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Tradition, prejudice and the trouble with time and bodies (and a lovely quote by Fergus Kerr)

December 19, 2009 by Simon

“According to some theologians, the metaphysical load that Christian practice and discourse carry needs little exploration. They would say, for example, that confessing the doctrine of the Trinity or the resurrection of Christ is much more important than worrying about the consequences for theological work of the ancient controversy between realism and idealism. They would say, even after thinking about it, that the epistemological bias of the age need not interfere with biblical exegesis or systematic theology.

To disabuse them would be a difficult task. I would say only that, if theologians proceed in the belief that they need neither examine nor even acknowledge their inherited metaphysical commitments, they will simply remain prisoners of whatever was in the antecedent 30 years earlier, when they were first-year students; or, more likely, 350 years earlier…”

Fergus Kerr, Theology After Wittgenstein, p.3

(He then goes on to show how a number of modern theologians are stuck in Cartesian ways of thinking).

The little thought put forward by Kerr, here, has seemed pretty obvious to me for quite a while. I remember, though, a time when it wasn’t obvious, and when I on the contrary assumed that direct, unfiltered access to the biblical texts was available, nearly 2000 years after they were written. Oh, how simple theology was before metaphysical presuppositions and epistemological biases came on the scene.

It is, of course, silly to think that as enculturated, temporal, historical, embodied, passionate we can approach anything with absolutely objectivity or neutrality, least of all texts that are themselves the product of a particular (distant) historical context and culture, let alone of another embodied and sweaty human, writing in very particular circumstances to a particular group of people. The sad and somewhat strange thing is that there are indeed “theologians” (though they are more systematic exegetes than theologians) who hold to this view, if not explicitly, then implicitly. The most high-profile of these are American. Their names rhyme with Grayne Srudem, Don Jiper and C.A. Darson.

It is not that such people don’t do some good work (no need to throw the baby out with the bath water, even if I personally disagree on a lot of details), but they are exactly in the situation Kerr describes above, captive to a metaphysics and an epistemology of which they are unaware, and which furthermore seems quite contrary to any coherent and meaningful Christian theological worldview. This is possibly the worst situation to be in as a theologian. We will always be creatures whose critical faculties are limited by our social context, upbringing, passions etc. – this is simply part of who we are as finite human beings –and while it’s not a reason to sink into relativism, it is a cause for intellectual humility. But more than that, when we are at least aware of our finitude; when we are at least aware of the need for a degree of intellectual humility; when we are at least aware that we have biases and prejudices, and that this is part of who we are, then we are in a much better place to, as far as possible, engage in self-criticism, so that the impact of these biases can be factored into our thinking. And it’s not even that we try and rid ourselves of these biases (that was the Enlightenment’s project, and it obviously failed), but merely that we be aware of them. As Gadamer said (in relation to interpreting texts):

“The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings [...]

Is not all human existence, even the freest, limited and qualified in various ways? If this is true then the possibility of an absolute reason is not a possibility for humanity. Reason exists for us in concrete historical terms – i.e., it is not its own master but remains constantly dependent on the given circumstances in which it operates”.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, from Truth & Method

According to this, the most dangerous place to be in is the position Kerr describes at the top, when we are unaware and unconscious of our prejudices (metaphysical or otherwise), and under the mis-impression that we have none, or at least can factor them out.

_____________________________

Does accepting any of this about limited rationality or intellectual humility mean “doctrine” or “orthodoxy” go out the window, as people like D.A. Carson have claimed?

Certainly not. It seems to me, that we’re left with at least two options (certainly more, but this is a blog). One is to follow the road of quasi-relativistic “postmodern” spiritual mush, John Caputo or Mr. Rollins being examples of this approach (which is pretty old hat by now, I know). Another is to bring tradition back into the picture, not as the bogey-man it is sometimes presented as in some contemporary, outward-looking protestant churches, but as the very life-blood of orthodox Christian belief and practice (and I mean a minimal or generous orthodoxy here, nothing more). If we are limited beings, without direct, unfiltered access to the biblical texts, then tradition has to be acknowledged as the avenue through which Christian truth has been passed down the ages within the Christian community. As Gadamer himself says, authority and tradition needn’t be seen as inherently bad things – they are, on the contrary, quite inescapable – rather, it is the kind of authority and the kind of tradition that is the real issue.

N.B. I’m not saying early or medieval or indeed 18th Century Protestant churches had everything right… again, I’m referring to a minimal orthodoxy here; the 21st Century is very different than the 3rd or 4th, and so Christian faith will necessarily look rather different in today’s context. Also, guys like Macintyre and Hauerwas and others have obviously talked about this kind of thing in relation to tradition, narrative and community for a while.

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The Five Books of Moses: A Resource for Counter-Formation

October 24, 2009 by Daniel J. Story

In both my masters studies and in my growing experience as a lecturer I have spent a great deal of time in the Old Testament.  I am aware that many Christians find drawing from this portion of our canon a challenging or even droll experience.  As a result it has been, in the opinion of many, much neglected, particularly in church and devotional life.  I do not wish to write in depth about why this should be, but rather to examine in brief one reading of the Old Testament narrative that has freshened up my own perspective, both academically and devotionally.

The portion of Old Testament literature to which I now turn is the Pentateuch or Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian canon, traditionally associated with the authority of Israel’s most revered teacher, Moses).  This literary unit, as we have it in our hand, is a more or less continuous narrative relating the story of the creation of the world, the origins of sin and the formation of the Hebrew nation.  It is generally agreed that the traditions and stories that make up this lengthy and complex narrative were edited into their final form sometime in the 6th/5th century BCE during the time of the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people.  It is therefore likely that these five books of Moses provide for us not a disinterested picture of the events which they contain, but stories which have, at least in part, been filtered through the lens of the exilic experience.  In some sense, in their final form, they can be seen as a product both of and for a displaced generation dominated by a foreign empire.

In the ancient world (and arguably still today), the credibility of a nation’s gods tended to depend largely on the prosperity and success of that nation.  Israel was in many ways no exception to this pressure.  Furthermore, for Israel perhaps the key tangible reminder of their association with YHWH was the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.  Presence (and prosperity) in the land was a key indication of blessing.

In exile this promised life was shattered.  Challenges and attacks whilst in the land of Canaan could come and go, but removal from the land (complete with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple) devastated virtually all visible signs which would distinguish them as the people of YHWH.  Deported to Babylon, they were surrounded by, though not entirely immersed in, a culture shaped by stories different to their own and directed toward the worship of gods other than YHWH, factors which together communicated an alternative reading of the world.  Furthermore, this alternative reading came to them from the victors.  It is not surprising that many felt and gave into the pressure to adopt and immerse themselves within their new environment; to cease to be a person of YHWH and to be (find their identity in) something other.

SuperStock_1746-1560But many did not.  It is, of course, not insignificant that the Babylonian approach (as opposed to Assyria) to conquered peoples was to allow them to retain some cohesion in exile including continuance, to a certain extent, in their practices of worship.  This meant that the people of YHWH were in exile together.  With this picture in mind, it is perhaps not too surprising that during this period, much of the Hebrew scriptures were shaped and formed into something akin to how we have them today.  What were they doing?  Those who remained faithful to YHWH had been gripped by a specific interpretation of the exile that sustained them through it and their efforts were spent in shaping and carrying forward stories which expressed this faith in the midst of a culture that was hostile to it.

For these exilic generations the Torah was a vibrant testimony of faith which held out the offer of counter-formation, that is, the opportunity to be formed as a people around the worship of YHWH as the true and supreme God.  Elements in the Torah which speak to this ongoing challenge are many, but let me point out just two.  Firstly, there are good grounds to view much of the prologue of Genesis (chapters 1-11) as an appropriation and radical reshaping of stories and traditions present in the broader cultural context.  In speaking the language of origin stories, akin to Enuma Elish, the Torah unmistakably presented a challenging alternative to the claims of the seemingly dominant world around them.  The God of the Hebrews is in fact YHWH and YHWH, according to Genesis 1, is in fact the supreme and effortless creator of the world.  Equally, the great Babel of Genesis 11, almost certainly a reference to the revered Babylon, does not in fact mean ‘the gateway to heaven,’ but refers instead to foolishness and confusion.  What appeared as the centre and pride of the ancient world was not as supreme as it may have appeared.  These are just a few examples of how Genesis 1-11 would have challenged the Jews to see their surroundings through different eyes.  It may seem that Babylon is supreme, but look again.

Secondly, though it often goes unnoticed, it is surely significant that the Torah, consumed as it is with the promise of land, ends in its narrative outside of the land (see Numbers and Deuteronomy).  The land of promise is within reach, but not yet grasped.  Many challenges still lay ahead.  It is a small leap indeed to suggest that the exilic Jews were keen to shape and be shaped by this story.  For first generation exiles, even Moses himself died without seeing the land but was careful to invest himself into the generation that would.  For second generation exiles, though they had not seen many of the great works of God, their faith was stirred by the faith-filled remembering passed on to them which in turn served to point them ahead to future blessing, even in the face of profound challenge.

With the decline of Christendom in the west, the “given” world which the church inhabits grows increasingly foreign to the Christian story.  In Babylonian fashion, the “gods” of the dominant culture rear their heads, often in disturbingly compelling ways.  It seems to me that the time is right for the church of the West to re-appropriate the culture-challenging story of the Torah.  How could this be done?  A good start would be to enter the story of the Torah with fresh eyes, to see it as alive for our present as the Jews in Babylon saw it alive for their’s.  We could then launch out along similar lines by drawing attention to the claims made by the stories of our own cultures.  Consumerism and consumption, for instance, have a story from which they spring and by which they seek to shape particular types of people.  Surely this and other stories of the “given” world could be called into question through exposure and countering.  We may also, in the tone of Numbers and Deuteronomy, remind ourselves of the way in which we occupy a place still outside of the land, but with the land in grasp.  The kingdom has come, but is still to come.  Challenge lives in the between, but so does divine promise.

I conclude these thoughts with a quote from the deeply insightful voice of Walter Brueggemann who I must credit with starting my own thinking in this direction:

As the Western world has been perennially hostile to the claims of Jewish faith, so the emerging contemporary world of commodity grows more signally hostile to the claims of the Christian faith as well.  As has not been the case in the long Christian hegemony of the West, now the church is having ot think and act to maintain a distinct identity for faith in an alien cultural environment.  While the church will characteristically attend to the New Testament in such an emergency, a study of Torah already alerts us to the resources for this crisis that are older and deeper than the New Testament…The preaching, teaching, and study of Torah is in order to “set one’s heart” differently, to trust and fear differently, to align oneself with an alternative account of the world (Little 1983).

(Brueggeman, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination, 27)

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Artificial Intelligence Programmed for Pure Evil

August 23, 2009 by Aaron Rathburn

What is ‘evil’?

Philosophers and theologians have asked this question for millennia.  Augustine posited that if God is the creator of all things, then evil cannot be a “thing” as such, because that would implicate God as the author of evil.  For Augustine then, rather than evil being a polar opposite substance than good, evil is instead the complete absence of good.  In the same way that darkness is nothing in itself but an absence of light, evil is nihil—ontological nothingness.

Scientific American has a piece looking at philosopher and cognitive scientist Selmer Bringsjord, who is working with a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to develop an artificial intelligence—a computerized person—that represents pure evil.

Bringsjord says, “I’ve been working on what is evil and how to formally define it.”  From the article:

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of “causing considerable harm to others,” Bringsjord says. Finally, “and most importantly,” he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

“I thought it would be interesting to come up with formal structures that define evil,” Bringsjord says, “and, ultimately, to create a purely evil character the way a creative writer would.”

The Author of Evil: Selmer Bringsjord

The Author of Evil: Selmer Bringsjord

This research has created E: the digital representation of quintessential malevolence.  By asking a series of questions to E, we learn that it describes itself as a young, white man, with dark hair and stubble on his face.

In one twisted study, E is asked how it responds in a situation where his “parents” have given him a gun that his “brother” used to commit suicide.  “He” is programmed to believe that in fact he gave the gun to his brother, rather than his parents.  Then they ask him why.

But of course, any exploration into the creation and manipulation of evil raises all of the ethical questions: Should we create evil?  Should we make artificial intelligence at all?  What is evil?  How would such “evil” be controlled, if allowed to interact in a virtual world with other “avatars” controlled by humans?  Bringsjord addresses only this final question:

“I wouldn’t release E or anything like it, even in purely virtual environments, without engineered safeguards,” Bringsjord says. These safeguards would be a set of ethics written into the software, something akin to author Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” that [1] prevent a robot from harming humans, [2] requires a robot to obey humans, and [3] instructs a robot to protect itself—as long as that does not violate either or both of the first two laws.

“Because I have a lot of faith in this approach,” he says, “E will be controlled.”

But the greatest blessing and curse of artificial intelligence is that it is intelligent; and as such, it can learn and adapt.  Even as Asimov wrote his ethical 3 laws, he foresaw the implications they could lead to by a genuinely independent intelligence. What if to protect humans, some harm had to be inflicted on them?  What if to protect humanity, humans had to be protected from themselves?  Even within engineered safeguards, Asimov explored how an artificial intelligence could evolve its understanding of such boundaries and operate within them in unforeseen ways.  (An entertaining introduction to this is the 2004 Will Smith film based on Asimov’s writings, I, Robot.)

An interesting field that has spawned as a result of the research into A.I. and robotics is the subfield of robo-ethics. Should robots powered by artificial intelligence be engineered to emulate humans?  Should robotic intelligence exhibit “feelings,” even if only simulated?  Should robots have a face?

With the evolution of humanity into a new technological age, humans and machines coexist in a symbiotic relationship.  The lines between reality and virtual reality are increasingly blurred: electricity to homes and cities is controlled by digital power grids and computer networks.  Conversations happen both face-to-face, and over Face-book.  Some people have flesh-and-blood hearts pumping in their chest, others have artificial mechanical hearts pumping in theirs.

Not only does this raise new ethical questions, it also asks afresh all of the old: What does it mean to be “human”?  What does it mean to have a will?  Is the will free?  And back to the original point: should we be creating evil “wills” in this kind of environment?

Bringsford says he has “a lot of faith” in his ability to create and control such an evil.  Is his faith misplaced?  Time will tell.

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Hermeneutics: A Postmodern Take on Biblical Historiography

July 13, 2009 by Aaron Rathburn

Mark Twain made famous the old quip, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  The point of the idiom is that even such supposedly “brute facts” as statistics can be interpreted to have multiple meanings.

Numbers Don’t Lie: Historiography and Modernity

Many people bemoan the study of history.  After all, history is simply rote memorization of names and dates—or so goes the story.  This is the popular view of the discipline: historians examine texts and artifacts, and reconstruct the events of the past as they took place.  “Just reporting the facts,” as it were.

This is the understanding of historiography as inherited by the Enlightenment.  Leopold von Ranke was a German historian who is credited as a pioneer in applying the scientific method to historical inquiry.  Ranke’s ultimate goal was to report “true” history; totally neutral, free from bias, and completely “objective.”  This legacy—and the residual ripples of Modernity—is still seen as the popular mentality to this day.

Eye of the Beholder: Post-Modernity and Interpretation

However, there is another famous old quip: “History is written by the victors.”

Post-Modern philosopher Jacques Derrida made the (in)famous critique that there is in fact no such thing as “objective” observation.

In his philosophical studies of language, Derrida observed that no communication is direct and straightforward, but rather is mediated through language and subject to interpretation.  James K.A. Smith offers a concrete example: if I shout “Duck!” in a golf course, it means something radically different than if I shout “Duck!” in a field while you’re holding a shotgun (pg.52, “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?“).

But moreover, in the same way that language is subject to interpretation, Derrida proposed that everything in human experience is subject to interpretation—whether we are aware of it or not.  There are no “brute facts,” but only “interpretations”; some more valid than others.  For example, the four-pronged piece of metal that we interpret as an eating utensil and call a “fork,” Ariel in The Little Mermaid interprets as a “dinglehopper”—an instrument for combing one’s hair (Smith, pg.40).  Through each of our individual pasts, experiences, and more, we are conditioned to interpret certain “brute facts” in particular ways.  Absolutely everything, then, is subject to interpretation.

This same subjectivity to observation and interpretation is carried over into historiography.  Contrary to Ranke’s project, there is indeed no “true” history that is not subject to interpretation.  Everybody has a perspective—our own conditioned “lenses” with which we view the world.  A Protestant will deliver a completely different account of church history, for example, than a Roman Catholic will.

Old Habits Die Hard: Pre-Modern Historiography and The Bible

What, then, about history that pre-dates Ranke and the historiography of Modernity?

Old Testament scholar Pete Enns highlights the example of the “Mesha Inscription” (pg.36, “Inspiration & Incarnation”).  This is an ancient inscription that was found, dating to around 830 BCE.  Mesha was the king of Moab, and a contemporary of king Omri of Israel.  The inscription reads:

Omri was the king of Israel,
and he oppressed Moab for many days,
for Kemosh was angry with his land.
And his son succeeded him,
and he said…he too…
“I will oppress Moab!”
In my days did he say [so].

But I looked down on him and on his house,
and Israel has gone to ruin, yes, it has gone to ruin for ever!
And Omri had taken possession of the whole land of Medeba,
and he lived there (in) his days and half the days of his son, forty years,
but Kemosh [resto]red it in my days.

Mesha appears to be gloating over deeds and interactions with Omri and Israel.

The Old Testament also records Mesha as having been a contemporary of Omri, and offers a different take on the relationship between the two parties:

Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he had to deliver to the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams.  But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. (2 Kings 3:4-5).

These texts each represent diametrically opposite perspectives of interpretation on similar events.  Mesha says that Israel “oppressed” Moab, and goes so far to say that “Israel has gone to ruin for ever.” Israel, on the other side of the coin, records that Mesha quit paying tribute and rebelled.  Regardless of whether they are describing the same events, each text represents a particular interpretation of the relationship between the nations.

Rubber Meets the Road: Implications and Application

Jesus called the Old Testament the “word of God” (Mk 7:13)—doesn’t this mean that the Bible’s perspective should report the “objective,” true history?  Yes and no.  “Yes,” the Bible does report truth, but “no,” it does not report this truth “objectively,” without also being subject to interpretation.

Christians maintain that the Bible, although it is one of God’s conduits of communication, was written by human authors.  As such, these human authors were bound in the same way that any other person would be—and that includes the necessity of interpretation when recording historical events.

When we read the Bible in the 21st-century, we are bringing all of our presuppositions to the table.  We assume that the Bible is a “book,” or at least that each of the “books” contained within are “books”—when in fact they are often texts that had been composed and redacted over a long tradition.  (Not to mention that different groups of Christians define the “Bible” with different groups of authoritative “books”!)  We assume that a “history” text is the “naked events” as they happened, rather than an interpretive narrative.  All of these assumptions and a host more lie at hand as we approach the Bible.  In order to do the Bible justice for what it is trying to communicate, we must be aware of these presuppositions and let the Bible operate on its own terms, and not impose our own ideas onto the text.

If archeology challenges our understanding of certain texts, Christians need not immediately assume a defensive posture—perhaps we need to reinterpret our understanding of the historiography of a text.  If biological and geological science challenge our reading of Genesis 1+, perhaps we are assuming a 21st-century historiography that was not intended for the text.

Finally, the Bible actually is, in fact, “biased”—and that’s okay.  The gospels are records of historical events, but also filtered through theological interpretation of the events unfolding of the incarnate Son of God.  John explicitly states that “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (20:31).  The Bible records an interpretation—God’s interpretation—of the unfolding plan of redemption for the cosmos.

History is indeed written by the victors.  And the ultimate victor is the Christus Victor: Jesus Christ.

†

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“Movement Obsession”: Ian Stackhouse and the Gospel-Driven Church

June 20, 2009 by Aaron Rathburn

ScottLenckeThis week’s contribution is from a guest blogger, Scott Lencke.  Scott is an American pastor, lecturer, and theologian, currently pastoring and teaching in Brussels, Belgium.  He holds an MA in Theological Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary, and blogs at ‘The Prodigal Thought.‘  Scott labors to reunite the life of the contemporary church with the deep truths of the scriptures.

________


Over the past month or so, I have slowly been wading through a very interesting book. I’m thinking that is my motto with everything I read – slowly wading through it.

The book is entitled The Gospel-Driven Church by Ian Stackhouse, pastor of Guildford Baptist Church just southwest of London. In the book, Stackhouse has mainly taken up the task of challenging the more vibrant church of the UK, specifically relating to the newer churches and more established charismatic churches of the past few decades.

It’s not that Stackhouse is not a charismatic, for he is, or I can only assume he is by his words. But he has still taken aboard to pastorally challenge the church in a few areas. Having lived in the UK from August 2003 to July 2006, I am somewhat aware of the church scene in the UK, hence my interest in the work. I came across Stackhouse’s book soon after it was published in 2004-2005, but only read a few pages. Nevertheless, I liked those few words I did read. But I was never able to get back into the book, as I ended up giving it away to a friend.

But recently I re-bought the book and wanted to go through it. And, to my delight, the book has been an excellent read.

As I said, Stackhouse has taken up the mission of pastorally challenging some things within the church of the UK. One area where he really brings a challenge is into its over-obsession with fads and movements. So, we can see how this relates to the church wider than the UK.

The church, as a whole, has typically been enamoured with movements. Matter of fact, in some places, there is an outright obsession with such. We have the church growth movement, the worship movement, revivalism, church planting movement, and those are only a few to name.

Now, not one of these things are evil in and of themselves. Who doesn’t want to reach people and see the church grow? Who doesn’t want worship that is Spirit-directed and draws the people of God in? Who doesn’t want God to move with true renewal and revival? Who doesn’t want to see churches planted as a sign of the extension of God’s kingdom in the lives of others?

All of these things are good and not evil, right? Of course! But all of this becomes unhealthy when they become our obsession, our main goal. In all of this, we end up developing unhealthy ‘isms’. And these ‘isms’ can actually start to become anti-God if we are not careful.

But why are such movements bad? As Stackhouse states himself:

‘…fads have diverted attention away from the real challenges that face the church in the West, specifically the challenge of discipleship.’ (p18)

Thinking specifically about the church growth movement, if we get so caught up with wide-open front doors and a great musical experience, we can forget the bigger and yet simple picture of what Jesus asked us to stay focused on.

Not only that, but growth first starts with seeing the saints grow in maturity. If we are not looking to see this developed, then it doesn’t matter how many flood through the doors each Sunday, for when hard times comes, and they shall, the back door will be just as wide.

In regards to an obsession with church growth, Ian Stackhouse reminds us:

‘Churches that are committed to the programme of Church Growth cannot do this essential work, because the addictive character of the numbers syndrome effectively stifles any genuine attempt in spiritual formation.’ (p33)

If we are so focused on getting people in the door, we will forget to nurture, care for, strengthen and challenge the family of saints of which we are already a part. That’s dangerous. That’s unhealthy. And it might just be that those hungering for discipleship will leave even before the others leave in reaction to hard times.

Another problem that Stackhouse raises when we focus on church growth in numbers is that we end up with a dichotomy between pastoral care and evangelism. But this rips apart a holistic gospel:

‘When growth replaces qualitative Christian nurture as the rationale of the church, traditional notions of initiation into the gospel are sacrificed on the altar of expediency, and pastoral care of the saints, in the somewhat ambiguous and messy business of real life, is set in opposition, unnecessarily and unbiblically, to the call to evangelise.’ (p28)

When we shepherd (or pastor), we are to encourage our people to be salt and light in the world. When we challenge them to have compassion for the broken, the poor and disadvantaged, we are pastorally challenging our people to care for others. This all works together for a holistic training of the people of God.

The more interesting challenge is that an obsession with church growth can actually get in the way of mission:

‘The comfort that comes from numerical increase is what makes evangelicalism so susceptible to Church Growth theories and the latest religious trends – tantamount in many cases to opportunism. And it is this obsession with growth that many are now realising needs to cease if, paradoxically, the church is seriously to engage in the task of mission.’ (p27)

How can church growth theories get in the way of true mission? Well our mission is not to get people into our buildings on Sundays, nor is it even to get them to raise their hand or walk an aisle. Our mission is about seeing truly converted disciples of Jesus and the kingdom be raised up.

So this might not mean that we keep our meetings (or services) to one hour. It might mean that we lay aside an action-packed morning of multi-media. It might mean that we actually let spiritual gifts operate in our gatherings and not relegate such to home groups. And there are a lot of other challenges that might come to us.

The problem is, when we see a method working, and by working I mean seeing hundreds of people in our buildings on Sundays, it’s hard to ever think change needs to happen. If the method works, who is to stand against it? It would seem outrightly foolish.

But, if we are not seeing people equipped and strengthened and built up and challenged, with fruit being produced in their lives, then we are actually missing the mark. We are actually not walking out the commands to seek first the kingdom of God, it’s righteousness, and to make disciples of those responding to the gospel.

Thus, we have got to lay aside our obsessions with certain fads and movements! Seriously!

At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I had brought just a few more hundred through the doors. What I shall wish is that I will have given my life to better equip, mentor, train and disciple more people. As Paul said to Timothy:

…and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2)

I want to be raising up faithful disciples who know how to walk with God. If the numbers come, they come. If they don’t, they don’t. But we must not get wrapped up in a movement. Movements come and go. This has been so throughout history, and especially church history. But we know One who remains consistent. And we know He is calling us to the same consistency.

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Shabbat Shalom

May 31, 2009 by Daniel J. Story

I quite appreciated the thoughts that Simon posted many moons ago on this blog in which he basically told the world to sit down and shut up (that is a very rough and decidedly poor summary…I suggest you read the post).  The main idea which I took away was that words abound in our culture, but very often little of substance is said or acted upon in the midst of the verbal onslaught.  The call was for a greater simplicity of lifestyle and better interfacing between theory and practice.

This notion of simplicity has been on my mind and heart much lately.  In fact, I doubt that there are many people (probably Christians in particular) who would disagree that we generally live very busy lives and could use a strong dose of simplicity, rest, leisure, etc.  Yet admiting that we need to rest and actually making progress in this area of two very different kettles of fish.  You could look at this simply from the angle of outward practice: we say we want to slow down, but when push comes to shove, phones are never switched off, free time is never prioritized, the outdoors is never relished, Facebook is never neglected, etc.  But even if we do carve out some sense of leisure time in our schedule, does this mean we are truly resting?  Miroslav Volf, in his excellent book Work in the Spirit, observes, “…it seems that work values have permeated [our culture's] leisure values.  Increasingly, people lives today alternating between frenzied work and frenzied play.  Rest has been driven out of leisure” (135).  This is an important observation (I think it could be taken deeper still, but we’ll get to that).  Getting at rest is apparently not as straightforward as one might think it to be.

relaxThis point is discussed quite well by Judith Shulevitz in her insightful 2003 New York Times article titled “Bring Back the Sabbath” (yes, it is the “S” word I am getting around to).  Shulevitz, writing of her return to Sabbath practice after her Jewish upbringing had, for years, turned her off it, has this to say about rest:

Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. As the Cat in the Hat says, ”It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation — at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will, one that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction.

So if Sabbath rest is not merely a stopping of work, then what is it?  If physical rest is not the only or deepest experience we need, then what do we need?  I think the creation account in Genesis 1 may provide an intriguing suggestion to answer these questions.  This creation account is famously structured according to a seven day week: six days of creation ‘work’ and one final day of rest, a day blessed and made holy by the Creator.  But why did God rest?  It rightly seems absurd to suggest that he was in some sense tired or his strength depleated.  There was something else.

I’d like to echo a thought that Tim Keller voiced regarding this passage, that God’s rest was to signify completion of his work and satisfaction in his completion at that (cf. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).  At the heart of true Sabbath rest is satisfaction in a job well done.  Keller here relates this to what he deems to be the incessant, for many constant, work which humankind attempts in a particular sort of task, namely, establishing in the eyes of themselves and others their own personal value and worth; the right for their existence to be deemed worthwhile for the universe to sustain.  The work which Shulevitz describes as a “ceaseless round of striving” bears resemblance.  We want to know who we are and that, furthermore, who we are is justified.  So we work, even when we are off the employer’s clock, our phones are switched off and we are two thousand miles away getting a snorkeling sunburn.

But the Sabbath is not meant to hang over our heads, taunting us with the rest we will never attain.  It is rather an invitation, as we learn later in the biblical narrative.  The invitation, however, is not so much to rest like God, but to rest with or in God.  The ceaseless striving for self-significance must point us to the fact that this is not a work which we can complete.  Instead, we look to God’s creation work which was completed and deemed “very good.”  And we look, most importantly, to God’s completed work in Christ.  At his crucifixion, Jesus uttered the words, “It is finished,” a work which God looks upon with total satisfaction.  Our rest, then, is not to be gained through our own striving, but in Christ who alone pronounces over us our significance and value.  This is the freedom we need to rest.  To know who we are and that who we are is worthwhile.  To know that who we are is not defined by our work, but by Christ’s.

So how do we access this sort of experience?  As a Christian I can point to times when I have more deeply experienced the rest of knowing who I am in Christ and times when this awareness has waned.  How do I find my way back when I’ve gotten lost in work?  Through the lens of Jewish religious practice, Shulevitz offers what I think is a very helpful comment:

…not even our group leisure activities can do for us what Sabbath rituals could once be counted on to do. Religious rituals do not exist simply to promote togetherness. They’re theater. They are designed to convey to us a certain story about who we are without our even quite noticing that they are doing so…The story told by the Sabbath is that of creation: we rest because God rested on the seventh day. What leads from God to humankind is the notion of imitatio Dei: the imitation of God. In other words, we rest in order to honor the divine in us, to remind ourselves that there is more to us than just what we do during the week.

Much by way of practical suggestion should be made about these things (and may come in a future post), but to begin I will take my cue from Shulevitz.  How do we access in experience the rest we have in Christ and his finished work?  Let us begin by coming together and breaking the bread and drinking the wine.  Let us be reminded of Him and that who we truly are can only be seen in Him.  As Keller suggests, worship must be at the heart of rest.  If you miss that, you can try all the relaxation techniques you want and still be rest-less.  When you get it, then you’ve finally learned how to rest.

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Totalised Speech & Two Poverties

April 30, 2009 by Simon

I recently read Oliver O’Donovan’s book on political theology, The Desire of the Nations, at the end of which he gives a (pretty fair) critique of modern liberal society. One point that struck me as profound relates to what he calls the ‘totalisation of speech’. For O’Donovan, this has eroded the love of true wisdom and the pursuit of the common good in society. I want to briefly run through his argument, before suggesting a couple of practical applications of it. O’Donovan begins:

“Modern society has striven to totalise speech. It is no accident of technological luck that late-modernity has become an era of mass communication, but the expression of a deep-rooted philosophical commitment. Those philosophers who have urged that speech is everything, that all social reality is a form of discourse, have, at least, articulated a powerful modern ideal, one which sets us at a far remove from ancient societies which valued the deed more than the word…” [DN:281].

After making these initial remarks, O’Donovan goes on to discuss how prophecy functioned in the early church, saying how it both reinforced and qualified a sense of equality among the community. It reinforced equality in that prophetic speech could arise from anyone of either sex, rather than solely through a preordained prophet, as in the OT. It qualified equality in that prophecy was still an occasional thing. It was not given at all times to everyone, but arose at specific times of ‘divine visitation’, when it was to be tested and discerned. It was thus to be treated with special reverence:

“An indiscriminate babel of prophetic speech, St. Paul insisted, left no space for the divine speech to be heard, and so subverted true prophecy. In this way the church modified, but did not discard, the ancient understanding, common to Greek and Hebrew, that wisdom was distributed rarely, its speech to be received by attendant, and therefore dependent communities of learners” [DN:282].

This emphasis on the rarity of and honour accorded to wise speech, however, has been distorted in modernity, in two ways. First, our understanding of ‘education’ has become far too narrow, failing to shape the whole person. Because ‘knowledge’ post-Enlightenment was increasingly understood to consist of objective ‘facts’, extracted from any wider discourse or narrative, ‘education’ has become less and less concerned with the disclosure of wisdom, and more and more concerned with the dissemination of pure information, devoid of any particular moral content. O’Donovan notes the problem with this:

“The mistake in this train of thought is one that postmodernism can claim to have identified. There is no ‘information’ that exists outside of any discourse. The idea of a purely formal task of education is a phantasm. To extract the dissemination of information from the goal of wisdom is to promote a thoughtless knowledgeableness, undercutting the ascetic and reflective disciplines that make wisdom possible” [DN:282].

O’Donovan’s point is that, separated from the practical disciplines which shape a person’s character in such a way that they pursue knowledge, not as an end in itself, but as a means to wisdom and a virtuous life, education does not really educate. ‘Educated discourse’ becomes little more than empty chatter – many words devoid of any meaningful content, because divorced from the practice of a virtuous life.

Second, with the Enlightenment elevation of the individual, modern political theory formulated a view of society conceived as a collection of autonomous individuals with competing interests and competing wills, contracted together for mutual benefit. This presupposes a basic mode of interaction between individuals which is conflictual or violent, and this essentially atomistic conception of sociality has radically refigured social and political discourse in modernity. Once conceived as a collective deliberation on the common good, public discourse now serves the assertion of competing interests, where self-interested individuals and groups battle with one another to get their own way. This conflictual mode of discourse is now supreme in most contemporary speech; whether on television or radio, in newspapers or magazines, or on websites and blogs, a disagreement is rarely dealt with constructively, but is conceived as a ‘war of words‘ (which just about says it all).

There seems to be no greater confirmation of the futility and vacuity of all this, from the totalisation of speech to the conflictual character of that speech, than in today’s mainstream press. Originally meant to educate and inform public discourse, it now hampers it:

“Our modern organs of communication, which were intended to inform and clarify our speech, distort and corrupt it. The press, which has always advertised itself as the guarantor of free and informed discourse, has become a major obstacle to it – and not by printing photographs of naked princesses, but amplifying to deafening level the dicta of an unreflective punditry“ [DN:283].

________________________________

Application 1 – Against blogs! Or towards a poverty of words: The totalisation of speech, as well as this “unreflective punditry”, is no more in evidence than on the internet, and the proliferation of blogs in particular. Everyone has something to say, and they will say it even if no-one is listening. Everyone has something to say, and yet very few really say anything (I am aware of the profound irony that this is itself a rather long blog post). If we’re honest, most blogging consists of either inane musings or crude polemics, or something in between. Indeed, the most ’successful’ posts tend to be the most inane and the most polemical. In a modern society, blogging is a means for individuals to broadcast their opinions, in competition with other opinions, in the hope that they can ’shout’ loud enough to get heard. Contrastingly, the value of poetry, for example, is that a huge amount can be said in only a few words. In the poetic, a poverty of words is accompanied by a richness of wisdom and insight. This truly is a virtue from which many bloggers, journalists and broadcasters could learn. There are more words than ever before in the world – printed, typed, recorded, televised – speech has indeed been totalised. But rarely does this speech constitute wise speech. What we need in our generation is people concerned to speak wisely and a little, rather than vacuously and a lot. To pursue wisdom, however, means taking the time to learn and reflect in quiet and patience. It requires the cultivation of a lifestyle from which wisdom can flourish. Speech comes second. This leads me on to my next ‘application’:

Application 2 – ‘Shut the hell up!’ Or the rich poverty of silence: My second point is that amidst the clamour of words bursting forth incessantly from our televisions, radios, iPods, newspapers, websites, blogs… Facebooks… we would do well to rediscover the rich poverty of silence. I think in our age, more than any other, God will make Himself known to us as a God of the silences. If we are to hear, we need to first cease speaking, in order that we might more truly listen. Perhaps this is necessary if we are to detect the faint whisper of the Spirit speaking beneath the incessant noise and hum of modern life. This is an example of the kind of asceticism Ivan Illich thought was necessary for us to rediscover the beautiful simplicities of life, and for us to reconnect with our very humanity and the humanity of those around us, amidst the busyness, speed and noise of the hyper-industrialised West (see another post of mine <HERE> for more on Illich’s asceticism). Disciplining ourselves to ‘practice’ silence, and learning the patience that accompanies that, is an example of the things necessary to form a character which pursues knowledge not for its own sake, but for the sake of wisdom and virtue.

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The Gospel According to Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology

April 11, 2009 by Aaron Rathburn

Original Caption: A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touched...

Original Caption: "A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touched..."

Cosmologies

This is an illustration called the Flammarion Woodcut, depicting the ancient understanding of the world.  A traveler has reached the end of the (flat) earth, and peers through the sky to see the heavenly dimensional plane beyond.

Living in our post-Enlightenment age with our 21st-century sensibilities, we cannot truly appreciate these old cosmologies.  We take for granted that the earth is round, in a heliocentric universe.  Sure, we know that peoples in the past did not always believe this—but we do not fully appreciate how genuinely prevalent and sophisticated these cosmologies were.  (Plato records that Socrates spoke of different levels of horizontal earthly realms, with different people-groups inhabiting each.)

In the ancient Near East, it went without saying that the earth was of course flat.  The land was disc-shaped, surrounded by vast waters.  Beneath the earth were pillars that supported the land, and held it up in place.  The sky was a tremendous dome, called a “firmament” or “vault,” which was completely solid.  It is described in ancient literature as a “pavement” or “stone,” and its blue color is ascribed to it being like “sapphire” or “lapis lazuli.”  Surrounding the perimeter of the land was a tall mountain range, and the sky’s dome rested and was supported on the peaks of these mountains.

This solid vault of the sky also held waters above it, which would periodically be released when the rains fell.  Precipitation would come through “windows” or “gates” in the sky.  The celestial bodies (sun, moon, and stars) would travel in mapped-out circuits across the firmament, rising and setting in patterned fashion.  Finally, above the pavement of the sky was the heavenly domain of the deities, where they reigned above and made their abode.

The Old Testament

Most interestingly, we see this same cosmological language used within the Old Testament itself.  In an otherwise confusing passage, this understanding of ancient Near Eastern cosmology helps us better interpret the creation account:

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.”

Ancient Cosmology Illustrated

This references how “waters” came to be “above” the firmament of the sky, according to the understanding of the time.  Proverbs says that God “made firm the skies above” (8:28), and Job corroborates: “Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?” (37:18).  This cosmology also helps us interpret what we would otherwise call “poetic” language, when God sends the great flood: “the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the windows of the sky were opened” (Gen 7:11).

Perhaps most striking is the account of Moses and the elders climbing Mount Sinai, after receiving the 10 Commandments:

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. (Ex 24:9-10)

Another translation reads, “a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.”

In the opening passage of Ezekiel, we read, “Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads… Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli” (1:25-26).

According to this cosmological understanding of the time, God’s throne was above the firmament of the sky, and above the heavenly waters, in the heavenly domain above.  It is for this reason that the psalmist writes, “Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood; Yahweh sits enthroned forever” (29:10).

Contemporary Significance

Obviously, this poses tremendous questions for anyone who takes the Old Testament as holy scripture.  These passages are often described as “poetic language,” or the more sophisticated “phenomenological language,” simply meaning that things are described as they are observed.  But the fact of the matter is that the Bible is a very, very, very, very old book—and as we hold our laser-printed English translations, we cannot appreciate the distance between our world and the world of the authors of scripture.  And for the ancient world in which these texts were written (and intended to be read), these descriptions are exactly how they understood the world to really be in reality.

What is important to note here is that Yahweh does not offer an alternative cosmology to the prevailing worldview of the day.  And perhaps more significantly, Yahweh does not deem it necessary to correct these ideas about the universe, which are, according to post-Enlightenment standards, demonstrably false.  God does not explain that the “firmament” is in fact an “atmosphere,” or some such thing.

Does this mean that the Bible contains elements that are in fact false? If we expect the Bible to be a modern, post-Enlightenment, scientific book, then these passages are indeed difficult to reconcile with a contemporary scientific understanding of the universe.  However, if we understand that the Bible is an ancient text, and take the Bible on its own terms, then these elements are to be expected, and are not problematic whatsoever.

What, then, do we make of these phenomena?

These texts demonstrate that God wants us to be with him.  God wants to reconcile ourselves to him, and wants to reveal himself to us in ways that we will understand.  And he is so resolute on making this happen that he is willing to stoop down to us in our time, place, language, culture, and context, and speak in the street-lingo that we are familiar with and can understand.  Just as today God does not speak to us about intricacies of quantum physics that we cannot understand, so too, he speaks to the ancients in language they can understand.

These texts are not “blemishes” on the Bible that we should explain away.  These are the very texts that reveal the glory of God:  a God who loves us, a God who condescends himself to us, a God who becomes one of us. He is a God who “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men; and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  These texts are a testimony to the gospel.

†

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“Dust and Light” is now a Dot-Com!

April 6, 2009 by Aaron Rathburn

Hello to all!

This is just a very brief announcement to let everyone know that “Dust and Light” now officially has its very own dot-com address!  You can find us right here, at http://DustAndLight.com

For any RSS feed subscribers, be sure and updated your readers.  Most readers should make the change automatically, but not all do.

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The Ammunition of Reduction and the Humility of Christ

April 1, 2009 by Daniel J. Story

I recently read an article on nytimes.com by Yale law professor Stephen Carter in which he laments the reductionist way in 38535105HEAR_20010630_10225.JPGwhich recent comments by US attorney general Eric Holder were interpreted by the wider media. Holder, speaking to Justice Department employees for Black History Month, stated that “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” Strong words perhaps, especially if one does not consider the whole of his 2,300 word speech (not a task I am here interested in). And that was precisely Carter’s complaint. Our culture, he says, is increasingly one that takes complex and intricate issues and strips them down to sensational headlines and emotionally charged arguments.

There are few issues of any importance that are not reduced, in public dialogue, to sloganeering and applause lines. Whether we argue over war or the economy, marriage or religion, abortion or guns, we reduce our ideas to just the right size for the adolescent tantrum of the bumper sticker.

Perhaps Carter’s article is itself somewhat reductionist. Nevertheless, I am inclined to agree with his sentiment. It seems rare to find a public figure treating an issue with balance, respecting complexity and differing opinions, rather than attempting to make a splash for his or her contingent.  This is, however, probably not a phenomenon peculiar to our culture and time, as Carter’s article seems to imply.  Rather, the broader experience of post-Fall humanity seems effected by this weakness for shouting over dialogue.

It is not surprising, then, that dialogue in the church is also at times coloured by such reducing. One area which comes to mind is the ongoing debate concerning the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. A strong contingent of conservative evangelicals have in recent years developed a somewhat shrill cry for the view of young earth, literal six day creation and left little room at all for fellow believers who still have a high view of scripture yet have come to interpret Genesis 1 differently. Does scripture teach that the universe was created in six literal days or does it allow for the possibility that evolution was the process which God used to create and fill the heavens and the earth? This is a complex issue about which many orthodox Christians disagree. My plea is that we do not caricature or, worse still, demonize those who disagree, but rather agree to disagree in a spirit of humility.

peace-bumper-stickersSwitching gears somewhat (and treading still closer to home), I sometimes wonder if this is a tendency with which the charismatic branch of the church must deal with in a peculiar way. In the pursuit of building faith (often for healing and the miraculous), areas of genuine complexity are often swept aside. For instance, could this be one of the (possibly many) reasons why the church so often goes without any sort of theology of suffering? Is there not an approach to a doctrine of healing that is actually made more robust by deep considerations of human suffering? My personal yearning is to have faith that can move mountains without having to circumvent more difficult issues to get there.

My concerns, however, are accompanied with great appreciation for many followers of Jesus who demonstrate a better way.  A striking example of this can be seen in the council of Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 15.  Here the young church, guided by the Holy Spirit, overcame profound cultural pressures and potential personality conflicts and rendered the deeply significant decision that being a Christian did not require conversion to Judaism.  A potentially explosive issue was treated not with reductionist emotionalism, but with humility, dialogue and cooperation with the Spirit’s guidance.  (No doubt this triumph has been duplicated in many ways and at many times in the history of the church, even in our time.)

It strikes me that the sloganeering which Carter laments is often a result of either pride (the thirst to puff up one’s ego, the desire to make headlines) or fear (of differing views, of complexity, of losing one’s place in the world).  In any case, the solution will require not a nihilistic skepticism which seeks to cast all argument into the quicksand of a hopeless complexity (for this too becomes reductionist), but rather a deeper identification with the Christ, both in his humility and unswerving confidence in His Father.  In other words, what is needed at the table of debate and conflict (whether on the cultural level or at the coalface of interpersonal relationships) is a new humanity in whom, individually and corporately, Christ is being formed.  As disciples of Christ we can both resist the desire to stoke the fire of ego and fix eyes on the power and weight of God amidst complexity and uncertainty.  Neither pride nor fear of complexity are congruent with the robustness and radical humility of the gospel.

In conclusion, I ask what does this mean in practice? At times we will need to hold our convictions with an open hand (as perhaps in the case of views on Genesis 1).  At other times we will need to embrace the reality that complex issues are not outside of the sovereignty of God (as in the case of the relationship of healing and suffering…we should not be afraid that a humble searching out of such things should weaken our faith).  At all times we should operate out of a sense of humility and service to others (after the manner of Christ) so that no aspect of our lives become reductionist and loud at the expense of love for neighbour and enemy.  Finally, I reiterate that such an approach does not mean we treat the gospel lightly.  Rather, we deepen our faith confession and in so doing find the resources for just the sort of humility that a “loud” culture needs.  S.D.G.

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