EngineeredTheology

Apparently I’m a sucker for taglines. This one is “Ok, so the church is broken, now what?” Broken church, colorful rainbow covering most of the front cover – I was somewhat expecting some GLBT themed stuff about the church. Couldn’t be more wrong.

In summary, the book is written by three authors who have founded an emergent church called neXus (writing the capital X in the middle just there was literally painful). It is written in a conversational type style with each of the three writing only a few lines at a time. The colors of God (blue, green, red, yellow) are symbolic of the four principles of their church (faith, healthy living, community, culture).

I think I can bullet point my issues

1) I don’t get the point of the colors. It is apparently foundational to the church (and the title of the book), but to me seem very superfluous. I was expecting that they had some deeper meaning (and that the green color would be comprised of the foundations of the blue and yellow), but it doesn’t seem to be. It is like they were devised just so they could create this pretty model picture, only so the pretty picture could be misinterpreted as some homosexual statement (seriously, if you are culturally engaged you have to know what colorful rainbow symbols have come to represent).

2) The exegesis of the book is thin. I get that this isn’t a theological book, but if you have a main point that is founded by a new view of a scripture you need to have at least an appendix that addresses the issues a little more. I get the rhetoric that there is an over-focus on sexual sin, and that excommunication is not something they are in to – but you need to address that Paul recommended that certain people be excommunicated because of sexual sin. No, I don’t see that the parable of the sheep mean that the sheep getting lost was a good thing. Saying the man on the side of the road with the good Samaritan represents Jesus gets you into some difficult hermeneutics (so the Samaritan brings Jesus back to health?).

3) Because of #2, I have serious issues with their concept of God (“vertical relationship” as they call it). Basically, because of the completed and universal work of Christ, there is basically no way you can screw it up, or even disappoint God – so don’t worry about it (their words are “doesn’t need management”). In their reformed framework, the original sin of Adam which we inherited is totally taken away by Jesus for everyone (if they know it or understand it at all) – which makes Christianity both the problem and the solution. Seems easier for me to sidestep that whole mess and just be Buddhist (I already shaved my head so I figure I’m half way there); you reach the same endpoint theologically and don’t need any complex discussions.

4) In chapter 16 they describe what piece of pop culture has impacted them most significantly. The first one on the list is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. My mouth is still gaping at that one.

This group may be one of the few who stand up and say “we are the emergent church”. The title is so vague, no one really knows what it means, so everyone has a tough time saying “that’s me”. It has come to mean, any church that is a reaction to the current Christian subculture. While their culture is certainly a reaction to the evangelical church, the theology is still firmly placed in the reformed framework. This would make emergent church less of a clean break from evangelical, and more of the next logical step in its formation (the same argument has been applied to much of the postmodern philosophy over modern). If we see a problem with what we evangelical church as become, we need to take a deep look at the roots (reformed theology) to see where we can move forward from where they have taken us.

A little over a year ago I made a database to contain some of my bible notes and began transferring a lot of what was in my bible into that database. This had three problems. The first was that a lot of the notes I had in my bible were pretty old, and my viewpoint has changed quite a bit since then. Secondly, I have a lot of notes, and transferring them all over was taking forever. Thirdly, the page I wrote made it difficult because it separated the adding of a note from the verses and there was no real way to edit them.

I decided to add all the notes I had because there still might be something in those old notes that is interesting. Unfortunately I didn’t even get through the Pentateuch because of problem #2, which is making the determination that the database will just have new notes. For the last problem, I spent some time improving things. Wanted something a little more dynamic, so I taught myself AJAX (which really just meant improving my JavaScript). Now, the interface to the database is much better and significantly easier to use – so adding a note to a verse just involves clicking on the verse and selecting the right menu, editing the note is done with a double click.

I was expecting this book to be funnier than it was. It does have its funny parts, but it is much more of a proper novel than a joke book. If we take the obvious jokes out (Jesus probably did not meet a Yeti and invent Judo), is the story that unrealistic? It certainly is possible that Jesus stayed in Galilee for until his ministry, but things may make more sense if he spent much of those years somewhere else.
I was seriously impressed with the book that pokes a little bit of fun at the biblical stories, but doesn’t seem to make a joke of Jesus himself. In fact, the story brings some humanity to Jesus and begins to answer the question of what it must have been like to be so alike, but again so different from everyone else and how lonely and isolating that could be. I was also impressed in the way the author pulls out where eastern religions match up with Jesus’ teachings, and how (from a Christian perspective) he pulls out what would be true, and separate it from what misses the mark.
Certainly this book is not for everyone (unfortunately most Christians wouldn’t get much past Jesus bringing lizards back to life as a child) – but looking through some of the humor it is well researched and thought out and pushes what we might think of Jesus.

What’s All This About Rethinking Paul is much like teaching someone that the earth revolves around the sun. It is going against tradition, and also against what we have learned to see at first glance with our eyes. It also is against the idea that we are at the center of it all. Christianity is not about me and my salvation, but about the work that God is doing. As we are piecing the puzzle together of how to interpret the bible, we need to be aware of the pieces we are leaving out. Much of the current ideas of Paul are made with puzzle pieces poorly fit together that are mearly echos of what he is really trying to say. The Protestant tradition was built on a framework of reading the bible fresh, despite tradition. We dishonor the reformers if we take what they said as a static truth.

Rules of Engagement We must be reading the scripture in its first century context, to understand what the words ment at the time. We also must read Paul as a whole, and interpret the passages as a piece of a whole continuous argument and train of thought. We are in trouble if our finished exegesis only relates tangentially to what Paul actually wrote.

First-Century Judiasm When Paul was writing Romans, Jews in general were not discussing how they might get into heaven. They saw themselves still in exile because God was righteous, and they had broken their covenant. They were awaiting the day (reading Danial 9 to try to figure out when it would be) when God would finally return and restore them. Righteous is “conformity within a norm” (64), and for God these are the norms in which “he himself has set up, in other words, the covenant” (64). The lawcourt implication of righteousness is important. If someone was deemed righteous in court, he would be in the right (innocent if the defendant, or in favor of the plantiff). The judgement is justification, and the result is now the person is righteous. Neither of these terms has anything to do with virtue specifically. For God an Israel, “the point of the covenant always was that God would bless the whole world through Abraham’s family” (67). God will be faithfull to that covenant (righteous) and save his people from their exile (which was again a righteous move as spelled out in the conditions of the covenant). What was discussed in first century Judiasm is how to keep the law in order to keep Israel’s end of the covenant (how Israel can be righteous).

Justification The meanings of words can grow beyond their original intent, but for words like justification, this can cause problems. It has grown into a word that encompasses the entirety of Christianity. The problem is that when people read back through the bible, it mixes up what the author was actually trying to say. Justice and righteousness are the same Greek and Hebrew word. They “denote the status that someone has when the court has found in their favor” (90). It is the status of a person that changes when the decree is made (in the right). “Justification makes someone righteous, just as the officiant at a wedding service might be said to make the couple husband and wife – a change of status” (91). It says nothing of their character; one could be righteous and immoral, or even guilty.
All of this, for Paul is wrapped up in “covenant”. The covenant is a shorthand for why God called Abraham, or really His plan to bring all of humanity back together and repair what was done in Eden. Paul’s soteriology is looking at God’s plan, which we can call the “covenant”. The problem with the “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” (covenant) is the Israel part – who had not been faithful to the covenant and needed a faithful Israelite through whom the single plan can proceed (the Messiah who is faithful). Because he represents the people, he can take upon himself the death they deserved. “The messiah is able to be the substitute because he is the representative” (106).

The rest of the book is working out these ideas in specific through the exegesis of the Pauline epistles – and are far too dense to summarize.

I couldn’t resist a book that begins the first chapter with Jesus sitting in a vegan restaurant, listening to his iPod, being approached by the Apostle Paul who promptly punches him in the face.

I can’t remember another book I’ve read that takes a satirical approach on discussing how we follow Jesus. After reading it really makes me wish this form of writing wasn’t so rare in current literature. The humor and absurdity brings us to question who it is we really think Jesus is. We are confronted with the Magic 8 Ball Jesus, Political Jesus, Peacenik Jesus, Televangelist Jesus, King James Jesus, etc. We have all these ideas of who Jesus is, but they all come down to ways we have reduced the real live Jesus into something we can contain and deal comfortably with. The fictional tale is about how we must give up these imaginary Jesuses if we want to ever come in contact with the true living Jesus, and how easy it is to deceive ourselves all over again.

The book, while not exactly short is an extremely quick read and pretty entertaining. In the realm of the Screwtape Letters, talks a lot about what Jesus is not, but has a difficult time when it gets to what Jesus is. Amusingly, this is exactly how we end up with imaginary Jesuses instead of apophatic statements. It points to how we need to reckon the Jesus in our minds, to the Jesus found in the Gospels. The true Jesus is found in the Gospels making the people around Him uncomfortable, challenging social norms, and encouraging others to freely give of themselves; can we expect the true Jesus who lives with us now to be any different with us?

God as a Mystery
We experience the Divine as two opposites, both farther from us, and closer to us than anything else. It is the very center of who we are, and also more foreign than what we could imagine. “Well known to the smallest child, incomprehensible to the most brilliant theologian “(12). Following God is like Abraham’s journey from a familiar country to an unknown, from light to darkness. We move from the “light of partial knowledge into a greater knowledge which is so much more profound that it can only be described as the ‘darkness of unknowing’”(14).
The faith we have is a faith in God not a faith that God is. “God is not the conclusion to a process of reasoning, the solution to a mathematical problem” (16). We believe in God like we believe in a person – it is personal not logical. Therefore, faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive (Mark 9:24). While there are no logical demonstrations of God, there are pointers towards a belief in a personal God (order and beauty, our personal conscience and a sense of the infinite, and relationships with other people).

God as Trinity
If we can affirm that God is personal and that God is love – we imply sharing and reciprocity. A person is not the same as an individual because relationships are how we become real people. This relationship is not static, but dynamic like all relationships. An analogy for this trinity is that of three torches burning with a single flame. It is three persons with one essence. This is unlike how we can say that three different people are still classified as “man” because each of these three people have an individual will. In the Trinity there is distinction, but not separation – one cannot act separately from the other two. The trinity is paradoxical and not something demonstrated by our reason, but revealed to us by God. It is from this personal relation within God that we find our own being and purpose in living that trinitarian unity on earth with communion between each other.
The Father is the source and the origin of the Godhead. The other two are defined in their relationship to the Father. The Son is the order and purpose that is in all things, making the universe into an integrated whole. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God that is within us where the Son is with us and the Father above or beyond us. With these neat categories we must remember “It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God’s ineffable greatness with the human mind” (34).

God as Creator
All was created not our of obligation, but by the free will of God – out of his love, which is to share and have others outside of himself to participate in this love. We have always existed in the mind of God, and our creation is the point where we began to exist for ourselves. Creation was not a one time event, but continues by the continual will of God (He did not make the world, but is making the world). Our creation is dependent on God, and without him we would cease to exist. “As Christians we affirm not pantheism but ‘panentheism’. God is in all things, but yet also beyond and above all things” (46). All things are created good, so sin and evil is not a “thing”, it is not a substance. Evil is the absence of good, it is the result of a free will twisting and perverting what is good.
Man is created as three distinct, but inseparable parts: body, soul, and spirit. Our body is our physical aspect (a rock has a body). The soul is what animates us and gives us life (trees and birds have bodies and soul). The spirit is what separates us from the animals. It is our ability to know good and evil, to act independently from our instincts. God has created two levels, the first inhabits the angels who have no physical body. The second level He formed the universe with various types of mineral, vegetable, and animal life. Man is the only thing that exists on both levels. We are more complex than the angles, and therefore created higher than they. Man is to be the mediator to unite the world to offer it back to God. The body is a piece of our true self, and without it we could not perform our mediating role. Separation of the body and soul at death is unnatural, contrary to God’s original plan, to be resolved at the resurrection.
Man is created in the image of God. This is the thing that distinguishes him from the animals, which includes his free will. In this freedom, each human realizes his divine image uniquely, which makes each human unrepeatable, irreplaceable, and therefore infinitely valuable. Though created in God’s image, each one of us can grow by the correct use of our free will to become perfect in God (in his “likeness”) – so our image is a dynamic thing. We were made for communion with God, and in a rejection of this communion we cease to properly be a man.
Man is the priest of creation, able to praise God for the world, seeing the world as a gift. He is able to reshape the world to create new meaning into it – so it is both a gift and a task, making man a logical, eucharistic, and creative animal.
The reason for evil and suffering in the creation has no easy answer. We have signposts that there was a fall in the heavenly realm, where angels chose self-will over God, and the second fall where man has chosen the same. Through our fall, we chose not to see the world as a gift to be offered back to God, but as his own possession to be exploited for his own pleasure. This begins to cut man off from God, creating a vicious circle. Therefore, evil and suffering comes from a deliberate choice from the created world to reject God’s love, and to turn from God to self. Love requires the ability to reciprocate. Without this free choice, there could be no love – and so evil has been a direct result of our reaction to the love of God.
The Augustinian view of the guilt of Adam’s sin being passed on to future generations is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The result of Adam’s sin is the formation world where it “is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men’s suspicions, and hard to win their trust” (62). We are born into this world, that is further compounded by the wrong actions of those before us, and our own deliberate acts of sin. The actions we do effect not just ourselves, but everyone around us. We are not islands, but interdependent on everyone else, including the actions and mistakes of those who came before us.

God as Man
With man now separating himself from God through rebellion, we are unable to heal himself. This is where God comes to man to restore the opposing points between divine glory and human sinfulness. “The incarnation, then, is God’s supreme act of deliverance, restoring us to communion with himself” (70). The incarnation brings man to a new level, and shows the true possibilities of our nature. He was perfect in that he completely reflected the likeness of God.
Jesus is both fully God and completely man. He has two natures, both divine and human – but is not divided. He has two wills, but they are not opposed as the human will is at all times freely obedient to the divine. He solves the problem that must be solved by mankind, but is only God is capable to accomplish. For the Christ to bring total salvation, he must assume the entirety of humanness.
The virgin birth points to three things. First, that Jesus was a true man, but he was not just a man. Second, that it the birth was the result of a divine initiative. Finally, that a new person was not coming into existence (child born of two parents is a new person in creation, but the incarnate Christ is pre-existent).
As the incarnation is the act of God identifying Himself with us, and sharing the human experience, the cross shows the utmost limits of that sharing. His suffering was not just that of the Passion, but in His sense of failure, isolation, and loneliness (even to the extent of losing awareness of the divine presence). He is under no compulsion to die, but freely chooses to, identifying with all the human pain and despair. The result is His victory; the victory of love over hate.

God as Spirit
The spirit is elusive. We are conscience of His presence, feel His power, but he cannot be described verbally yet experienced directly. It is through the spirit that the divine becomes personal to us. At Pentecost, the Spirit was a gift to fill all those baptized in Christ and brings unity to the church, but also a gift of diversity based on the distinctions of our personalities.

God as Prayer
Stages of Christianity can be thought of as the practice of virtues and repentance, then the contemplation of God’s existence in all things, then the direct vision of God. These stages are not necessarily consecutive, and it is expected that repentance is practiced all through life. This spiritual way is ecclesial, done in a community through the Church (active life). It is also sacramental; though God is not bound by the sacraments, we are. Finally it is scriptural; reading the bible is communion and prayer with God, and as our Christian journey is not solely individual, our interpretation should be made using the entire whole of Church thought. These last two are known as the contemplative life.
The active life requires struggle and continuous effort of our will. “We are to hold in balance two complementary truths: without God’s grace we can do nothing; but without our voluntary co-operation God will do nothing” (112). Each day we renew our relationship with God through prayer and with others through practical compassion and cutting off our own self will. This active life requires “repentance, watchfulness, discrimination, and the guarding of the heart” (113).
The second stage is natural contemplation; contemplating the things that God has made. This is not possible without nepis or watchfulness and learning to be present where I am. Without the virtue of the active life, the natural contemplation becomes romantic and fails to reach the level of spiritual. All things are sacred, but have been distorted by sin (both original and personal). Searching for God in creation leads to the third step, realizing that God is also above and beyond nature. This leads to an acknowledgement that words cannot express God, and prayer turns to an inward stillness and silence.

God as Eternity
We await a second coming of Christ to bring a kingdom without end. Humanity does not increasingly advance and improve (evolutionary optimism), but is increasingly destructive. At this time the root of all our actions become clear and we will enter either eternal life or death. “The lost in hell are self-condemned, self-enslaved; it has been rightly said that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (135). We will not be saved from our bodies and from the world, but in them and with the world. The resurrection kingdom is eternal and therefore has an inexhaustible variety. It is not a return to Eden, but a continual progression forward, greater than the first.

First off, the book can be freely downloaded from the book’s website

I will admit that I started this book expecting the worst. Having moved quite far from the viewpoint that Christianity is all about saving people from hell, I expecting a book explaining exactly which people needed to be saved from hell.

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The book contrasts the traditional evangelical view of Christianity (that Jesus came to die to save us from our sins so we can go to heaven), with finally freeing God’s people to actually be God’s people.

our salvation addresses the problem God faced throughout the entire Old Testament: How can I have a faithful people with a heart for Me? rather than the nowhere-mentioned problem How can I get people into heaven?(61)

The book is a little difficult to summarize because the chapters don’t entirely build on each other to a climatic point. With the main aim to raise questions about current Christian dogma, so much material needs to be covered in order to cover enough bases to make a point. Instead, topics are somewhat eclectic to cover what the author feels are the most important to help his point to be taken seriously. It is in no way the final word, but instead tries to open a window to let in a fresh breath on scripture.

The writing style was not entirely to my liking, but the tone of the book was very appropriately delicately confrontational. In addressing current modern beliefs, I believe that so much of the current understanding comes from haphazard quoting of the bible without its due context. It may be due to a desire of brevity, but much of the copious scripture quoting in the book is somewhat absent of the context in which it was originally written in. I also suspect that I am obviously not the target audience for the book who may be more interested in this type of point and shoot proof texting. I would be very interested in how this book would strike someone who is new to this mode of thought.

There is an effort to bring continuity of Jewish thought into the NT – showing the dissimilarity between current Christian believes and what would have made sense in first century Judaism. When we say we are saved, we must ask what they thought they would be saved from. When we say righteous, what would that have meant. In this mode of thinking, I was not at all surprised to find a few direct quotes and some heavy borrowing from N.T. Wright.

The book is published by Biblical Heresy Press, and I suspect there will be many who think it an apt name for this book. I think we fear heresy so much that we never truly engage the bible and God himself. If we vow to follow God wherever he would lead, does that also mean that we would allow Him to lead us to those murky grey waters, or are there boundaries that we would stop and say we will follow no further. Would we stand and defend “heresy” if that is where God would want us to be?

Last month there were two conferences taking place. The first was in Wheaton, and was a large group to discuss the impacts of N.T. Wright on modern Christian theology. The second was Together for the Gospel (T4G) which is a “bi-annual conference that encourages pastors to take their stand together for the gospel” (from their FAQ). Fortunately for me, both are available on line: T4G and Wheaton.

To me, it is quite fitting to have two conferences occurring at the same time. One focusing on how N.T. Wright’s reading of Paul has changed the landscape of the discussion about justification, and the other focusing on protecting the gospel from just such changes. In listening to both, I’ve tried to be as neutral as possible (which is quite impossible because I already have strong agreements with Wright). Without getting into anything actually said, this has been my overall impression.

Lexicon and Presentation
From the start, there is a large difference in how the lectures were prepared. The Wheaton conference was highly technical, focusing on very academic debates. For those not already well versed in their “ologies”, there would have been only one speaker that would have been largely understandable. While there were jokes (and some quite funny ones), they would really only be understandable to people really following along. Otherwise the presentations were basically dry and like a collegiate lecture. On the other hand, the lectures at T4G were on the level of a Sunday sermon. No expectations of terminology and dramatic swings in tone and volume at important points.

Criticism
The Wheaton conference was conducted as a scholarly debate. While all the speakers generally agreed with Wright, each one brought forth the main point they think he has missed, overlooked, or completely gotten wrong. There was criticism within the people in the room, but stressed unity for the church as a whole. T4G is a conference to defend a certain idea. Because of this, there was unity within the room, and criticism for the church as a whole.

A priori
Even coming out of the gate of their talks, there were certain things that were explicitly stated as assumed. At Wheaton, it was assumed that to understand Jesus, you need to understand a historical Jesus. He was a real man who walked on the earth in a certain time. It is foundationally important to understand Jesus in this context, and to read the gospels in such a way that they would have made sense in that setting. At T4G, most explicitly stated by John Piper, the assumption is that understanding Jesus does not require, and is in fact hindered by, historical research. Jesus is completely found by what is contained in the bible, and it is complete in its portrayal of him.

In all these things, there were certainly good points in each. I suspect that the average attender of the T4G conference (mainly pastors and some laypeople) had logged more hours in seminary than at Wheaton (current students, some pastors, and laypeople). The main drawback to the Wheaton conference is the high barrier of theological entry. Without a strong foundation in the topics, many people will be lost in the talks. It isn’t that the concepts are too difficult, but I don’t think the speakers have reached the ability to state things simply (with the exception of N.T. Wright).

It is the comparison in criticism that worries me. At the Wheaton conference there seamed to be a stronger desire to look for what is true vs. the T4G conference protecting what they know is true. Personally, I get concerned when we speak of absolute truths. It isn’t that they don’t exist, but we need to be extremely careful when we presume to have them. I can not in good conscience turn off my mind to search for god in new ways and assume that where I am is the culmination of Christianity.

The a priori assumptions then comes down to personal belief, but is obviously one of the key differences in the content of the conferences.

G.K. Chesterton followed himself into heresy only to find he ended up discovering Orthodoxy. This book discovers the reformation. The main difference is Chesterton realized the irony of “discovering” something like Orthodoxy.

With a warning on the first page like “You might throw this book down in disgust; you might pick it back up again in curiosity; you might shake your head in frustration as you wonder, ‘How could I have missed this before?’ or ‘Is this guy crazy?’” (15), I was expecting something different than what I found. I have been to my share of churches around the world, and I suspect there would be very few reformed churches who would have any issue with the foundational theology of this book.

Following deeply in current reformed theology, the book is a cheerleader for total depravity and perseverance of the saints. Unfortunately, by the end of the book we end up with a good reason why Jesus died, but no real reason for why he lived. We need to seriously work through why the gospel writers thought it so important to document all those events between Christmas and Easter. We can not just short circuit it all and have our Christology consist totally of a virgin birth and a sacrificial death. We would then be missing Christianity at the point where it is so important. We dishonor the memories of the early Christian martyrs when we say that they must have died because people didn’t like them going around preaching that humanity needed to relax and stop trying so hard. Just coast it out because Jesus has done it all is not a particularly dangerous message. This is where the inaugurated eschatology needs to step; this is where the Kingdom of God really meets Rome.

Ok, writing a summary of this book didn’t really work out. The writing style is so dense that it is impossible to summarize concisely. I ended up just quoting most things because I couldn’t really say them better or more precisely than they were written.

I usually find books of this period somewhat lacking in logic, and was very surprised to find a logical critique on “modern” thought. It is amazing how appropriate much of this critique is on current Christian critics. His arguments were still quite solid that pure logic thought cannot bring us out of insanity. There were still sections of the book that I largely left out of the summary because either I didn’t understand the logic, or I didn’t see where it was leading (possibly because I didn’t understand).

If nothing else, the book is interesting, extremely quotable, and a valuable defense of the faith.