March 03, 2010

General / Interesting things Around the Web

Sometimes I get lots of stuff to write about, but no time.  So here's some theology stuff I wish I had time to comment on:

• Richard Wiekart has his papers on the history of social Darwinism posted on his site
• Harry Frankfurt on B.S.
• A Kristof column about evangelicals doing social and gospel ministry
• A book about one person who left Hamas and his new vision for the middle east centered around Jesus' command to love your enemies
• Christian Carnival CCCXV
• Doug Groothius comments on an attempt to bring Jesus into a pantheistic monism
• A good discussion of the issue of gender equality and differences, and the difference between functional authority and equality
• An interesting conversation on healthcare.  Read the last two paragraphs by Malcolm Gladwell especially: "that's why I favor a system that is, for all its faults, incredibly dynamic; and you favor a system that, for all its faults, is incredibly good at delivering the status quo"
• A lecture by Huxley on evolution and ethics
• Salvador has an interesting post on quantum cosmologies

January 27, 2010

General / Quoted in the Christian Century on LifeChurch.tv

I was recently quoted in an article on LifeChurch.tv in the latest issue of Christian Century.  Jason Byassee was doing an introduction to the church for a mainline audience, who might not understand what LifeChurch is or why it is important.  It was a really good article.

My quote is toward the end, which, admittedly, borrows a lot from a friend who I will not name because he may wish to remain nameless:

Jonathan Bartlett, a seminary student with a background in the Vineyard movement, says he sees little place in LifeChurch for strong lay leaders. "Their whole pitch for leaders of LifeGroups is 'It's easy.' LifeChurch is made up of people who liked youth group in high school, but then grew up and found nothing like it—until this."

While I was at LifeChurch, that is what I found - there simply isn't much of a place for a strong lay leadership.  It is antithetical to the way they operate.  I think they like the idea of a strong lay leadership in theory, but they simply don't provide any meaningful mode of expression.  Their LifeGroups, which presumably might feed that purpose, are promoted to leaders, not with the idea that this is something that requires something of you, but rather that all that is required is for you to insert a DVD and press play. 

And, not suprisingly, most LifeGroups conform to the low expectations that the Church puts on them.

January 20, 2010

General / Family - From Naivete to Reality

Mark Riddle hits a home run with his saga about breastfeeding, and the changed perspective one gets after actually having a family, rather than just imagining what it might be like.

November 08, 2009

General / Academics vs. Laity

I am often appalled at the way in which many academics treat laity.  Whether it is the way in which academic theologians think about the faithful Bible-believer in the pew who knows only how to read the Bible devotionally or it is the way in which evolutionists think that no other discipline (or especially someone just making use of common sense) might have something to add to biology.

If I've ever treated someone this way, I'm sorry.  It is a bad habit, and it is bred into you in the post-graduate level.  Basically, any thinking like a lay person should be thought of as stupid, and talked down to, rather than addressed seriously.  That is the way nearly every academic professor I've run into has behaved when teaching classes, and so that academic elitism gets transferred to the students by osmosis.

What academics don't realize is that there is a perspective that lay people can offer that is simply unavailable to them in an academic setting.  This isn't to say that lay people are more knowledgeable than the experts.  On the contrary, the perspective that lay people offer is important precisely because they do not know all of the details. 

Think about the view of earth as a fly, a person, an airplane, and a satellite.  Each of them might be looking at the same spot, but each one is seeing very different things.  The satellite will never see the details that a fly does.  However, the satellite may in fact have data, or even a perspective, that would be useful to the fly.

I often challenge evolutionists to try to find something of value in the way in which creationists (not me, but the lay creationists that annoy them so much) are thinking.  They often respond that while they can value the person, there is no way in which they can value such idiotic ideas.  Really?  Nothing?  Can you value the way in which they rest solidly on their faith, even though you might disagree with its content?  Can you value some aspect of the way their worldview works?  I have trouble thinking of any thought pattern which is completely valueless.

But this looking-down-your-nose attitude continues to prevail throughout culture.  And it's not just evolution.  If you hear the way in which theologians talk so condescendingly about people who read the Bible who have no idea of the synoptic problem, but just want to know God better, it is truly disgusting.

The fact is that lay people have, among other things, the following attributes in which academics simply cannot have:

• A fresh perspective on the issue that is not clouded with the discipline's own history of investigation
• A view of the discipline only from the perspective of how it interacts with other disciplines
• A view of the data using alternate rubrics of interpretation and reliability
• A habit of sorting through the data so as to ignore the unimportant and grasp only the essentails (let me tell you - academics are habitually trained to focus, in a razor-sharp manner - on the unimportant)

Any particular lay person will have additional perspectives which are valuable.  This doesn't mean that academics should abandon their post for a lay-only view of their subject.  But it does mean that people who aren't part of a discipline might have valuable insight that is simply unavailable to the unaided academic community.  If a layperson is incorrect, belittling them is not the answer - but rather a process of both finding out where they are coming from and explaining where you are coming from is the answer.  I've often found that, even when someone is completely wrong, there is a kernel of truth to what they say, and if you find it this kernel will be greatly valuable.

For you lay people, be encouraged.  Just because an academic treats you like mud doesn't mean your ideas are worthless.  It just means that you having gone through the right hazing rituals to be respected by their community.  For you academics - lighten up!  A two-way dialogue is the best way to interact with the lay public, not a one-way lecture.

November 06, 2009

General / Critique: Harvey Cox's The Future of Faith

I have been reading Cox's The Future of Faith.  There seems to be a rash of reinterpreting what Christianity means.  I don't know if there is a direct-causal relationship, or which way the causality goes, but I will say that the rise of "reinterpreting Christianity" seems to match, almost step-for-step, the rise in theistic evolution among evangelicals.  I think that what is happening is that they stem from a common theological sea change - the move from an emphasis on special revelation to an emphasis on general revelation.

Cox describes what he views as the direction that Christianity is headed in as "the age of the spirit".  He says that we have been in the "age of belief", where Christianity was identified by adherence to specific doctrines, and are moving into a period where Christianity will be defined by people who are empowered by the awe they see in the universe, however they define it, to live it out in their lives by doing good.

Cox tried to make a connection to this view of the world to the early days of Christianity, but really it doesn't stack up.  The Bible - the book produced and used by the early Church - makes it clear both that (a) there is doctrine, and (b) that it is important.  It is true that sometimes Christians go overboard with doctrine and forget our calling in the world.  Nevertheless, scripture (and likewise the early Church) makes it clear that doctrine is, in fact, important.  Of course it is wildly popular today to talk about other types of Christianity in the early period (Paul had some interesting things to say about these other types of Christianity himself).  However, this was not mainstream Christianity, nor was it an extension of the apostle's teaching.

The fundamental flaw with the move to general revelation over special revelation is that Christianity is a historical religion.  It's very foundation is the fact that God has indeed done special things throughout history.  God is Himself involved in history.  Christianity cannot be replaced with a sense of awe that invokes a desire to do good.  It is about God doing specific things with specific meanings.

Did God do these things?  If so, then they matter - both their historical reality and their implications.  If not, then we need to not improve Christianity, but rather simply switch religions.

Cox on several occasions tries to convince the reader that the old way of believing is invalid, but his arguments are excessively weak.  He argues against end-times notions on the basis that it doesn't help environmentalism.  He argues against Biblical Christianity on the basis that Catholics and Jews have different Bibles.  He argues against fundamentalism on the basis that people get carried away with it (has he never read any of the liberation theologians he espouses?).

It is true that Christianity is often suffocated by creeds.  But the fix is not to abandon them, but to rather, (a) be more cautious about our own ability to fully rationally understand and articulate the faith, and (b) put them in their right place within Christianity.  Creeds are important, but God calls us to be united.  Cox, like others (see Spong, for instance), call for a "shift" in Christianity, which is actually an abandonment.  What you believe is important, because these are God's acts in history.  If Jesus did in fact come down to be a sacrifice for us all, then what you believe about that event matters. 

The God that Christians worship is a God who has been active in the world from the beginning - not in some nebulous manner - but a real, active, and detectable presence throughout history.  Christians live in continuity with God's message, believing in His works, and trusting Him about what the future will hold.

But that is not the future of faith that Harvey Cox sees.

October 18, 2009

General / Clayton and Cox Book Blog Tour

Philip Clayton and Harvey Cox both have new books out and they are taking them out on a blog tour. One of the blog tour stops will be here, and as you can see below they will be making their rounds over the next month.

They will wrap things up in Montreal at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting where they will be joined by a top notch panel including Eric Gregory, Bruce Sanguin, Serene Jones, Frank Tupper, and Andrew Sung Park to share a 'Big Idea' for the future of the Church. These 'Big Ideas' will be video tapped and shared, and I'll post a link when they are ready.

Clayton's new book is Transforming Christian Theology for Church & Society and Cox's is The Future of Faith. Both are worth checking out at one of the many tour stops. If you can't wait you can listen to them interview each other. I am currently working through Cox's The Future of Faith, and hope to have several posts on it in the near future.  

Here's the blog tour list if you want to follow what's going on:

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

This Tour is Sponsored by Transforming Theology DOT org!

[Note that while I did edit this to my own satisfaction, this was a suggested announcement post for the blog tour, and may look strangely like other announcements for the tour at other sites]

October 06, 2009

General / Laps for Little Ones

Support the Little Light House by sponsoring us in Laps for Little Ones

The Little Light House is one of the best ministries I've ever been involved with.  They are a Christian, private, tuition-free school for special-needs kids.  That's right, the kids who go there don't have to pay anything at all.

This isn't day-care - it's an intensive, customized program for each child.  The school day lets out at 1PM, and the staff spends the rest of the day planning each child's next day.  When a child gets to school, they have a card of things that they are going to work on that day.  It's both extremely fun and extremely helpful for the children -- and the parents.

While our oldest son, Danny, was alive, he attended the Little Light House.  His world expanded so much while he was there.  His ability to play with others and interact and do new things hinged upon the teachers at the Little Light House and their love and their help.  Danny had to be fed through a tube, received many, many, many medications at specially-timed intervals, and, if everyone was lucky, he only threw up three times a day.  Yet the Little Light House had no problems seeing to his every need while he was there, and providing every manner of therapy.  At the Little Light House, they have physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and probably a lot of other therapies I'm not so familiar with.  And everything is done in a specifically Christian way.

Isaac had the same genetic defect that Danny had, and, had he lived long enough, would have enjoyed the services of the Little Light House as well.  As soon as we discovered his condition, we reserved him a spot there, because we knew that their help was the difference between night and day for us.

Below are pictures of Danny learning at the Little Light House.  Also, for those of you who didn't get to know Danny or Isaac, I pasted their memorial videos below.  In any case, please consider helping out the Little Light House - they have been a huge blessing to us, and to many, many, many other children.

You can donate now by going here.

Here is Danny's Memorial Video:

Isaac's Memorial Video:

A few pictures of Danny at the Little Light House if you don't have time for the video:

The picture below might look like playtime to you, but this was actually crucial for Danny.  He had problems touching a variety of surfaces - many different textures made him cry and gag and puke (yes, really).  The Little Light House worked with him to help him adjust his senses to be able to touch and play with a huge variety of textures.

May 27, 2009

General / Shallow vs Deep Apologetics

One thing that is frustrating about the conservative movement, is the tendency in the last century to practice what I call "shallow apologetics".  Shallow apologetics is an attempt to defend the scripture or practice of the Church using the simplest means available.  It often means memorizing formulas or answers to questions.

Now, on its face, this has some value.  It builds up the congregation by providing answers to questions, and doing so at a level which is comprehensible to the largest group of parishioners.  But I will argue that this sort of benefit is largely temporary, and in fact is one of the reasons we are losing the culture war.

So what is the alternative?  The alternative is "deep apologetics".  Deep apologetics is looking into the faith in a way which engages the mind on a deep level, and is not satisfied with shallow answers.  This usually produces some of what I consider to be shallow apologetics, but the difference is that deep apologetics does not view the formulas and answers as the final goal, but rather looks at discovering the order of God's Creation as the final goal.  The fact that it can provide near-term answers is an added bonus.

The shallow apologists are looking to refute something, while the deep apologists are looking to learn something.  Notice that in shallow apologetics, it is the skeptics of the faith who set the agenda, while in deep apologetics it is the faithful who do so.  This is why shallow apologetics, if it is the main feature of the apologetics enterprise, is destined to lose.  Eventually someone is going to figure out that the shallow apologist is not producing anything of value, but merely holding on to what he has.  Think of the parable of the talents.  The shallow apologists are the ones who simply bury their talent it in the ground, and dig it back up when God asks for it.  Shallow apologetics does not bear fruit, precisely because it does not aim to.  Deep apologetics provides a harvest for the future precisely because that is where it aims.

This used to be known as "academics."  Unfortunately, in the current academic environment, anyone who starts their reasoning from scripture, or norms their reasoning by scripture, is considered unacademic.  That is a travesty of the highest order.  The very institutions which were established to provide a harvest for the future of the faith have excluded faithful reasoning from their repertoire.  And so, when we wonder where is the intellectual harvest of the Church is, we find that the institutions charged with its production have decided to simply do something else.

We need to return our minds to the task of understanding God's world - scientific, political, cultural, sociological, and historical, from a perspective that is explicitly and intentionally Christian.  Since others have burned the crops which the Church has contributed to, we must begin in earnest rebuilding the storehouse of faithful reason for the future of the faith.

May 16, 2009

General / Why I'm Happy to be a Fundamentalist

There are lots of definitions of Fundamentalism floating around.  A lot of people in the Church are quick to say, "oh no, I'm not a fundamentalist!"  I got that sense, for instance, reading N.T. Wright's The Last Word.  He wanted to distance himself from the "fundamentalists" while at the same time holding many positions many people think of as fundamentalist.  The reaction is understandable - the term "fundamentalism" is used by many people in academia and public policy as a reason for not listening to someone - if you can be labelled as a "fundamentalist", then you simply don't count as a rational human being.  You can be set aside with other sorts of crazies and ignored for all practical purposes.  Plantinga has a great little section about Fundamentalism in this sense (from his book Warranted Christian Belief which I have not yet read but should).  

The fact is, most people from the left who use the term "fundamentalism" to discount people's ideas, actually use the term for anyone who believes in a God who answers prayer.  This includes many Christians on the left who use this term (they are essentially deists, but maintain some aspects of Christian tradition and practice).  So, the first reason why I'm proud to hold the title fundamentalist is that I try not to set my rule of faith based on what other people want me to believe.  The fact is that most people are cowering from the term fundamentalism simply because of the negative connotations that others are giving it.  But if we let our detractors set the standards for our beliefs, what good are they, or are we?  We cannot let others redefine ourselves into their image based on what others are willing to believe.

So what are the reasons for being a "fundamentalist"?  Well, there are two main areas which I want to explore.

First of all, the term "fundamentalism" comes, at least for the most part, from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the beginning of the 20th century.  Probably the best book on the subject is Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.  Although some people claim that there were a set number of fundamentals, the fact is that there was no agreed upon number.  The 5 fundamentals that most people consider to be characteristic of fundamentalists (and I won't disagree) were established by the Presbyterian Church in 1910.  Before reading them, I want to ask you, are you a fundamentalist by these beliefs?  Here they are:

• The historical reality of Christ's miracles
• The bodily resurrection of Christ
• The belief that God used Christ's death as an atonement for sin
• The virgin birth of Christ
• The belief in the inerrancy of scripture

Now, be honest, based on those beliefs, how far are you, really, from being a fundamentalist?  So when someone labels you a "fundamentalist", for the most part what I interpret them as saying is that anyone who believes any of these notions is stupid.  From this list, for my Christian friends who eschew the label of "fundamentalist", the only one of these beliefs they might have a problem with is inerrancy.  Yet, if you use Machen's description of the Christian belief about the Bible, it would include anyone who believes that the Bible is uniquely inspired, whether or not it contained any errors.

But the reason that I like the term fundamentalism goes a little deeper than that - it goes more to the heart of what fundamentalists were trying to do than the specific set of beliefs they came up with.  I consider fundamentalism more as a mode of thought than anything.  And the other mode of though it usually stands in contrast with is "progressivism".  Now, before I describe their differences, keep in mind that I don't totally hate progressivism - there are certainly some very good aspects of it which I think are important - but rather I think fundamentalism is a better default mode of thought.

I define these two terms - progressivism and fundamentalism - in terms of the primary question that they are asking.  The progressive thought is "Here we are, let's decide where we want to go and make a plan to get there from here".  As I said, there are many things to like about progressivism.  But let's look at fundamentalism's basic attitude - "Here we are, what was the purpose in our coming here, and why did we bother with this path?  What was our goal and how are we doing in achieving that?"

Fundamentalism attempts to connect with past generations and try to understand where they are in relation to the goals and dreams of the past.  In addition, it looks at the current situation and asks, "what are we doing here, and how does it align with our mission?" Progressivism attempts to rewrite the goals in every generation, while fundamentalism attempts to live in continuity with the past, and tries to understand the goals deeper and deeper every generation.  We don't always succeed in that :)  But that is the difference as I see it between the two.

To give an example, I want to refer us to the Internet bubble in the stock market around the turn of the millenium.  In terms of financial practice, you had the "fundamentalists" which evaluated businesses based on a historical criteria of earnings and earning potential.  On the other hand you had the "progressives" who thought that the old way of thinking was out of date in the new markets, and that instead of looking to the "fundamentals" we should be looking at "mind-share".  This was profitable for a time, but eventually we found that looking at the fundamentals of a company didn't cease to be important just because it was unpopular.  The fundamentalists would ask the question, "what was the point of starting a company?  Oh yeah, to make money - let's do that" while the progressives would ask, "okay, we're in a company, what do we really want to do instead?"

Again, there is a place for progressive thought.  But, in general, I think that our default mode should be to remember why we are here and what our purpose is, in continuity with the purpose of the Church historically.  Our new pursuits should always be done by asking the question of how this fits in with the historical purposes and guidelines of the Church.  That doesn't mean we can't ask good questions about the Church's historical purposes, goals, and beliefs, but that our general baseline should be to live in continuity with them, and we should take extreme caution in any fundamental revision we make. 

And that is why I am happy to be a fundamentalist.

April 10, 2009

General / Ghosts

Ghosts are not anything I regularly put in a lot of intellectual time on, but Parchment and Pen recently did a very interesting overview of the relationship between concepts of "ghosts" and the Bible.