Neo-Reformed or Neo-Fundamentalist

Tim Gombis comments on why those identified as Neo-Reformed might be more accurately referred to as Neo-Fundamentalist.

First, there’s a strong anti-creation impulse that runs through this culture. I remember hearing one of the above-mentioned people making the flippant remark that Christians shouldn’t worry about stepping on the grass or killing dolphins since it’s all going to burn in the end. That sort of remark represents a deeper depreciation of creation and culture as expressions of worship. Further, one could make the case that John Piper’s call for Christians to delight in God tends to come at the expense of creation rather than in and through creation. While some elements of a Calvinistic soteriology are prominent within this culture, what is lacking is a broader and deeper Reformed worldview. Most crucially, the tendency to emphasize redemption from creation runs counter to the Reformed vision of God’s redemption of creation.

Second, the movement’s militant posture toward the wider culture is manifest also in its lack of genuine engagement with other viewpoints–even evangelical ones–and its inability to enjoy mutually beneficial conversations with other Christian traditions. This may be due to the movement’s exaltation of certain figures as “authoritative voices,” but there’s a strong impulse of suspicion toward fellow Christians who aren’t within the camp. Again, this runs counter to the Reformed vision of seeking to grasp God’s truth wherever it may be found. Further, it fails to heed the call to be “reformed and always reforming,” which happens through intellectual humility, self-reflection, and genuine conversation with others.

 

Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.

2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.

3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.

4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.

5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.

6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.

7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, too enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.

8. The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.

9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.

10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature, its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.

11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.

12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. [I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.

14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”

15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.

16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.

17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.

18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially equally* present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.

19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one [see if that’s an overstatement]; there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, my God, what would happen if you talk took* all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.

HT: here

A more fleshed out version is available here.

 

Mysteries vs. Problems

Why there are no theological problems.

HT: Alastair

 

Alastair Is Back

Alastair’s posted a nice critique of the ‘Christmas is Pagan’ school of thought, and from the pen of a pagan, no less.

Of course the most important take away from this is the realization that…

ALASTAIR IS BACK!!

What a wonderful Christmas present.

 

St. Nicholas Day

Almighty Father,
who chose your servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church;
grant us to perfectly know thy Son Jesus Christ, and that,
following in the footsteps of friends like Nicholas
who loved the poor, the weak and the young,
and who gave what he had to enrich those who had but little,
we may faithfully walk in the way of your kingdom;
May we give fitting honor to his memory
and always have the assistance of his prayers.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever—and ever.
Amen

 

Mad Men, Mom and Dad

My wife and I are watching the first season of Mad Men.

Wow.

After last night’s episode, there are all sorts of thoughts clambering around in my head. Most of them are sad. There’s a new awareness of people who desperately yearn for that, which their actions ensure is forever outside their reach, the cruelty of starting in a situation that wasn’t chosen or even understood, and the hopelessness that comes when the understanding finally arrives.

Something in the world conspires to frustrate our yearnings for happiness, love and life. Its effectual too. Invariably so. It delights in the hollowness of our attempts to grasp at these things. It rejoices when we realize that every effort seems to work us deeper into the smothering, filthy muck that drowns us- the light just out of reach.

People are lost. That’s what Mad Men has brought home to me. Not in a abstract ‘God’s gonna get you’ sort of way, but in a ‘follow them to work or home’ or especially ‘when they’re alone and sober’ sort of way. We don’t need a preacher to tell us that we need to be saved. A camera…. and a wife or a job or a child or a client or a home will do the trick.

But as I’ve watched the show, the thing that’s struck me the most is how foreign all of this seems to my experience of the same time period. The Sixties and Seventies were the years of my childhood. I have no recollection of this type of desperate, lonely, sin ruled world.

None.

In fact, I find the portrayal of the ‘respectable’ element of the 1960s hard to believe. Certainly in today’s world, but not back then. I was there, after all.

Turns out that the characterization is inaccurate, but only because the betrayal, abuse and selfishness is underplayed.

Apparently the world has always been the world- just as it continues to be the world today. The reason the world of Mad Men was not my world is simple and precious: Mom and Dad.

Our home was a place- a concrete, flesh and blood place- where Jesus’ rule was acknowledged. Certainly Sin crawled around our house, but he wasn’t in charge.

I suspect that many childhoods begin in wonder. Innocence alone can give you that; but love, fidelity, unselfish nurture and security were the world I grew up in- not a facade that experience would one day peel away.

Sure, I grew to understand the struggle, sacrifice and unalterable requirement of forgiveness and grace that Christ’ realm required, if it was to be made manifest; but that world never melted into something else. Never.

My initial reaction to this powerful show has reminded me of how deep was my parents gift to me. Growing up, I had no idea that a sin-ruled world was out there- or what it might look like. It was all more than I knew, literally. Watching the show I’ve realized that the illusion that most people then lived in my world- in Christ’s kingdom, in Dad and Mom’s house- followed me right into my late forties.

I’ve been reminded that the realm in which my childhood occurred was not the only one. But so powerful were the choices of my folks, that I continue to feel that it was. Thank you Mom and Dad, glory to you Lord Christ for making such a world and sharing it with me.

 

When the battle is over, the shooting ought to stop

Peter Leithart drew my attention to a critique of Sproul’s Faith Alone. The complete critique is available here (pdf). Another example of why I am grateful that the TR battles are no longer mine, and so sorry and ashamed that they once were.

Leithart posts:

In an article evaluating RC Sproul’s teaching on justification in a 2004 issue of JETS, Matthew Heckel concludes that Sproul’s work is misleading and misses the opportunity of the moment:

“Sproul’s assertion that the Reformers considered sola fide the essence of the gospel is not fundamentally wrong. Yet it is unqualified and dangerously misleading. Why? Sproul’s thesis fails to interact with the doctrine of justification in its pre-Reformation forms and in its post-Reformation developments. Without input from Augustine, the pre-Reformation church and a whole host of saints become the victims of Sproul’s polemic, because he does not distinguish between justification by faith alone as an experience and justification by faith alone as an article of faith. Sproul does not seem to allow for faith alone to save apart from believing it as a formula. The Reformers themselves provide an antidote to this narrowly confined approach, since they applied their doctrine throughout church history and did not make explicit knowledge of sola fide a necessary condition for the experience of sola fide. Sproul also fails to appreciate that our own context today is not polemical but largely ecumenical. The Catholic Church has officially moved beyond its rejection of Luther, accepting many if not the most important aspects of his theological reforms of the doctrine of justification. The closest the Reformation ever came to this kind of experience was at Regensburg, where the uncompromising Calvin believed convergence had been achieved on the doctrine of justification. Based on this Reformation model, could evangelicals not strike a similar pose toward Roman Catholics today? Sproul’s vision is limited to a sixteenth-century polemical context. Does Sproul’s treatment of the Reformation doctrine lead to the wrong approach today? Could evangelicals come to regard Roman Catholicism as genuinely Christian and at least achieve unofficial unity and mutual recognition as ECT proposed? If so, then Regensburg might not only be revisited but reclaimed.”

 

Love and Labor

Great Stuff from Daniel Kirk. His experience feels very familiar to me.

Favorite line: It wasn’t love that made me labor, it was labor that made me love.

The first house that Laura and I bought needed a lot of cosmetic love.

The first day we owned it I pulled out the avocado green dishwasher with a couple buddies. And, yes, the old shut-offs were leaky so water was soon cascading into the basement. Within a couple of months, though, we had laid the kitchen tile, painted the cabinets, replaced the counter tops, changed the sink fixture, moved in the new appliances–and voila! The kitchen was beautiful (and all decked out to the Night Kitchen theme).

With saws and nails and hammers in hand, we loved on the dining room by tacking up wainscoting and chair rail, painting with a silver linen look, and changing out the light fixture.

I love that first house, not because it was an awesome house, but because we poured our labor into it.

Last weekend, I finally made good on a vision for planting some flowery vines and other things in front of our house here in San Francisco. It wasn’t much, but it makes a huge difference in how I see the house. And I’m proud of the my house here for perhaps the first time. I love the way those changes enhance the way it looks.

It wasn’t love that made me labor, it was labor that made me love.

John Locke proposed that mixing your labor with the soil was how property rights developed. I don’t know about his theories of government or his history, but I know the feeling he’s talking about. When you mix your labor with something, you feel like it’s yours.

The same goes for our relationships.

Once upon a time, the main pre-marriage counseling that my circle was into was a set of bootlegged Tim Keller sermons. He was talking at one point about how we treat children differently from our spouses: “By the time that child is 18 years old, even if he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, you love him. Why? Because you’ve spent the past 18 years pouring yourself into him.” Conversely, in marriage, we hope to find our fulfillment by having our own needs met by the other rather than discovering love in pouring our life into our spouse.

And there’s the trick. Too often in our relationships we look for someone, or something in the case of organizations, that are worth loving, and then envision ourselves laboring there–at least for as long as the initial infatuation lasts.

But perhaps that is only a quick fix. Perhaps real love doesn’t work that way. Perhaps real love, be it of an individual or a community, is not about responding to love with labor, but cultivating love through our labors. Perhaps the dynamic that more truly satisfies, the place where more profound love, develops, is not in the discovery of the lovely, but in the cultivation of love through our giving ourselves to our beloved.

Can we ever love a church if we ask it to meet our needs? Or will we only love it if we give ourselves to it? Can we ever love a city if we only use its resources to meet our expectations? Or will we only love if we pour out our lives in making it better?

Mix a little labor. See what happens.

 

Hallowmas(s)

All Saints Day

Waiting behind burned-out jack-o’-lanterns for day to come,
the saints clap their stigmata hands.
They are the sun’s halo, shimmering the November air
with celestial simplicity; the sky, their dried blood.
By the time we wake on All Hallows,

weary from our own werewolves and witches,
the narrow sidewalks are crowded, the Christian dead
hopscotching between the cracks
we’ve let creep parallel to where we live.

And soon, yes, they’ll be marching triumphantly
past the graveyard, cymbals like offering plates at their hips,
the old spiritual clanging the neighborhood,
saxophones and trumpets blasting the last
doubts from our ears.

Of course, we will follow,
stiff in our nightshirts, too human for holiness
but hungry enough to shadow their sanctified sufferings,
genuflect with them in the cold gothic arch of the cathedral where,
with the canonized, we will feast greedily
on the Body and Blood.

—Marjorie Maddox

 

What Is Narrative Theology

While commenting on The Bible Made Impossible, Roger Olson offered a very helpful summary of Narrative Theology

Some Thoughts about Narrative Theology

1. Narrative theology focuses on the Bible as a whole (canonical interpretation) as a dramatic account of God’s activity; its main purpose is to identify God for us (i.e., God’s character).

2. Narrative theology acknowledges that the Bible contains propositions, but it says biblical propositions are not independent of or superior to the metanarrative of God’s saving activity. (Jesus told stories—parables—and sometimes interpreted them with propositions. But the propositions serve the stories, not vice versa. If propositions could communicate the point better, then surely Jesus would have started with the propositions and then given the stories to “illustrate” them.)

3. A biblical proposition is “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but it needs interpretation. It does not simply interpret itself. What is “love” in this proposition? How is God’s love related to God’s justice, etc.? It won’t do simply to look up “love” in a dictionary. The only way to interpret “God is love” is to look at the biblical story that reveals God’s character through his actions.

4. According to narrative theology, the Bible contains many kinds of statements—commands, propositions, expressions of praise, prayers, poetry, prophecies, parables, etc. All are included by narrative theology under and within the rubric of “story” or “drama.” They are all parts of the great story of God whose central character (for Christians, at least) is Jesus Christ. Therefore, all must be interpreted in light of that story and its purpose—to reveal the character of God through his mighty acts leading up to and centering around Jesus Christ.

5. Theology is our best human attempt to understand the biblical drama-story and that includes developing canonical-linguistic models (complex metaphors, doctrines) that express its meaning for the church’s belief and life. But a theologian cannot do that properly unless he or she is “living the story” together with a community of faith shaped by the story.

6. Doctrines are secondary to the story; they cannot replace it. They are judged by their adequacy to the story—their ability to draw out and express faithfully the character of God as revealed by the story. But the story is primary; the doctrines are secondary and that means always revisable in light of a new and better understanding of the import of the story.

7. The task of the church is to “faithfully improvise” the “rest of the story.” Christians are not called simply to live in the story; they are called to continue the story in their own cultural contexts. First they must be grounded in the story. They must be people for whom the story “absorbs the world.” Second, they must together (communally) improvise the “rest of the story” faithfully to the story given in the Bible.

8. The alternatives are to either a) regard the Bible as a grab bag of propositions to be pulled out to answer questions, or b) regard the Bible as a not-yet-systematized system of theology (like a philosophy). Both alternatives fail to do justice to what the Bible really is—a grand drama of God’s mighty saving acts that progressively reveals his character culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ.