was gone. It had to find an integrity in itself. Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, and Sola Christus had to stand alone. Sola Scripture no longer stood as a reforming princple reforming the corrupt traditions of Catholic church structure. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of Scripture’s authority and principle of interpretation unto itself.  Sola Fide no longer stood as a reforming principle against the corrupt sacramental systems that fostered abuse and a works righteousness in Roman Catholic Europe. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of God’s saving operations in the world. And Sola Christus could no longer stand on its own as a reforming principle against a monolithic church structure that made all salvation take place through her structures. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of the church. The developments here, so I suggest, eventually led to an individualization of Christian faith, one that is inherently aligned with modernity and certain democratic capitalist culture systems. (Read C. C. Pecknold’s brilliant and concise narrative of how this all took place in ch.5-8 of Christianity and Politics).  It looks a lot like the Neo-Reformed Neo Puritan evangelicalism of my brothers and sisters in the Neo-Reformed camps. I don’t know if I want to give this linkage up. It’s a main part of the questions I have concerning whether Neo- Reformed theology can lead a Missional engagement of the church into N America. I hate to obscure that linkage.

For all the reasons above then, I think one has to stick with “Neo-Reformed” until my friends in the movement itself and at Calvin/other Reformed institutions give me the signal to change (by hashing this out at a conference or something?). I’m waiting.

Is Mark Driscoll an Outlier?

Several people argued in the comments that Mark Driscoll is an outlier in the Neo-reformed movement. His behavior, brashness, excessive antagonistic outbursts should not be seen as characteristic of the Neo-Reformed group as a whole. In Scot’s words, Driscoll’s “brash and crude edges clash dramatically with the sanity, care, caution and focus of the Puritans.”

I agree with Scot on this one. I do not think Driscoll’s personality issues should be attributed to all of the good ministers/thinkers within the Neo-Reformed movement. But I wasn’t saying that. I was suggesting that Driscoll’s outburst may reveal a weakness in the theology itself and the practice of it. The defensive outburst may (or may not) be a clue to understanding this weakness. In the post I tried to show a disconnect between Driscoll’s theology (which I argue is canon Neo-Reformed thinking) and the post-Christendom context he found himself in (in Britian). He did not understand the context and therefore got defensive. But is this not emblematic of a larger reality? Again, take his personality out of it. Look at my analysis of what got Driscoll upset? Then ask, whether Driscoll’s explosion is not a symptom of something larger. Is there a reason why his defensive insulated yet bold posture seems to wear well in the Neo-Reformed world?

This is what I meant when I asked in the post, “is Mark Driscoll just an outlier for the Neo-Reformed movement or is he the truth that lies at its core?” Is he an eruption on the skin (thin skin) of the Neo-Reformed movement. I suggested that this episode at least warranted the Neo-Reformed taking a closer look at this episode, at the disconnect between the Neo-Reformed theology and practice and the post-Christendom context. This is where a conversation with the more purist cultural Reformeds from Grand Rapids might be able to help. I closed by saying, how Neo-Reformed leaders/bloggers respond to Driscoll, like Tim Challies,  Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, Collin Hansen,  James McDonald, will reveal more about the reality of this possible disconnect with post-Christendom. It will tell us whether they totally agree with Driscoll and therefore also don’t understand what just happened? Or whether they see that Brierley has some things to say and perhaps they will interact better than Driscoll in a way which is promising for future theology. In other words, how they react will indicate whether their theology can engage the post-Christendom context from where Brierely’s questions came from.

In summary, I sincerely hope the Driscoll flare-up, my post and all the other hundred or so posts on the Driscoll flare-up lead the Neo-Reformed movement to these kind of discussions for the furtherance of Christ and His Kingdom in the world.

In the meantime, what do you think? Should we have to change what we call the Neo-Reformed? or should we let them figure that out?

 

 

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Filed under Mark Driscoll,Missional Theology,Neo-Reformed,Uncategorized 23 Comments

on January 19 2012

The Mark Driscoll Fiasco: What the Latest Flap Teaches Us About The Neo-Reformed Movement

You can stop reading this post if you think I am going to review Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage. I have a much more boring post in mind.

Driscoll’s Real Marriage book is to the NeoReformed what Rob Bell’s Love Wins was to the Emerging church last year. They both stir up humongous sales with a media frenzy and in the process reveal the “cracking” (to use Scot McKnight’s word) taking place within the mainline N. American protestant evangelical church. As with Bell’s book, so also with Driscoll’s book, each brouhaha (to use Bill Kinnon’s word) reveals something of the theological pulse driving their respective movements.

This time the Driscoll fiasco revolves an interview done by the Driscoll’s about their book with Justin Brierley on the British radio program Unbelievable (here’s the podcast of the entire hour-long interview with Mark Driscoll). There was a “dust-up” on the interview. Driscoll was offended. He then calls it “the most disrespectful, adversarial, and subjective” interview he’s ever had. And now it’s all over the internet driving up sales of his (and his wife’s) new book.

My take (and the angle I want to pursue) on the interview is that Driscoll’s “act” simply doesn’t translate well into the very post-Christendom context of Britian.  In fact the whole encounter reveals the Christendon assumptions that drive his theology. There are three missional “bugaboos” that he clashes with Brierley on. Each bugaboo represents a theological position we Missionals fear/resist because of the way these things work against mission.  In this interview, these bugaboos  are a.) Driscoll’s singular obsession with penal substitutionary atonement, b.) his commitment to hierarchical male authority in the church, and c.) his blind belief in the importance of preaching/successful preacher to the church’s identity. These bugaboos represent the Christendom assumptions behind Driscoll’s theology and way he operates. Yet I think we can make a case for interpreting Driscoll as  a symptom of the wider Neo-Reformed theological movement. So I think this episode reveals more than just Driscoll’s Christendom theology and mode of operation. I think it speaks to why the current Neo-Reformed revival and its theology will have a hard time leading missional–incarnational-externally driven church. So I put this theological psychoanalysis to the test before all my neo-Reformed friends. Let’s converse. Here goes!

(FYI: I’m riffing off of the account of the interview here and here, Driscoll’s response to the interview here, and Justin’s response to Driscoll as reported here).

1.) The Focus on the Substitionary Atonement. Towards the end of the interview, Driscoll asks Brierley if he believes in the penal substitutionary atonement. When Brierley affirms it as one of many ways to view the cross, Driscoll suggests he’s being cowardly about it.  Driscoll then insists on singular commitment to penal substitutionary atonement is essential to the success of the gospel.

To me this speaks to the singular focus on the penal subtitutionary atonement that is central in many parts of the Neo-Reformed matrix regardless of contextual considerations. Am I right? Driscoll is blind to contextual considerations concerning salvation. In other words, the atonement is many faceted (read McKnights Community of Atonement for example). One size does not fit all. It could be argued that penal substititionary atonement makes the most sense in Christendom, amidst a culture shaped under Medieval Catholicism, it’s theology and penitential system (Driscoll grew up Catholic). Moral guilt, you could say, was (and is) the singular Christendom condition into which Reformed theology was born. It is not however as universal in the West as it once was. If we insist on being locked into this one view of the atonement, we will in essence be narrowing our context for mission.

The atonement is wider, bigger and more multitudinous than substitionary theory. And the hurts and pains of the world we are engaging cannot be put fit into this one theory. I believe in the substitionary theory of the atonement. But it is limited. The work that God is doing in the world includes reconciliation, healing, restoration, justice, and the victory and authority of Christ over Satan, evil, sin and death. It is in short God at work through Christ making all things right.  A narrow focus on substitionary atonement disables the church from engaging the world outside Western Christendom culture. It discounts the manifold ways God in Christ has come to set the whole world right. Mark Driscoll can’t understand this. And so when he enters a post-Christendom context he gets frustrated.

Does not Drsicoll’s frustration then reveal the atonement myopia at the heart of the Neo-Reformed movement. Does it not reveal the weakness inherent in Neo-Reformed theology for those of us minsistering in post Christendom contexts (like Brierley’s Britian)? Does not his whole fiasco reveal how the singular focus on subtititionary atonement hinders missional engagement? Yes? no?

2.) The View that Authority is Hierarchical. Towards the end of the interview the issue of women pastors came up. It caused a bit of a flare-up in Driscoll’s intensity. Driscoll ends up suggesting that the reason why more people did not show up at Brierley’s church was because of a woman in leadership. To me, this has been a subtle persistent theme within Neo-Reformed ecclesiology: that men should be over women in authority in the church. Now it explodes on a radio interview in the UK. This I suggest is a Neo-Reformed habit learned and sustained in Christendom.

Authority in Christendom is viewed in hierarchical terms. Hierarchical patterns of leadership exist readily in established church systems where you have Christianized people who are already conditioned to respect clergy authority, where things can get done, goods and services distributed, decisions made, disputes arbitrated more efficiently among Christians who already submit. It is because of these ingrained habits of hierarchy that most Neo-Reformed views of church authority have struggles with women in authority over men (OK this is at least one of the reasons). Take hierarchy out of the authority question and it becomes much harder to interpret Scripture in a way that excludes women from leadership in the church.

In the post-Christendom world, authority is flattened in the church and pushed outward (Read this post for more info). Positional authority of anyone over someone else is not the way things work in the Kingdom (read Mark 10:42). Instead we work alongside each other out of our giftedness in the communities appreciating one another gifts and mutually submitting one to another in each one’s gifts (read Eph 4, Rom 12:3-8). The authority lies in one’s recognized gift. The idea that women are over men is as unthinkable as the idea that men are over women.

Flattened authority structures push leadership out amidst the organic work of ministry in context. Hierarchy pushes church ministry inward and upward for approval. Hierarchical authority inhibits dispersed missional engagement. Its structures will miss with people who submit to authority only as encountered via authentic relational engagement. Driscoll seems blind to these issues. He’s absolutely frustrated with Brierley’s inability to be impressed with the importance of top down male leadership. My question is: are these assumptions part of the larger Neo-Reformed movement as a whole and does this mean that the Neo-Reformed will always be inhibited somewhat from true missional engagement? (Can I say “just asking?”). It will always be a movement prone to attracting Christianized people who are already habituated to submit to a pre-established hierarchical (male) authority.

3.) The assumption that “success” is best measured by the number of people who show up to hear a male preacher preach. When Mark Driscoll finds out that Justin Brierley’s wife is a pastor and is questioned on the validity of a wife whose husband supports his wife’s leadership, Mark asks about the size and growth of his wife’s church.  He says among other things “You look at your results and you look at my results and look at the variable that is the most obvious.” In other words I have thousands in my church, and you have a few hundred. That proves female leadership is inferior.

To me this is more than blind Driscollian machismo. This reveals something deeper in the Neo-Reformed ethos. There is a tendency in the Neo-Reformed movement to put a large emphasis on the gathering to hear preaching. I believe in preaching! But I see its function differently in the mission of the church. For the Neo-Reformed – correct me if I am wrong – there is a confidence that non-Christian people will still come to church to hear a good sermon. There is therefore a default tendency in Neo-Reformed churches to see success in terms of the numbers of people gathering on Sunday to hear a male preacher preach. This is a missional bugaboo. Success in mission will not always look like big numbers listening to a preacher (has Driscoll ever heard of Fresh Expressions in UK?). I see preaching as formational for a missional people, not a place where mission actually takes place (although I am uncomfortable with making that split). As a result, though often unintentional, the Neo-Reformed movement often devolves into a male led preacher attracting already existing Christians to come hear a good sermon. It thereby mistrains the congregation to think this is what church and mission is all about. That’s perhaps an over-characterization. But is there any truth to it?

Again, I think Driscoll’s question about the size of his wife’s congregation is more than a slip of the Driscollian machismo, I think it reveals something at the heart of the Neo-Reformed movement that will hinder it in the formation of congregations for mission. What say you?

In Conclusion

I see in the Mark Driscoll dust-up with Justin Brierley a revealing of some of the Christendom habits deep within the Neo-Reformed movement although often covered over by the many good things they do. The fact that Mark Driscoll’s flare-up happens in the UK – a very post Christendom place – only reinforces my case.

Some have said in response, that Mark Driscoll’s church is in Seattle, the most post-Christendom city in the US. But here, in this post, he says boldly admits going to Canada or the UK is much harder to do ministry than even in Seattle. He states “You are in a cultural context that is more non-Christian, and even anti-Christian, than even the most liberal cities in the United States. I’ve taught across Scotland, Ireland, and England. Each one is more difficult to reach than my hometown of Seattle, which is one of the historically least-churched and most secular-minded cities in America. I’ve said for years that Britain and Canada are more secular and difficult than the United States.” He basically admits that he himself with his particular approach to ministry would have difficulty succeeding in his own approach to ministry. Does this then not reveal what I am saying here? Driscoll is largely dependent upon the harvesting of already Christianized populations in Seattle area (what’s left of them)? Is this then why he then goes with video churches to go capture other such populations elsewhere? Does this then reveal some things that my Neo-Reformed brothers have to examine about their own theological modus operandi? I genuinely ask these questions for the furtherance of God’s Mission in our times.

It may seem unfair to stigmatize the entire Neo-Reformed movement with the likes of a Mark Driscoll temper flare-up. But I’ve learned that these kind of escapades are the best places to look at the cultural forces at work in theology and poitics. For myself, Mark Driscoll is an irruption of sorts on the skin of the Neo-Reformed movement.  His flare-up, if closely examined, can reveal some of the theology at work and the forces behind these theological allegiances. How other leaders in the movement respond to him, like Tim Challies,  Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, Collin Hansen,  James McDonald, will reveal perhaps even more. Is Mark Driscoll just an outlier for the Neo-Reformed movement or is he the truth that lies at its core?

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Filed under Acts 29,Mark Driscoll,Missional,Missional Ecclesiology,Missional Leadership,Missional Theology,Neo-Reformed,Post-Attractional,Post-Christendom,Rob Bell,Soteriology,Uncategorized,Women in MInistry 116 Comments

on August 29 2011

The Incarnation: Some Clarifications on An Abused Term: Post #2 Marcus Borg and Brian McLaren

Warning: Academic theological discussion ahead. Read at own risk :)

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In my last post, I complained that the doctrine of  the incarnation had gotten a bad rap lately. For me, talk of “the incarnation” has become confused. Yet I think it is an important doctrine – especially for the missional church movement. And so last week I began a series of three posts on the incarnation to hopefully clear up some confusions and put forth a proposal. Post Number One in this series described the doctrine of the incarnation, the debate surrounding it within missional circles, and then the first of three positions ( as I see it) on the incarnation. I labeled the first position the “incarnation as singular event.” I pegged this position as the one ascribed to by John Starke at the Gospel Coalition (I think John’s position is representative of the Gospel Coalition as a whole) and people like Halden Doerge. Ironically, I see the “the Gospel Coalition” and Halden in the same camp although admittedly coming from different theological starting points.

Today, I’d like to describe a second position on the incarnation. It is equally as popular and finds its strongest advocates among the Emergent crowd along with people like Marcus Borg and Brian McLaren. It understands the incarnation primarily as God providing “the Way into the Father’s Kingdom.”

2.) The Incarnation as the Way Into the Father’s Kingdom

People like  Marcus Borg and Brian McLaren alert us (rightfully I think) to the problem within position 1.): the Incarnation as Singular Event. They say that such a position has the effect of making Jesus irrelevant for the daily challenges we face in our society. The Incarnation as Singular Event tends to focus intensely on the “event” of salvation in the individual as initiated in an already accomplished and completed work of Christ in the past. This has the effect of dis-enculturating the work of Christ, extracting salvation out of culture. So, paraphrasing the words of Brian McLaren, this view of Jesus says that “He is not the one who saves from poverty, captivity, blindness, or oppression” even though Jesus uses these very words to describe His mission (Luke 4:18-21). (NKoC  2010 p.128). This is a Jesus detached from the suffering world and the pains of our daily existence.

And so, as has become so popular these past twenty-five years (actually more like 100 years), people like Borg and McLaren (and many others) push us toward the gospels (as opposed to Paul) and the life of Jesus as the clue to understanding the incarnation, the mission of the Son and who He is. Here we see that Jesus is the revealer of God “not only in his teaching … but in his very way of being.”(Borg Jesus a New Vision 191). Jesus is a model for discipleship. Jesus modeled what it was like to live life in the Spirit, in the very center of God’s love for the world. He led us into life with the Father in His Kingdom and taught us how to always be engaging culture as God’s instrument to bring transformation for God’s purposes in the world. There is a new Kingdom of God at work here and Jesus teaches us how to live in it and asks us to go teach others to do the same (McLaren Secret Message p.75).

People like Borg. McLaren, and the Emergent church in general do a marvelous job of capturing this aspect of what God has done in Jesus Christ for the world. We see how God has entered into our world via full humanity, and has shown us the way to truly live in relationship with God and His coming Kingdom. As a human, Jesus shows us that God’s salvation embraces the whole of the world for a transformation that begins now (not just a future). We see in Christ how to live in the Spirit and be used to accomplish miraculous things God has done in and through Jesus (John 16:22).

This view of the incarnation puts the focus on discipleship. It puts the emphasis of following Jesus because to follow Him “is to be like him, to take seriously what he took seriously.” (pg 17 Jesus a New Vision Borg).  Jesus lived life to the fullest in God’s Kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit and shows us how to do the same. In Him, we become his disciples for the transformation of the world.

My Assessment

And so I applaud and agree this view of the incarnation. It focuses on the humanity of Christ and thereby enables us to see the way God has offered all of us “a way” to enter into His life. It draws us into full and earnest discipleship. People like Brian McLaren, Mark Scandrette and Marcus Borg have opened up (in their popular writings) the fullness of the incarnation in ways rarely accessible in the past to Christians in N America.

Nonetheless, in my view, this position tends to not go far enough because it fails to present the disruptive and radical nature of the incarnation as God’s incursion into the world for the salvation of the world.  In Christ, a victory has been decisively won for the world and that victory, via Jesus Christ, has entered into the world. We go therefore into the world as servants ushering in a unique victory, a new order in Christ. His rule and transforming work has invaded the world. This position, in my view, errs towards seeing Jesus as a Way into God’s Kingdom apart from Jesus also being the means.

And so, sometimes, when I hear some teachings about “the way of Jesus” within Emergent circles I worry we are putting forth a way of life that can turn into moralism or legalism. “This is what disciples of Jesus do!” Yet we are not being invited into the dynamic rule of Jesus as Lord and His victory over the powers. I agree much with the Emergent authors that this is a rich way of love and justice in God’s Kingdom. Yet devoid of the inbreaking power of Christ’s rule via the Spirit, will this not devolve into another moralistic ideal?  Jesus is not only “the way,” He’s the victor, the King, the One who is bringing in His Kingdom through a people who submit to and affirm in life and practice that “Jesus is Lord.” So, as I see it, there’s a backing off off here that creates a less radical, less prodigal gospel. What say you? Have I got this right? Does Borg do this? Does even Brian McLaren border on this error?

I suggest that the “Incarnation as the Way into the Father’s Kingdom” position too often domesticates the incarnation into a way to be followed as opposed to a new order that has begun. This rule is intrusive and radical because God in Christ, as fully God, comes into the world humbly to disrupt the world and bring forth His Kingdom. This often ends up fudging  on the divinity of Christ. Perhaps this is why their proposals cannot be radical enough for me to describe the dynamic of the incarnation for our lives today.

For sure Borg tells us that this Jesus invites us into the supernatural, that God truly is at work in the world. Borg decries the enlightenment for striping our world of the Spirit and God’s work in the world. He invites us into the fullness of God’s Kingdom and what God is doing to transform the world. He draws us into the experience of a relationship with God through the Holy Spirit that draws us into His work in the world.  All this is great!! Yet, Borg in the end wants to deny the divinity of the Son (See for example Jesus a New Vision, p. 191). By doing this, I contend, his portrayal of Jesus doesn’t match the prodigal nature of the radical incursion that is God coming to us in the Son in Jesus Christ. His version of Christianity is not radical enough.

What say you? Have I been too harsh on Borg? Have I wrongly associated Brian McL in the same camp as Borg?

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In the next post, I propose a third approach to the incarnation that goes beyond both the the Incarnation as Singular Event and the Incarnation as the Way into the Father’s Kingdom.

Filed under Incarnational,Missional Ecclesiology,Missional Theology 13 Comments

on August 23 2011

The Incarnation: Some Clarifications on an Abused Term – Post#1

Warning: Academic theological discussion ahead. Read at own risk :)

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The word “Incarnation” means “take on flesh.” The word itself is not used in the NT but rather is a doctrine of the church that describes for us that God has become human in Christ and the implications of that for our lives as Christians. The task of this doctrine has always been to not only describe how Jesus is both God and human (the metaphysics) but also to explore the implications of this reality for salvation, the church and the consummation of all history. The incarnation is one of the most central doctrines in all of church history.

Recently the doctrine of the incarnation has been the subject of some blog fire. Over here in this post we have John Starke of the Gospel Coalition upset with the way some “missional practicioners” (like Alan Hirsch) use the doctrine to describe the ways and means of contextualizing the gospel. Over here in this post, Halden Doerge complains about the way I use the doctrine to defend the idea of “inhabiting place”, what he perceives to be, a territorial practice of church. Of course, I find myself in agreement with much of what these folk say- including and especially Alan Hirsch. Yet, in each case I believe that both the NT and the history of the church demand we push the doctrine further than any of these three individuals are willing to do. In short, Jon Starke, Halden Doerge and even Alan Hirsch are not radical enough. From where I sit, they do not take the incarnation seriously enough to carry out the full implications of it into our life, salvation and cultural engagement.

Admittedly, this is a bold statement, so allow me explain by trying to diagram their positions in terms of 2 positions: Position 1. Incarnation as Singular Event, and Position 2, Incarnation as the Way Into God’s Kingdom. Then I want to argue for a 3rd Position which applauds the first 2 positions but takes them further by arguing for Incarnation as Extending Christ’s Presence in and for the World. Today, I’ll start with position 1.

1.)The Incarnation as Singular Event. Starke wants to confine the doctrine of the incarnation to the one time hypostatic union in Jesus Christ. For him, it is this past event of God the Son entering the world and becoming human 2000 years ago that we can properly refer to as incarnation. Starke contends that we must be careful in extending the incarnation into history via the church’s work. For that matter, one must be careful to not improperly extend the incarnation as a principle to be applied to the church’s engagement with culture and context.

To expand on this view a little bit, we might say that this view of the incarnation is punctiliar. God breaks into history at a point in history. God, the Son, invades creation in Jesus Christ and then ascends back to heaven having completed His work for the whole world. The church in the present looks to this event in the past and proclaims it’s salvific significance to all individuals who might by faith enter into what God has done (and/or receive its merits).

This version of incarnation is common among evangelicals. It is heavily confident in the preaching of the church to proclaim the good news across time and place. There is a stream of this thinking in the early dialectic Barthians. There is also a related version of this thinking in the “new apocalypticists” who emphasize that God in Christ was an apocalyptic “event” in discontinuity with all history bringing salvation over against all previous cultural forces at work. Christ comes anew each time he brings His salvation and therefore cannot be extended from within current social structures, places or habitats. Christ comes over against all structures instead of by entering into them. In some ways, the post-Bultmanians of the 70’s, the existentialists following in the wake of Kierkegaard, as well as apocalyptic NT scholars like J. Louis Martyn fall into this category.  Nathan Kerr, drawing from various other sources, can fall into this stream at times, and of course it often seems that Halden Doerge falls into this camp

My Assessment

I agree with certain aspects of this view of the incarnation. For instance I applaud the attempt to protect the uniqueness of the one time incarnation in Christ in terms of his divinity as well as his humanity and the work he accomplished during his death and resurrection. I affirm that.

However, I fear that in an attempt to protect the uniqueness and divinity of Christ these folk haven’t taken the incarnation to its full intent as revealed in Scripture, history and the church. For God came into human life in Christ to bring new creation, reconciliation, and righteousness (2 Cor 5 17ff..) These are social realities (altho this includes the personal as well). And yet this view of incarnation tends to over-individualize salvation (something the Reformation often tends to do in its later post-medieval developments). For these folk, Jesus comes to us in the proclaimed message to individuals. There is a confidence in preaching as universal language. We do not need a social contextualized en-culturated manifestation of the salvation God has birthed in the world in order to witness to who Christ is and what he has done. But, I firmly believe, that what has been set loose in the incarnation is profoundly social/en-culturated in its manifestation.

I disagree with those that say what God has done in Christ is discontinuous (in the extreme apocalyptic sense) with history and culture. I think this defies the incarnation. The reality is that God does something new or discontinuous, but this also has continuity with who God is, what He has done in the past (in OT) and his work in and among the socialness of human life. Christ comes into history in ways continuous with the ongoing history of God with Israel. In the incarnation, He comes and works within a social reality to manifest His redemption for the whole world. This invasion into history, culture and human life sets off a string of continuous “events” which continue the presence of Christ into the world socially. The church in inherently is and must be “incarnational.”

And so I profoundly disagree with those who limit the incarnation to the past “event” of Jesus Christ alone. God in Christ has entered fully into history. It is not singularly punctiliar (which borderlines on a Nestorian Christological error), Rather, in weakness and vulnerability, Christ revealed God in the hiddeness of the incarnation. He inaugurated the Kingdom and Christ’s presence was extended into the world via the birthing of a people to participate in the new Reign He is bringing for the whole world. This “church” was given the very presence of Christ by the Spirit to witness to the coming Kingdom inaugurated in and through the work of Christ by God the Father through the Spirit. Via this participation “in Christ,” the church is caught up in, and participates in the Triune work of God for the whole world.

So in a very real way, the incarnation did not end with Jesus ascension. Its effects are extended into history until he returns. We, through participation “in Christ” actualize His real presence, his dynamic rule into space and time, contexts, local places we I habit for the Kingdom. This is not territorial  (as Halden accuses me of) because, just as God the Son did not enter human history through domination, so Christ’s presence will be and can only be made manifest in us as we vulnerably, humbly give up all power to Him and serve the world. Of course, WE MUST BE CAREFUL to MAINTAIN THE INTEGRITY OF THE INCARNATION so that Jesus’ presence in us does not become colonialist. Nonetheless, just as God came in Christ for the very reason of revealing Himself in ways which would not dominate, so we too are called to enter the world “incarnationally” under the same modus.

For me then, in closing, Starke, Doerge and even Hirsch do not take the incarnation radically enough. The incarnation is not God coming in for a one time landing, to do the things He needs to do and then jettison back out. Instead, the transcendent God has entered into history in a new way in Jesus Christ, and does not leave us, but rather extends His very presence into the world via His people in the world. The implications of this are enormous for the church’s witness, for the church’s participation in the mission of the Triune God. I will deal with all this in my third post on incarnation!

Til then, what do you think. What are the inadequacies of  current views on the “incarnation”?

Filed under Incarnational,Missional,Missional Ecclesiology,Missional Theology 22 Comments

on March 8 2011

When We Form Our Lives Around What We Are Against – Announcing “The End of Evangelicalism?”

The Idea of an Empty Politic and Evangelicalism

Most of us know the feeling of exhilaration when we are part of a large group united against a common enemy. There’s a certain energy elicited. This was evident for instance in United States after 9-11. All of a sudden, after the terrorist attacks on NY, all of America put aside our differences and united against our common enemy. It was exhilarating. There was a certain “high” we felt as we all had something to live for. It is always easier to unite a community around a common enemy than cultivate goals we will work together for through whatever the future may bring. I’m not saying this to criticize the country’s political reaction to 9-11. I’m just illustrating a fact of politics – it’s incredibly easy to organize a people against a common enemy.

This dynamic however has a shelf life. We cannot lead a community this way without constantly keeping the threat of the enemy preeminent. If we somehow don’t have enemies then we must invent them or else the community will fall apart. This kind of politic works off an antagonistic energy which eventually devours itself. The continual enmity is fatiguing. It does not give life. This way of organizing life together is what I call an “empty politic.” It has nothing at its core to hold us together. We are held together NOT by who we are or what we are for but by what we are against.

American politics is full of this dynamic. I fear in these last few decades that evangelicalism is showing signs of behaving in these same ways. I fear the church of my upbringing, the church that I love – evangelicalism – has become “an empty politic.” As a result our very way of life in Christ is threatened.

In my new book, the End of Evangelicalism?, I explore how evangelicalism has morphed into an “empty politic.” I try to show, through the work of a political cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, how this is killing us. I propose that we need to return to a life together “in Christ” where He is at the center. Our life together (i.e. our politic) needs to return to a simple participation in the life of Christ and the Triune work of God in the world.

I believe that local churches are shaped by theology and practice. We are shaped by what we believe about the gospel, the kingdom and how God reveals Himself and the ways we practice these beliefs together. Yet often we have taught our beliefs and practiced them as the means to differentiate ourselves from those who don’t believe. We learn our theology by who(or what) we are against. And so strangely, we define ourselves over against “the liberals,” or “the gay or lesbian communities” or “those who seek to bring down our culture – the Christian Nation.” We end up separating ourselves from the world making enemies instead of living our lives together for the world in God’s Mission.

I contend we need to articulate these same beliefs and practices so that we are gathered into and out of our relationship with God through the Son. For in Him our life together becomes full and overflowing with His life for the world. We become a “politic of fullness.” We are created anew as a people “for the world” participating in His mission. This I call a politic of fullness after Ephesians 4:13. Here we gather seeking  “the unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” This is what The End of Evangelicalism? is about.

Are you prepared to lead a community theologically into a way of life together that gives God’s life to the world?

In your hands is one of the sharpest and informed evaluations of the state of evangelicalism. Read it slowly. Ponder it. Plot a better evangelicalism.

Scot McKnight

 

 

I’m pleased to announce the early release of End of Evangelicalism

I hope my book The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission helps lay the groundwork for leading a church theologically into the life “in Christ” for the world: what I describe as “a politic of fullness.” Here’s the book’s webpage. You’ll find a free pdf download of the introduction. The book is not for the faint of heart. It is not a book written specifically for a popular audience. I worked at making the material accessible! Nonetheless there’s some intense political theory in this book alongside some intense theology. I’m just being honest!! So read the introduction before you buy the book. You’ll get an idea from the intro as to whether this book is for you. You’ll find on the webpage we’re offering it for the first 100 days here at a 40% discount. You’ll find updated reviews on the webpage as they come in. You’ll find blurbs like the one Scot McKnight offers above. If you’re interested in reviewing the book, and you have a blog that gets decent traffic, I have a limited number of free copies to be sent out by publisher for review. Let me know!

As always, I’m open for comments on what I’m putting forth here. Let me know if you connect with the issue of this book. In the meantime, I pray this book serves the Kingdom God is bringing in. Check out the page!! It will be updated often. and thanks for being a regular visitor to this blog!

 

Filed under End of Evangelicalism?,Evangelicalism,Missional Theology 8 Comments

on February 2 2011

Three Compelling (Theological) Questions – for the Shaping of the Local Church into Mission.

Recently I was asked the question, how does theology shape the church? The implication was that theology is irrelevant to the life of a church. To which I responded “There’s a theology that drives every church. Theology is shaping every church whether we know it or not.” Next came the question: if you went into a church how would you begin to direct its theology so as to shape its missional presence in the neighborhood? I suggested there’s three questions that every pastor/equipper should be able to answer. They then should be capable of leading their churches in answering these questions in a way that shapes our practice of life with God together. For me, these are the questions that fund the social imaginary of a community by the Holy Spirit by which we enter into His life and mission. The three questions are the How, What and Where questions

1.)  How does God Reveal Himself?

2.)  What is the gospel?

3.)  Where is the Kingdom?

How we answer these questions as a people, how we are led into the answers through the discipling/preaching/teaching ministries of the church, shape a community’s disposition in the world.

The way we have answered these questions in the past within my own tradition (evangelicalism) has been largely

1.) The Inerrant Bible,

2.) The Decision for Christ, and

3.) The Christian Nation -in last thirty years – and dispensationalism in the thirty years prior to that (the kingdom is in the future).

Admittedly I need to fill out these ideas. Yet I’ve become convinced that these three answers have become problematic for today’s church not only because a.) they don’t really answer the cultural questions we face anymore, but more importantly, b.) these answers shape us as communities over against mission.  In other words, these ways of articulating these beliefs – and the practices that coincide – have shaped us as an arrogant, duplicitous, dispassionate social presence in the world.

In my forthcoming book (I hear it’s coming in 2 weeks – I’ll have a free sample on this site in about two weeks hopefully) The End of Evangelicalism?: Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission (Cascade Books – Theopolitical Visions Series) I try to show how these three beliefs of evangelicalism were forged as a defense. They have shaped us in antagonistic ways. I argue they worked well in a former time to meet the cultural challenges evangelicals faced – as largely typified by the modernist-fundamentalist controversies. But now, many years later, they are working against us.

I contend we need new ways to uphold a high view of Scripture’s authority, to teach/ initiate conversion into life in Christ and to understand the church’s engagement with society for God’s salvation in the world.

Here’s how I pose the answers to these three questions in The End of Evangelicalism?

1.) From Inerrant Bible to: Our One and True Story of God for the whole world – infallible in and through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

2.) From the question “have you made the decision to receive Christ as your personal Savior?” to: “have you entered into the salvation already begun in Jesus Christ that God is working for the sake of the whole world?”

3.) From the church as Christ’s army dispersing individuals into the world to fight for the Christian Nation to: the church as the social body of His Lordship (His Reign) incarnating Christ into the world.

I contend these three ways of speaking about these beliefs (and then practicing them) shape us for a hospitable, authentic, compassionate witness to Christ in the world. For what it’s worth, I still subscribe to the Bible’s inerrancy (qualifications needed) and of course I still believe in the decision to receive Christ’s pardon and make Him Lord. (I haven’t quite been able to swallow the Christian Nation thing, although I’ve tried wink, wink). Each of these beliefs is enhanced and deepened through this new articulation and practice.  All of this is explored in significant depth in the upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism? And I’ll be pleased to be giving 2 lectures on these subjects at Ambrose University college in two weeks in Calgary, Alberta. The lectures are entitled “The Future of Evangelicalism in N. America’s Post Christendom: Forging a New Faithfulness. Lecture 1: Reshaping Our Doctrine and Practice For Mission. Lecture 2 The Dangers and Hopes of the Emergent/Missional Church Movement.

If you’re nearby, join me!! Eh?

In the meantime, how have you, your church, led you through these three questions?

Filed under End of Evangelicalism?,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 16 Comments

on July 6 2010

The Emerging View of the Church in Society: Alan Hirsch/Michael Frost and the Danger of De-Ecclesiologizing The Church in Mission

This is my last of three treatments on the theology of the emerging/missional church. As I said on the three previous posts here, here and here,  I’m currently winding down my book project  The End of Evangelicalism? by writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the rubble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements. But I contend they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. Today, I’m examining one of my favorite persons in the missional church movement – Alan Hirsch and his co-writer Michael Frost. I love these guys. I hope they take what I wrtite here as an act of love and appreciation for what they’re doing.  Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on third of the 3 traps using Hirsch and Frost to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

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Emerging/Missional leaders have criticized evangelicalism’s practice of the church as too defensive and inward looking. The evangelical church, they say, has become an organization set off over against society as opposed to being a people in and among society in God’s Mission. Missiologists Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost,  two of the main leaders of the missional church movement in N America, have challenged evangelicals in this regard to embrace a “missional ecclesiology” in N America.

Early on in their writing, Frost and Hirsch chided the N. American church for its obsession with attracting people to come to its services and programs. In The Shaping of Things to Come, they labeled the N. American church as fundamentally “attractional.” It is structured primarily around a building which is to be the center of all its various services and programs. This “attractional” modus operandi has engulfed all of the church’s functions including evangelism. According to Hirsch and Frost, we even seek to reach the hurting and those seeking faith by inviting them to church to a program we built to meet their needs. For Frost and Hirsch, this notion of the church is fundamentally flawed. It depends upon the social orbit of Christendom society where the societal expectation is that the church would be the center for all things having to do with God. This Christendom world, however, is slowly passing away. Today, this attractional “indrag” works to close off the church from the hurting and the poor and the ever-increasing world of non-Christians.

For Frost and Hirsch, the N. American church is carrying on the bad habits of Christendom. We still believe we possess power and influence in our culture “to compel them to come to us.” We organize ourselves into hierarchical business like structures that centralize the church’s operations instead of dispersing it into the world. In order to preserve our own culture, we divide what is sacred (the church) from the secular (the world). It is a power play requiring those who believe to come to church to meet God.  As a result, the church is self-enclosed trying to defend its own view of the world. It has not only withdrawn from Mission, it has become antagonistic to it. In many ways then, Frost and Hirsch agree with just about everything I have written in The End of Evangelicalism? concerning evangelicalism’s practice of “the Christian Nation.”

In response to this state of affairs, Hirsch and Frost preach a dispersed notion of the church where it inhabits its neighborhoods and contexts of everyday life. Recounting some the core themes of missional thinkers, they unfurl how the church is to live missionally as an extension of the Mission of God in the world (not as a church that does missions as a program). We are to follow Christ and the incarnational model of God’s sending the Son into the very context, rhythms and language of everyday human life. We are to live inhabit the context and witness to the Kingdom. These are “the forgotten ways” of Jesus and His disciples, which bred the first mission into the world. It is only after we inhabit and identify with those we are with that the church can then take shape in terms of its programs and services. To do the reverse is to revert to the attractional ways of Christendom.

This brief summary does not do justice to the contributions of Hirsch and Frost to the burgeoning missional church movement in N. America. They have provoked the church, especially the evangelical church, to rethink its position in society and take up the posture of Christ in the world, who came humbly, vulnerably to serve, seek and save the lost. They offer us a practice of church that shapes us out of the dispassion and protectionism that has plagued so much of our churches. Their work is helping to shape among a politic of faithfulness for mission in our time.

Nonetheless, there is a potential ideological trap that lies within the missiological practices of Hirsch and Frost. It is the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church’s relationship to society. By the word de-ecclesiologize, I am not referring merely to Frost/Hirsch’s resistance to the institutionizing of the church. Indeed some of that might be warranted. I refer instead to the separating of the practice of the church from any continuous work of the incarnate Christ in history as extended in the forms of the church by the Holy Spirit. If this happens, I contend that the church is set adrift from any determination in Christ and the work of Christ in the world. It becomes de-ecclesiologized.

This trap is not immediately apparent in Frost and Hirsch. On the contrary, they have written extensively in sympathy with theme of The End of Evangelicalism?: the restoring of Christ to the center of a politic of Mission in the world. The central task of their book ReJesus is to “reinstate the central role of Jesus … in the life and mission of God’s people.” They do not wish to separate the practice of the church from Christ, they seek to “reinstate” it. They often summarize their approach to this issue with the formula: “mission must precede ecclesiology and that Christology must precede missiology.” For Hirsch and Frost, this phrase requires that Christ must come first and be the source of the church’s formation in the world. It is Christology which drives Mission from which the church is birthed in the world.

It is this formula, however, and the assumptions behind it, that reveal the potential for the de-ecclesiologizing of the church in their ecclesiology. Implicit in this formula is that we (anyone) can know/encounter Christ determinately apart from the ongoing form of the church. The continuous forms of the church, including Eucharist, the preaching and interpretation of the canon of Scripture, the fellowship of the gifts, are therefore dispensable for Mission. Jesus forms the church directly in Mission and the church is de-ecclesiologized in Mission.

Hirsch and Frost of course are following the founding theological mantra of missional church theology, that “it is not the church that has a mission to bring God’s salvation to the world, it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.” That the church should be defined as an extension of God’s Mission in the sending of the Son should not be questioned. Yet for Hirsch and Frost, this doctrine means that the church carries no continuous form from context to context. According to Hirsch, first comes entering the cultural context, identifying with its people, getting know, understand and live among the context. Only then, after one’s life takes shape in the culture, after redemption has taken hold in the culture, can the church take on forms. The church, as Alan is fond of saying, “comes out the back of mission.” The forms in which the church takes shape in the world are all a matter of post facto development after “we” have inhabited a context. The questions however remain: who are the ones who engage the context prior to being the church? Does not this missiological engagment assume the prior existence of the church? And how does one know Christ in this context apart from the continuous forms of the church to carry on His presence in the world?

Hirsch and Frost imply in ReJesus that it is through “a direct and unmediated relationship” between the individual believer and Christ that He is known in the context (ReJesus 55). They go to great lengths to “debunk the many false images” of Jesus that have existed in the church down through the ages. They then seek to “go back to the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, powerful God-Man” (ReJesus 105,111). They recognize here that we must allow all the various images of Jesus in the gospels to drive our encounter with the world. There is a serious attention given to the texts of Scripture in defending the “wild Messiah” Jesus they advocate as the basis for Mission in the world. There remains the question however, how do we seek after this Jesus without ourselves becoming victums of another encultured view of Christ? this time the Wild Messiah as portrayed and argued for by Hirsch and Frost. For Frost and Hirsch it is a fresh encounter with the living Christ which over comes the forms of the church instead of being made manifest in these same forms as Christ has given them to the church. The danger here is that Christians are left without a basis for our very connection to the ongoing presence of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit in the Triune history. We become a bunch of individuals seeking a personal mystical experience of Christ via our own interpretation of the gospels. We become individual worshipers of a self-described Jesus devoid of the means to be immersed in the work of the Triune God in the world.

The church however has been given practices from Christ and in continuity with Christ as the Sent One to embody Christ in the world by the Spirit. Within these practices of the Eucharist, the preaching of the Word, baptism, the fellowship of the “gifts” through mutual submission, ordination, service to the poor (Matt 25), the presence of Christ in mutual discernment (Matt 18:15-20) the body of Christ is materialized in the world. These various practices must be contextualized for each place we inhabit God’s Mission. Yet it is here in these practices that we learn that the incarnation is more than a principle to be applied as a missiological method – it is a reality extended in and thru the church. These practices should not separate us from the world, they should incarnate us as His body in the world. To somehow separate these practices from the extended work of Christ in history into the world via the Spirit is to risk setting up on high an ideological picture of Jesus as the possession of each individual. Instead through these simple ecclesial practices, we are enabled as individuals to submit to and participate in the full Trinitarian Mission of God of which the church has been sent and is a part. In these ways, missiology does not precede ecclesiology, missiology is ecclesiology and vice versa..

The danger in all of this is that the church falls into the trap of becoming ideologized. Without the forms of the church, we Christians are left without a source of political formation in the world. Without a practice to be formed “in Christ,” we as individuals instead gravitate around compelling causes, which often can be used and manipulated for ulterior purposes, whether it be the building of a large organization or the accumulation of power for purposes devoid of Christ. If the church has no stance from which to engage the world, discern the issues, and engage God’s work in the world, it is susceptible to disappearing as it is contextualized out of existence. It can then become an ideology or worse, the instrument of an ideology. Either way the church loses its faithfulness. “Mission” becomes an ideological banner because it too is undetermined by a concrete practice in the world. It in essence becomes a concept to be applied. We can be lured to put it to the service of the pragmatics of making the church more successful in terms and for purposes that have little to do with God’s Mission. In all these ways, de-ecclesiologizing the church’s place in the world makes the church susceptible to the trap of becoming the instrument of ideology, repeating (what I show in the End of Evangelicalism?) the evangelical mistake of “the Christian Nation.”

Hirsch and Frost rightly want to guard against the Western habit of imposing a form of imperialism on the host cultures we seek to inhabit. They want to guard against the church thinking its got it all figured out before it lands in a culture. They want to guard against the tendency for the church to think that the Holy Spirit is only working in the church and its practices. For all of this Hirsch and Frost are to be applauded. With Frost and Hirsch, we should understand that the practice of the church needs be contextualized although not discarded. The church has failed often in its history at this. We need to realize that God’s Mission is at work outside the church, that Jesus is Lord over all things, and the church exists to inhabit, discern and be responsive to His work, not our own pre agendas. The church has failed at this. We need to listen to Hirsch and Frost. Yet we must do so while taking heed to avoid the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church stance in society.

There is no question in my mind that Hirsch and Frost are leading post evangelicalism towards a new faithfulness for Mission. They teach us how to be Christ’s body, His very incarnate reality in the world. They teach us the ways of compassion, of being among the poor and the needy, they teach us how to be an hospitable witness that embodies the justice of Christ in the world. These are truly the beginnings of a politic of faithfulness. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the trap of de-eccelesiologizing our belief and practice of the church in society.

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What do you think? Does Alan and Michael fall into the trap of de-ecclesiologizing the church? Have I fallen into the error of Catholicism (please describe what that might be for you eh?)? Does this matter?

Filed under Ecclesiology,Missional Ecclesiology,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 27 Comments

on June 28 2010

The Emerging View of Salvation: Brian McLaren and the Danger of De-eschatologizing the Kingdom

As I said on the two previous posts, I’m currently winding down my book project  The End of Evangelicalism? by writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the rubble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements among others. But I contend they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on the second of these 3 traps using Brian McLaren to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

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Emerging church writers have spilt much ink criticizing evangelicalism’s narrow understanding of salvation. Author/pastor Brian McLaren has led the charge. For McLaren, truly the father of the emerging movement, evangelicalism has over-personalized salvation, made it into a transaction and has generally been pre-occupied with the afterlife and escaping hell. As a result, evangelicalism’s salvation message has actually distanced the believer from the salvation that God is doing to transform the unjust world. As a result, evangelicals have become dispassionate and even duplicitous in the way we lead our lives in the world. Again, in short, McLaren agrees with everything I have written in The End of Evangelicalism? concerning evangelicals and our practice of “the Decision.”

McLaren responds the status quo by admonishing evangelicals that they have forgotten (or ignored) the Jesus of the gospels and His message: the Kingdom of God has begun. We have focused instead on the Pauline/ Lutheran doctrine that we are justified by faith in Christ through his atoning work on the cross. He argues that evangelicalism’s salvation has become a personalized middle class gospel accommodated to the comforts of American prosperity. It is a message hardly recognizable in what Jesus preached in the gospels where He announces that the Kingdom of God has broken in, a new way of life with God has begun. McLaren, true to the evangelist he is, invites his readers to identify with it and join in living the way of Jesus in this new Kingdom. As opposed to an evangelical conversion that emphasizes the afterlife, McLaren says Jesus is about the work that God is doing in His Kingdom to reorder our lives now. In joining in with God and His Kingdom we can become part of what God is doing to transform the world.

In his The Secret Message of Jesus, McLaren takes this theme that is over 100 years old in New Testament scholarship and refashions it for evangelism. He invites his readers to follow Jesus into the socio inter-personal and political dynamics of the Kingdom birthed by, in and through Jesus Christ. In Anabaptist fashion, McLaren describes how God is working not through coercion or power but in the daily (even mundane) lives of committed followers of Christ willing to participate in what He is doing through love and reconciliation. To those of us tired of the individualist consumerist habits of evangelical salvation, Brian McLaren is a breath of fresh air. He offers a salvation that includes repentance and a decision, but is grandly holistic. It is a belief and practice that shapes us out of the duplicity and dispassion that has seemed so much a part of evangelicalism’s practice of evangelism.

In McLaren’s next book, Everything Must Change, he expands on this vision. He describes the message of Jesus as a new way of life founded upon “a counter story.” This story is of course the Kingdom of God, “a framing story” offered by Jesus that truly helps us see what God is working in the world. Over against the stories of domination in our world that are destroying the earth, sustaining suffering and exploitation and perpetrating gross injustice, McLaren calls for an awakening to this new framing story, the “creative and transforming story” of Jesus (EMC, 274), where God’s love, reconciliation, sacred beauty, restoration, justice and renewal takes shape among us and in the world. This is a story “that changes everything” (EMC ch. 3). McLaren calls his readers to become true believers and participants in this “framing story,” the Kingdom of God.

It is in Everything Must Change that we see, maybe for the first time, McLaren’s temptation to de-eschatologize the Kingdom. De-eschatologizing the Kingdom happens when one separates the Kingdom of God from its fulfillment in the historical (i.e.incarnate) work of God in Jesus Christ. It is in EMC that we notice that Brian is comfortable differentiating “the message of Jesus” (the Kingdom of God) from “the message about Jesus” (that Jesus Christ, in His life, death, resurrection and as Reigning Lord, is the means by which the Kingdom is taking place) (See for instance EMC 22,98). It is therefore possible to read him in this book as advocating that we must put our faith and trust in God and His framing story – the message of the Kingdom – as opposed to submitting ourselves to the one who has been exalted as Reigning Lord and is actually bringing in this new in-breaking Kingdom. Jesus becomes (if we’re not careful) the guide, the exemplar in helping us do this. This move de-eschatologizes the Kingdom and risks thwarting the formation of a politic for mission in three ways.

1.) First, de-eschatologizing sets the stage for “the Kingdom” to become another nebulous Master Signifier which can mean anything. When we separate the Kingdom from the ongoing in-breaking work of Jesus as reigning Lord, the Kingdom is set free from its moorings in God’s eschatological work. No, no longer grounded in its history in the nation of Israel and the fulfillment of that history in Christ, the Kingdom can be applied as a concept to any number of activities that one deems qualifies as God’s ‘ethic’ for bringing justice into the world. Indeed, it can become the means of another form of ideological complicity as we casually associate “the Kingdom” with various causes without discerning whether this is of Christ and His Kingdom. I have no question that some government initiatives qualify as God’s Kingdom, especially when Christians get involved. Yet how would we know apart from the church’s participation in God’s eschatological activity to bring this Kingdom to fulfillment in Christ? The Kingdom has of course become a Master-Signifier before. Some might even suggest that George Bush used evangelicalism’s amalgamation of democracy and the Kingdom to justify the Iraq War as the bringer of God’s “freedom” to the world. There is a long history of such “ Kingdom abuse.” Separated from the eschatological fulfillment of this Kingdom in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom can become just another Signifier that distracts us from God’s justice as opposed to building a politic of God’s justice/Mission in and among our everyday lives.

2.) Secondly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom strips us of our ability to inhabit the gospel in peace and hospitality. Ironically, when the Kingdom is de-eschatologized, we are tempted to make it into a Cause which we advocate over against those who disagree with us. We are tempted to take control of history when the Kingdom is separated from the certainty that God is working to bring it to completion in history in Christ (1 Cor 15:25-28). As a result, the onus to bring in the Kingdom is shifted more onto what we do than what God is doing. We lose the wherewithal to participate in God’s work as patient and non-coercive participants as McLaren wants (I consider it a curious mistake of McLaren to give up on the second coming in New Kind of Christianity 197).  It is only as we are confident of what God has in store for the world, that we can participate daily as His subjects, not as ones who need control the world. McLaren’s words in his title, “Everything must change,” reveal the stress of this de-eschatologizing. Instead, I would suggest “Everything Has Changed” already in Christ and we must now participate in what God has already begun and is bringing to completion in Christ for the world. Only in practicing such a belief can Christians avoid taking on “the Kingdom” as another cause which we must fight for over against those who disagree with us. This patience and hospitality is essential for a political presense that can participate in God’s Mission in the world.

3.) Lastly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom loses the very dynamic that gives us hope for something different coming into the world. One of the first things I learned about the Kingdom in seminary is what we used to call “the already, but not yet” character of it. From Oscar Cullman, George Ladd and other NT theologians we learned there is a tension in the NT that acknowledges the Kingdom has come yet it is not yet completed. We then are a people baptized into the new age all the while continuing to live among the old. We are called to live under and bear witness to the new realities of the Kingdom, Christ’s Lordship, his defeat of the powers, his victory over death, sin and evil. This takes seriously the fact that something actually happened cosmically to the world in Jesus Christ yet it has not been fully manifested (it comes as a mustard seed). If we separate the Kingdom from the Reign of the living resurrected Christ, we lose this tension. If we lose this tension, we lose the wherewithal to engage the world for the transformation God is bringing in His Mission.

As I said last post, the emerging church shows much promise for leading post-evangelicalism into a new faithfulness for Mission. McLaren, and many other emerging leaders, teach us a salvation of the Kingdom that breeds hospitality and authentic witness to what God is bring to the whole world. He takes the foundational teachings of Jesus and writes them for a new evangelism in our time. My concern is for a new post –evangelcial political presence of faithfulness  in our culture. I suggest McLaren contributes to such a new presence. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the trap of de-eschatologizing our belief and practice of salvation.

What do you think? Does Brian McLaren commit the ideological “trap” of de-eschatologizing the Kingdom? rendering the gospel of the Kingdom impotent for shaping a politial presense in the world?

Filed under Evangelism,Incarnational,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 14 Comments

on June 24 2010

The “Emerging” View of Scripture: Pete Rollins and the Danger of DeIncarnationalizing the Word

As I said last post, I’m currently winding down my book project  The End of Evangelicalism? by writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the rubble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements among others. But they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on the first of these 3 traps using Peter Rollins to illustrate what such a danger might look like.

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Emerging church writers have spilt a lot of ink criticizing evangelicalism’s modernist assumptions on Scripture. They have rightly showed the problems inherent to evangelicalism’s excessive propositionalism, hubris in interpretative method (that there is one true interpretation tied to the author’s original intent) and its resulting exclusionary arrogance. Irish philosopher Peter Rollins, a former evangelical Pentecostal, addressed these issues on behalf of the emerging church with his books How (Not) To Speak About God and his follow-up book The Fidelity of Betrayal. His deconstructive approach is popular among the emerging church leaders in N. America.

According to Rollins, the established church, which often means evangelicalism, is too certain about what we know about God and too hyper-cognitive towards Scripture thereby taking the mystery out of our encounter with the living God. We evangelicals, so Rollins suggest, tend to colonize the text, make Scripture our own possession and in effect make the words of Scripture an idolatry. As a result, we have become a controlling, uninviting, judgmental people losing the wherewithal to encounter the living God and inviting others into such an encounter. We know Scripture but we are untouched by it and so we are insulated from God who seeks to reveal Himself in and through it. In short Rollins agrees with everything I have written in my upcoming book The End of Evangelicalism? concerning the evangelical practice of “the Inerrant Bible.” Rollins solution is to move us from “right believing” to “believing in the right way.”

To get us to the right way, Rollins’ provides a diet of pre-Medieval mystics, apophatic theology and some post-structuralist ideas found from the likes of Derrida, Jean Luc Marion and John Caputo. True to his apophatic leanings, Rollins says we must approach revelation with a sense that there is always more of God concealed than is revealed. God can never be fully revealed in words, even the words of Scripture. We therefore always fall short of knowing what we mean by God. The evangelical tendency to concentrate on the known content of Scripture, therefore, misses the point. God is made known in the unknown. We must approach all revelation with a humility and openness appropriate to this reality. In true deconstructionist terms, we must acknowledge “that our various interpretations of revelation will always be provisional, fragile and fragmentary.” Context, culture and language both limit the extent of our understanding of God as well as make it possible. Truth is not so much then about what we can conceptually grasp. It is about the living encounter with God that transforms our selves as a result what Rollins labels a “soteriological event.”

To those of us who have suffered with the modernist habits of the evangelical practice of Scripture, Rollins comes as a breath of fresh air. He helps shape in us a humility towards Scripture that can breed the hospitality and conversation we need for a politic of Mission.

Rollins’ proposal, however, poses a danger. His version of truth risks that the gospel never hits the ground sufficiently to shape a political reality. He certainly intends to foster the incarnation of the gospel in people’s lives. This is a big theme among emerging leaders. Nonetheless, it is questionable whether he has provided for a confidence in what God has revealed sufficient enough to order a politic of truth, justice and reconciliation in the world. He is apophatic after all in his approach to religious language (God can never be contained in language). He is serious about all interpretations of revelation being provisional. As a result, we could end up ever and always postponing judgment as to what God is saying so that indeed we never test it, engage it and allow it to shape our lives together as a people in everyday life. Because God is revealed in what we cannot know, we may get lost in contemplation and/or conversation that never provides the determinacy to actually participate in the Mission God in concrete ways as a people.

This is what I call the danger of de-incarnationizing the Word of God. It is the same critique of deconstructionism that has been voiced by Milbank, Zizek, and others. They suggest that deconstruction glorifies “the never to be reached” and sucks us in to a ‘bad infinity.’ Our life together begins to look like a “pseudo activism indistinguishable from a Bhuddist quietism.” None of this may be true of Rollins but it is the danger that lies close at hand: the danger of a concept of truth that by definition never lands in the concrete circumstances of our every life together.

To be more precise, to de-incarnationalize the Scriptures is to separate them from their source in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son – to remove the language of Scriptures from the logic of incarnation. God has condescended to reveal Himself in Christ via human culture including the language of Scripture itself. God was born in human flesh and lived among us speaking our language. He died, rose and ascended gifting the church with apostles, teachers and the ongoing proclamation of the Word all by the purview of the Holy Spirit. In that His Holy Spirit is among us, His presence continues and inhabits the ongoing language of His people. As we situate ourselves in this language, we are able to encounter God in it and discern Him elsewhere. The Scriptures are the very extension of the incarnate Christ through the Holy Spirit into the world via the preaching, Table and community of His people. In such a place, we are able to discern justice, righteousness, reconciliation and the ways of God in our lives together for the world. This does not deny that the language of His people always points beyond itself to the fuller reality which it cannot contain. This too is part of the incarnation (This is from Jamie Smiths Speech and Theology). And we must always approach the Scriptures with humility and submission in all the ways it is practiced. Yet the Word has condescended into our lives, and God continues that enfleshment in His people. We can discern the truth in the Spirit via the Scriptures, actual truths, what we must do,  concretely for our lives together in the world. To separate the Scriptures from their incarnate continuity with the Son is to render them impotent to shape us politically as the reconciliation of God at work in the world. We are in danger of receiving a Truth that can never land in the social realities of our every day lives.

That Rollins is at least vulnerable to this trap is evident in some of the liturgical services of his Ikon community as outlined in the 2nd half of How (Not) to Speak of God.  These well-crafted performances are meant to be “soteriological events.” They invite the participant to engage in Scriptural stories in ways that deconstruct the most commonly held interpretations of Scripture. Their operating mode is to turn the received interpretation ‘on its head’ so as to clear some space for a fresh encounter once it has been determined “what God is Not.” The events are inventive and engaging to say the least. There is no doubt they provoke an encounter with God. Yet these liturgies can have the affect of deconstructing the participant pulling him/her apart from our history in Christ. Yet the very purpose and profundity of Christian liturgy, as I understand it, is the opposite: to draw us into the very participation into our history of God in Christ. These Ikon services can have the affect of removing the participants from the very context or language that we need to locate ourselves within the Story. The modus operandi here illustrates some of what happens in the de-incarnationalization of the Word. In an effort to avoid the ‘creedalizing’ of doctrine, we are left devoid of (disconnected from) the history of what God has done, and is doing whereby we can see God in the world and participate in Mission. As a result, these “Ikon services” can come off almost as performance art. They can leave the participant with no place to go and no context from which to move into the world to locate God’s Mission. If this indeed happens, these are not liturgies that can incarnate a people into a life together in Christ for His Mission in the world.

The emerging church therefore has much to offer post-evangelicalism in the forging of new faithfulness for Mission. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the de-incarnationalizing of our belief and practice of Scripture.

What do you think? Does Pete Rollins commit the error of de-incarnationalizing the Word? rendering the Scripture impotent for shaping a politial presense in the world?

Filed under Incarnational,Missional Theology,Uncategorized 29 Comments

on June 22 2010

The Three Potential (ideological) Traps of Emerging Missional Theology: Can Rollins, McLaren and Hirsch Avoid Them?

I have had to invent 3 words to describe what I see as the 3 ideological traps facing emerging and/or missional theology. The words are de-incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. I am not proud of the creativity it took to devise these words. They are pathetically clumsy.

My writing project The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission is winding to a close (praise God).  The book charts evangelicalism’s recent troubles culturally in N America. It then uses political theory via Slavoj Zizek et al to dissect how our beliefs of Scripture, Salvation and Church in Society (and the way we practice them) have shaped us for an inhospitable political presence in the world. I argue that the Inerrant Bible, the Decision for Christ, and the Christian Nation somehow became badges for us that worked against our formation into God’s Mission for the world.  I try to show how evangelicalism developed into an ideology that is imploding under its own contradictions and antagonisms. I then spend a whole chapter showing how our political theology can be re-constructed on a different basis – all the while upholding and transforming these existing theological commitments.

Currently I’m writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the ruble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements among others. But they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms.

I argue to de-incarnationalize Scripture is to separate the authority and interpretation of Scripture (even its language) FROM the incarnation of God itself in Christ that is extended historically in and through the body of Christ. Once separated from Christ, we must engage Scripture by somehow overcoming it instead of allowing ourselves to be immersed into it. I argue this is a bad idea. We are left with events, encounters, which cannot shape a politic in the world. Like an ideology, events can be vulnerable to being used to support existing political structures. I applaud Peter Rollins account of the problem of Scripture in evangelicalism but also show how he might be vulnerable to this de-incarnationalizing of Scripture.

I argue to de-eschatologize the gospel is to somehow separate the Kingdom of God FROM the life, death and resurrection of the incarnate Christ and the extension of God’s work of incarnation into the inauguration of Christ’s Lordship at His ascension. Any separation of the Kingdom from this dynamic of Christ’s inbreaking Reign, the manifestation of His Lordship in through the Spirit over His subjects and over the world, risks making “the Kingdom” just another banner to be waved for social causes. It can become a Master-Signifier whose meaning can be filled in by many different and competing causes. It can lose its meaning quickly and become highjacked for ideological purposes. I applaud Brian McLaren’s work that has called into question the traditional evangelical construals of salvation. The question is, can Brian himself avoid the error of evangelicalism (turning the Kingdom into an ideological side benefit we fit into our lives)? To do so he must avoid the trap of de-eschatologizing the gospel.

Lastly I argue to de-ecclesiologize the church’s relation to society is to somehow separate the practice of church FROM its origins in the Incarnate Christ. From this point in history the church as a politic was born in the person and work of Christ. From his death, resurrection, ascension, gifting of the Spirit and His continual presense where two or three are gathered, a people are birthed in the world for His Mission, His embodied presense incarnationally in the world. There are some forms (perhaps much abused in our day) to this politic, i.e. the Table, the preaching of the Word, fellowship and justice of a people, which brings into being the inhabiting of the world with Christ’s very presense. To detach the church from its sources via the practices of church (I know this sounds Catholic) we in essence make church and its engagment in the world a banner, a cause, that can get ideologized. “Missional” becomes a banner to promote another program devised by humans. The question is, can Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost for example, avoid this trap when they advocate missiology precedes ecclesiology?

The epilogue to my book is meant to challenge the current emerging and missional movements to not make the same mistakes as evangelicalism thereby succumbing to being absorbed by other ideologies, whether the Enlightenment liberal cause or the evangelical mega church cause.

In the next week I am going to post my three summaries of the Rollins, McLaren, Hirsch engagements (I love all 3 guys by the way!).

P.S. I am still going to post my final post on Mission among the GLBTQ. It deals with the shape and necessity of redemptive sexual community for Mission.

Filed under Missional Theology 14 Comments

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