Category: Historical Theology

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Biblical Seminary Culture Historical Theology

Christian History — Contextualization

I’m starting my first class today as a student at Biblical Seminary.  I’ll be working ever so slowly on a Masters in Missional Theology.  Hopefully God will use this to enrich my work as a law professor and in the local church, as well as to deepen and broaden my own faith.  My first course is an online class in World Christian History.  We started with this great quote:

“. . . All historically visible Christianities are partial manifestations of an essence that is never seen in an unmixed form, and can never be seen in its wholeness and entirely on earth. The ‘God’s eye’ view of the eternal of the Christian Church is just that. Every manifestation of Christianity is partial because it is always a composite. The churches never escape their social context and the value of their host society. So the Christian message and the Christian life always combine elements drawn from the ethos and assumptions of the age (which, of course, Christianity, in turn) help to shape.” Evan Cameron, Interpreting Christian History, pg. 86.

Nice.

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Biblical Studies Historical Theology Theology

Noll on Evangelicals and Biblical Criticism

Mark Noll’s book Between Faith and Criticism:  Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America, is must-reading for anyone who wants to engage as an evangelical with historical and critical methods in Biblical studies.  Noll sketches the history of evangelical interaction with Biblical criticism and points towards a way forward (a “third way”?) for evangelical scholarship.  Noll shows that Protestant evangelicals historically tried to develop theological frameworks, such as B.B. Warfield’s notion of “concursus,” that would allow them to interact with the broader world of scholarship.  Here is a somewhat lengthy passage in which Noll splendidly makes his point:

Since the fundamentalist-modernist controversies, however, evangelicals have usually lacked this kind of theological anchorage.  Evangelical voices on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly drawn attention to the striking absence of a secure theological framework for the study of scripture.  So Englishman David Wright:  ‘One of our most urgent unfinished tasks is the elaboration of a satisfactory doctrine of Scripture for an era of biblical criticism. . . . In particular, we have to work out what it means to be faithful at one and the same time both to the doctrinal approach to Scritpure as the Word of God and to the historical treatment of Scripture as the words of men.

An even more striking appeal along the same lines has come from Bernard Ramm, one of the leaders with E.J. Carnell and Carl Henry in the postwar renewal of evangelical thought.  Ramm’s 1983 book, After Fundamentalism, called upon his fellow evangelicals to learn from Karl Barth how to be both genuinely Christian and genuinely honest about the ‘humanity’ of Scripture.  Ramm was especially distressed at the ‘obscurantism’ which he felt had beset evangelical efforts to incorporate modern Western learning into the study of Scritpure.  Here was the primary problem, as Ramm saw it, complete with his own italics and an unflattering comparison to Barth:

there is no genuine, valid working hypothesis for most evangelicals to interact with the humanity of Scripture in general and biblical criticism in particular.   There are only ad hoc or desultory attempts to resolve particular problems.  Barth’s method of coming to terms with the humanity of the Scriptures and biblical criticism is at least a clearly stated program. . . . To date, evangelicals have not announced such a clear working program.  If Barth’s paradigm does not please them, they are still under obligation to propose a program that does enable an evangelical to live creatively with evangelical theology and bibilical criticism.

The historical record, both evangelical and more broadly Christian, suggests two things about Ramm’s appeal.  First, Christians certainly have often done what he proposed.  Whether it was Augustine and Platonism, Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, Luther and nominalism, Wesley and eighteenth-century sentimentalism, or Jonathan Edwards and Newtonianism, the history of the church is filled with orthodox thinkers who have baptized (and transformed) apparently alien world views for the use of the church.  But history also reveals that the synthesis of any one era does not remain intellectually or spiritually satisfying indefinitely, at least without periodic readjustments requiring nearly as much creativity as the original formulation.  Ramm’s appeal, therefore, does not seek the impossible or the unorthodox, but it does call for the exercise of creative theological energy on a very broad scale.

 

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Biblical Studies Hermeneutics Historical Theology Theology

Bloesch on Scriptural Authority, Truth and Error (Third Way)

Scot McKnight has been blogging about a “Third Way” in evangelicalism.  Donald Bloesch wrote a book in 1983 — yes, 25 years ago! — talking about many of the same ideas:  The Future of Evangelical Christianity:  A Call for Unity Amid Diversity.  Among other things, Bloesch’s book (and others from that era like it) show that thinking about a “third way” is not just some kind of emergo-liberal babble.  Bloesch resonates with me on scripture and epistemology.  Here he is in “The Future of Evangelical Christianity” on scripture:

As I see it, there are three basic approaches to scriptural authority:  the sacramental, the scholastic, and the liberal-modernist.  In the first, the Bible is a divinely appointed channel, a mirror, or a visible sign of divine revelation.  This was the general position of the church fathers, the doctors of the medieval church, and the Reformers.  In the second, the Bible is the written or verbal revelation of God, a transcript of the very thoughts of God.  This has been the viewpoint of Protestant fundamentalism, though it was anticipated in both Catholic and Protestant scholastic orthodoxy.  in the third, the Bible is a record of the religious experience of a particular people in history; this refelects the general stance of liberalism, both Catholic and Protestant.  Only the first position does justice to the dual origin of scripture — that it is both a product of divine inspiration and a human witness to divine truth.   We need to recognize the full humanity of Scripture as well as its true divinity.  Indeed, it should be impressed upon us that we can come to know its divinity only in and through its humanity.  As Luther put it, the Scriptures are the swaddling clothes that contain the treasure of Christ.

Well there you have it — all of the issues that are on the table today were being discussed by wise and eminent evangelical theologians such as Bloesch twenty-five years ago.  And, as Bloesch notes, what we are calling the “third way” is really the ancient way of “faith seeking understanding.”

Similarly, Bloesch deals in “The Future of Evangelical Christianity” with how we define the inerrancy or infallibility of scripture.  He says:

On the intractable problem of whether Scripture contains errors, e need to recognize that this conflict is rooted in disparate notions of truth.  Truth in the Bible means conformity to the will and purpose of God.  Truth in today’s empirical, scientific milieu means an exact correspondence between one’s ideas or perceptions and the phenomena of nature and history.  Error in the Bible means a deviation from the will and purpose of God, unfaithfulness to the dicates of his law.  Error in the empirical mind-set of a technological culture means inaccuracy or inconsistency in what is reported as objectively occurring in nature or history.  Technical precision is the measure of truth in empiricism.  Fidelity to God’s Word is the biblical criterion for truth.  Empiricism narrows the field of investigation to objective sense data, and therefore to speak of revelation as superhistorical or hidden in history is to remove it from what can legitimately be considered as knowledge.  The difference between the rational-empirical and the biblical understanding of truth is the difference between transparency to Eternity and literal facticity.

Again, here it is — a critique of modernist epistemology from an evangelical theologian who is not “post-modern” twenty-five years ago.   The “third way” is not an effort to do something new.  It’s an effort to correct something new and get back to something ancient.

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Historical Theology Science & Technology Theology

Evolution and Divine Action

One of the issues Daniel Harrell deals with in his excellent “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith” is the problem of divine action.

“Divine action” is the question of how God acts in history. Biological evolution raises questions about divine action because the process of evolution is “random.” Christians have historically believed in a God who is sovereign — that is, a God who is “in control” of history. How can “random” evolution be reconciled with a “sovereign” God?

Some Christians argue that these notions cannot be reconciled. The “Intelligent Design” movement, for example, is fueled in large part by a belief that “purpose” or “design” must be empirically detectable in order to demonstrate God’s sovereignty over creation. /FN1/

In my view, most of these “strong” Intelligent Design arguments about “randomness” are misplaced. The theological notion of God’s sovereignty has never required that all of God’s activity in history be empirically demonstrable. In fact, the Calvinistic understanding of “providence” is that God’s purposes often are hidden from human understanding. What seem like a set of “random” circumstances from the human perspective are sensible and ordered from God’s perspectives. The assertion that God is sovereign is a theological claim based on revelation and faith. This claim is supported by some important empirical data — most notably the historical resurrection of Jesus — but it is not primarily an empirically testable claim.

Thomas Aquinas wrestled with the problem of the hiddennes of providence when he addressed the problem of evil in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas wanted to show that God is not the cause of the evil acts of human beings. A standard response to this problem is the “free will” defense: human beings are free to chose or not choose evil, and God is not culpable for those choices. But if God is sovereign even over human affairs, how is it possible to claim that God did not ultimately cause human evil?

Aquinas framed his response in terms of different levels of causality. God determines the ultimate purpose, role and function of each element of creation. However, God gave some creatures, particularly humans, at least some capacity to choose among different courses of action. When creatures make choices, those choices are the secondary cause of whatever consequences result. However, God remains the primary cause in that God in His sovereignty ordained that human beings should be creatures that are free to make moral choices, and God’s will continually sustains that ability.

This notion of primary and secondary causation can help us understand how we can talk about “randomness” in nature without impinging on God’s sovereignty. As Christian theists, by “random” we don’t mean metaphysically random. We mean only “random” from our human perspective. We acknowledge that many things that appear random to us as human beings are not random to God.

In fact, the question of “random” events seems to present no problem at all to most Christians except where biological evolution is concerned. Take a pair of dice and toss them on the desk. Unless you have extraordinary skill in manipulating dice, the result will be “random.” Log onto a secure website. Your browser is using an encryption algorithm based on a “randomly” generated encryption key. Follow the stock market. Its fluctuations are “random,” or more accurately, “stochastic” — they follow no statistically predictable pattern. Observe a thunderstorm. The storm develops stochastically, which explains why predicting the weather involves so much guesswork.

In all of these cases, we have no problem asserting that God is ultimately sovereign. Indeed, scripture gives us express support for this belief: Many times in the Biblical narratives people make descions or seek to determine God’s will by “casting lots” — an activity similar to playing dice (see, e.g., Leviticus 16, Numbers 34, 1 Samuel 14, Josua 19, Esther 3, Esther 9, etc.). Proverbs 16:33 offers some wisdom about this practice: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”

There seems to be no reason why this can’t also be true concerning biological evolution. Though it appears “random” to us, there is no reason why it can’t at the same time happen within the boundaries of God’s sovereignty. There is no reason why God must have “intervened” at discrete points in natural history to maintain His sovereignty. /FN2/

Of course, this suggests only that a theory of biological evolution that accepts apparent randomness is consistent with classical Christian theism. Theories of biological evolution that insist on metaphysical randomness are not consistent with Christian theism (and further are “philosophical” and not “scientific”). Moreover, a Christian theist might insist on other grounds, particularly on the basis of scripture but also based on tradition, experience, and reason, that God did “intervene” in natural history at certain points — most notably, perhaps, in the creation of that which makes human beings “human.” But these are not meta-questions about God’s sovereignty.

For a longer and truly outstanding discussion of how a Thomistic understanding of creation relates to the question of divine action in evolution, see William E. Carroll, Creation, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas.

Footnotes:

/FN1/ It’s important to note that Intelligent Design is not primarily a critique of the “common descent” aspect of evolution. Many Intelligent Design advocates, including Michael Behe, fully accept common descent. This means that Behe and others like him agree with mainstream science that the history of life on earth generally reflects a long, gradual transition from one common ancestor to all the diversity of life today. In other words, most Intelligent Design advocates argue for or at least implicity accept some form of “guided” or “front loaded” evolution. This, by the way, is one of my biggest arguments with some evangelical apologists: they improperly cite Intelligent Design as a refutation of common descent in favor of some kind of direct creationism.

/FN2/ At the same time, it’s important to note that not all theologians, even outside the Intelligent Design camp, are comfortable with this admittedly simplified Thomistic model of primary and secondary causation as applied to nature. This is a rich and very interesting area, which has spawned a variety of nuanced models. Many of these nuances also attempt to respond to the theodicy problem raised by even an apparently randomly evolving creation (why would God create a world that develops through predation and competition?). These range from making “space” for divine action in quantum indeterminacy to suggestions that move in the direction of open theism and panentheism. See, e.g., Robert John Russell et al., Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican Observatory Publications / CTNS 1997). In my view, however, the Thomistic model remains very useful and retains the decided advantage of falling within classical and Reformed understandings of God’s transcendence, sovereignty and foreknowledge.

Categories
Historical Theology Law and Policy Theology

A Morally Deficient Theory of Contract

The religious right in the U.S. emphasizes that its view of human freedom and democracy derives from Christian principles.  A significant pillar of the religious right’s economic theory is freedom of contract.  Under this view, government should avoid regulating private transactions because the individual parties to contractual agreements are in the best position to judge the value of their bargain and possess the moral freedom to make their own bargains.  A theological basis for this view is the inherent worth of the individual in the Christian tradition and the tendency of people with governmental power to abuse that power.

These are valid notions, but they are not the whole story.  In his chapter “The Christian Sources of General Contract Law” in the splendid Christianity and Law:  an Introduction, Harold Berman traces Western contract law to its medieval canon law roots.  Berman summarizes these roots as follows:

In subsequent centuries, many of the basic principles of the canon law of contract were adopted by secular law and eventually came to be justified on the basis of will-theory and party autonomy.  It is important to know, however, that originally they were based on a theory of sin and a theory of equity.  Our modern Western contract law did not start form the proposition that every individual has a moral right to dispose of his property by means of making promises, and that in the interest of justice a promise should be legally enforced unless it offends reason or public policy.  Our contract law started, on the contrary, from the theory that a prmise created an obligation to God, and that for the salvation of souls God instituted the ecclesiastical and secular courts with the task, in part, of enforcing contractual obligations to the extent that such obligations are just.

 (Christianity and Law, at 132).  This broadly social notion of contracts was modified, Berman notes, during the Puritan era.  The Puritans’ strong notion of total depravity made them less willing to place the authority to determine which obligations are “just” in the hands of a magistrate.  Moreover, the Puritans’ emphasis on order inclined them to seek the meaning of contractual documents in the literal words of the document rather than in an overarching contractual hermeneutic of justice.  However, even for the Puritans, “private” contracts were social obligations within the all-inclusive fabric of God’s covenantal relationships with people.  Private contractual relations were not really “private” — they were covenantal relations between people who were also bound in covenantal relation to God.  As Berman notes, 

the Puritan stress on bargain and on calculability (“order”) should not obscure the fact that the bargain presupposed a strong relationship between teh contracting parties within the community.  These were not yet the autonomous, self-sufficient individuals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.  England under Puritan rule and in the century that followed was intensely communitarian.

(Id. at 140).  

In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Enlightenment, these theories of contract based on justice and covenant were secularized.  Justice and covenant were replaced with “the inherent freedom of each individual to exercise his own autonomous reason and will, subject only to considerations of social utility.”  (Id.)  These Enlightenment ideas “broke many of the links not only between contract law and moral theology but also between contract law and the comunitarian postulates which had informed both Catholic and Protestant legal traditions.”  (Id. at 140-41).

It is a shame, I think, that contemporary evangelical discourse about law seems to focus so heavily on notions of individual freedom to contract that are more post-Christian than Christian.  We seem to be left with two options:  the current prevailing secular legal theory of contracts, which is strictly realist and pragmatic and elides any notion of higher values, and the religious right’s libertarian view of contract, which elevates the individual far above the community.  I agree with Berman:  “[w]e may learn from history . . . that there is a third possibility:  to build a new and different theory on the foundation of the older ones.”  (Id. at 141).

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Books and Film Historical Theology Looking Glass Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Narrative Statement of Faith

I’ve been working on a narrative statement of faith — something that would tell the story of the historical Christian faith, which could be used in a church setting in lieu of the usual bullet-point summaries evangelical churches often favor. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily what I think of as the core of the core of the core of the faith, but it expresses for me the contours of what I think it would be good to express as the basic story in which a local church becomes embodied. It probably is still too “propositional” and not “narrative” enough, and I don’t claim to be an authoritative source, but here is what I’ve come up with:

There are many different kinds of “Christians,” but we all share at least one very important thing in common: “Christians” seek to follow Christ. As Jesus taught us, we are learning together how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This kind of love is the grand summary of everything we want to be about at [insert name] Church.

But the story starts much farther back. When we speak of “God” we speak, in many ways, of a mystery: the “triune” God, or “trinity,” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. God always was, and he never needed anything. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit danced together and could have gone on dancing without us.

But in his goodness and love, God made room for – created – the heavens and the earth. Everything that exists is the result of God’s choice to create. Things continue to exist because God in his love desires it to be so.

Human beings are a very special part of God’s creation. He made each one of us to live in loving relationship with Himself, each other, and the created world. Yet from the very beginning, human beings have rebelled against God. Each of us continually turns away from the good things God has planned for us. We each try to go our own way, even though our ways lead to brokenness, injustice, and the separation of death. We all sin.

But God pursues us. In the person of the Son, Jesus, God became a person like us. He experienced hunger and pain, loneliness and temptation, separation and loss . . . yet, unlike us, he did so without rebelling against God. In fact, we proclaim a mystery: that Jesus became fully man and yet remained fully God.

As the God-man, Jesus died a terrible death on a Roman cross. His death is a paradox because, unlike any other death in history, Jesus’ death was a victory. In his death, Jesus took on himself all of the consequences of our sin. All of the hurt we have caused, and all of the hurt we deserve, he willingly suffered.

Jesus’ death was a victory because he did not remain in the grave. We shout, along with all the generations of Christians who have lived during the two thousand years from the time of Christ until today: “He is risen!”

Christ left the Earth but lives today and reigns with God the Father. Christians wait eagerly for the time when, as he promised, Christ will return to Earth to “make all things new,” to wipe every tear from our eyes, to complete the victory he won on the cross over sin and all the brokenness it causes. We live now in a time-in-between – a time of hoping, waiting, working, expecting, rejoicing-in-part, seeing-in-part, and sometimes suffering – while we wait for the time of restoration and peace Jesus called the “Kingdom of God.”

We are not alone in this twilight time. God the Holy Spirit dwells in each person who trusts in Christ, to empower, comfort, guide and correct. The community of all Christians through the ages forms a family called the Church. We meet together in local representations of this global community, in churches like [insert name] Church and in countless other varieties, to worship God, to support each other, and to learn how to love more like Jesus.

In addition to the community of His people and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God gave us his written word, the Bible, to teach and direct us. The Bible is the ultimate norm for Christian faith and practice. It is the standard for all our thinking and teaching about who God is, how He expects us to relate to each other, and how He expects us to love and worship Him.

When we meet together as the local Church, we practice certain customs that Christians have always found vital to the life of faith. These include singing songs of worship and praise to God, offering back to God a portion of the wealth with which He has blessed us, and receiving the proclamation of the word of God from the Bible. These also include special symbols or “sacraments” given by Christ to the Church, in particular baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In baptism, those who have trusted Christ publicly confess their faith and demonstrate how they have been brought up from the dark waters of sin into the fresh air of the new life of faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine remind us of the body of Jesus, broken on the cross, and of his blood, spilled for our sins.

As we meet together, God the Holy Spirit acts in and through us to change us and to change the world. In this way, we “already” experience the Kingdom of God, even as we know the “not yet” completion of the Kingdom awaits Christ’s return. We do this soberly, knowing that the powers of selfishness and evil actively oppose it, and that God will honor the choices of those who reject the free gift of forgiveness and grace He extends through the cross of Christ. Yet we also do this eagerly and joyfully, knowing that it is the very work of God in bringing peace to the world.

Categories
Historical Theology Spirituality Theology

The Doors of the Sea — Eastern Orthodox Theodicy

Wonders for Oyarsa recommended to me David Bentley Hart’s wonderful little book The Doors of the Sea:  Where Was God in the Tsunami.  Hart is an Eastern Orthodoxy tehologian with a Radical Orthodoxy sensibility.  Unlike much turgid theological prose, his writing is lucid and gracious, sprinkled with just-right literary references.  The terrible Indonesian tsunamis of 2004 prompted Hart’s reflection on theodicy.  Much of his reflection in The Doors of the Sea plays off of Dostoyevksy’s The Brothers Karamazov, particularly The Grand Inquisitor’s devastating speech. 

I loved this book, because it reminded me that things really are “not right” in this world.  Having been immersed in the study of how Christian faith relates to the natural sciences, it’s easy to forget that the creation is “fallen.”  There is no trace of a “fall” in the record of natural history.  We can’t attribute the behavior of carnivorous animals, or the geological processes that inevitable give rise to earthquakes and tsunamis, to Adam’s sin — these things existed on earth for billions of years before man appeared.

Yet, we intuitively know that the apparently meaningless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people when the giant waves hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand is not “natural” or “right.”  And, we know from scripture that “death” is an “enemy.”  Developing a theology that accounts for God’s goodness, human sin, the long, deep record of natural history, and the “enemy” of death, is one of the great challenges every thinking Christian has to face. 

Hart insists that Christian theology not fall into the trap of thinking that nature is all there is — that death must inevitably be part of human history.  But he also insists that we must not give in to a literalistic fundamentalism that ignores or distorts billions of years of natural history.  How does he pull this together?  In typical Eastern fashion, he really doesn’t.  He allows this paradox and mystery to simmer a bit, and invites us to contemplate a God who is not bound by the ontology of the present creation.  An ontological “is” is not an ontological “must” for God.

I appreciated this approach.  God knows, literally, that recovering fundamentalists like myself need to learn how to rejoice in mystery.  But I confess that, categorizer that I am, I wasn’t fully satisfied.  So I asked Prof. Hart how he draws these things together, and he referred me to the Patristic Father Origen.

Well, now I need to read more Origen than I have.  Here’s what I understand of Origen’s conception of the fall, however:  for Origen, the fall happened in the wills of pre-existing souls, outside of “natural” time.  Embodied in “natural” time, these souls recapitulate their original fall.  This underlying theology is why, in the book, Hart makes some effort to distance himself from gnosticism.  The Greek and gnostic themes seem evident in this notion of a pristine disembodiment that goes bad and becomes embodied, with the hope of redemption from embodiment in the eschaton. 

I’m pretty sure I don’t know enough about Eastern Orthodox thought or about Origen to be getting this exactly right.  I’d love to hear from any readers about nuances I’m missing.  At the end of the day, this seems like far too elaborate and speculative an ontology for me.  But, I think there’s something very true about the fall as in some respect an event “outside” of normal time — like, in a way, the incarnation.

Categories
Historical Theology Spirituality Theology

Eucharistic Baptists?

The evanglical / sort-of-Baptist church I attend had a “liturgical” service today.  It really spoke to me!  I think it’s so great to connect with the historic traditions and confessions of the Church — the Apostle’s Creed (or a Baptist version of it?!!) and a eucharist in which everyone comes forward to identify with the body and blood of Christ.  This is exactly the kind of service I’ve been looking for — contemporary worship mixed with historic confession and observance of the Lord’s Supper, but still with a Biblical sermon. 

In fact, I’d be interested to explore and push a little further how we treat the eucharistic meal in the economy of salvation.  Growing up in evangelical / fundamental / pietistic churches, I’ve always heard the communion meal prefaced with some statement about how communion doesn’t have anything to do with salvation.  The churches I grew up in were eager to distance themselves from what they (mis)understood to the the Roman Catholic view on the eucharist as sacrament — actually the closed Bretheren church I went to as a little kid was hatefuly anti-Catholic — but even then I felt the “communion merely as rememberance” view was unsatisfying. 

I wonder if it isn’t time for us as evangelicals to recapture the Patristic and Reformational view of the eucharist as something more mystical than merely a remembrance — or maybe I should say, to reinfuse the term “remembrance” with soteriological meaning.  I like Calvin’s view that salvation comes by grace alone mediated by faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit — and so the eucharistic meal is not a “means of grace” in the Roman sense of it — but that partaking in the eucharist is a kind of sign and seal of faith.  I think that the Baptistic evangelical tradition has gone too far in the direction of defining faith as internal experience — we’ve over-reacted to more sacramental forms of the faith.  Internal experience, IMHO, is important, but highly variable and also highly unreliable — particularly for people like me who struggle sometimes with anxiety, depression, doubt, etc.  The fact that someone stands up in front of the congregation and receives the bread and cup is itself an expression and act of faith — and something very real and mysterious happens at the spiritual level in that moment.  (I want to use the phrase “soteriological meaning” above not to signify a sacrament that is required for salvation, but to understand participation in the eucharist as part of what happens along the “way of salvation” — part of the process of the saved / “being saved” // already / not yet of life in Christ).
 
I’m not sure if Calvin ever went in this direction, but I’m kind of thinking of a pneumatological theology of the eucharist.  When someone takes the elements in faith, the Holy Spirit is present to that person and in the gathered community of faith in a special way, supplying, confirming, reinforcing, directing, invigorating faith.  I wonder if this is a sort of evangelical way forward from a kind of stale view of the eucharist without getting in to the question of the “real presence” in either its Catholic or Lutheran versions.  I wonder, if by understanding the Holy Spirit to be present in a special way when the elements are taken in faith, we are able to recite the actual text of scripture:  “this is my body, broken for you” “this cup ???????? ????? ????????is the new covenant in my blood” without having to get into the ontological status of the physical elements.
Categories
Historical Theology Spirituality Theology

A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

I guess I’ve been living under a rock or something, but I hadn’t seen the Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future before today. All I can say is, wow — this captures so much of how my thinking has developed over the past few years — indeed, of how my thinking has developed ever since I was exposed to ideas like this at Gordon College more than 20 (gulp) years ago.

Here are some excerpts:

On “The Primacy of Biblical Narrative”:

We call for a return to the priority of the divinely authorized canonical story of the triune God. This story—Creation, Incarnation, and re-creation—was effected by Christ’s recapitulation of human history and summarized by the early church in its rules of faith. The gospel-formed content of these rules served as the key to the interpretation of Scripture and its critique of contemporary culture, and thus shaped the church’s pastoral ministry. Today, we call evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God’s story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning. In a world of competing stories, we call evangelicals to recover the truth of God’s Word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of evangelical life.

On the Church:

We call evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the church. We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God’s mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church. Thus, we call evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the church a mere addendum to God’s redemptive plan.

Individualistic evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies, and judgmental attitudes toward the church. Therefore, we call evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.

On Theological Reflection:

We call for the church’s reflection to remain anchored in the Scriptures in continuity with the theological interpretation learned from the early fathers. Thus, we call evangelicals to turn away from methods that separate theological reflection from the common traditions of the church. These modern methods compartmentalize God’s story by analyzing its separate parts, while ignoring God’s entire redemptive work as recapitulated in Christ. Anti-historical attitudes also disregard the common biblical and theological legacy of the ancient church.

Amen, amen, and amen!

Categories
Historical Theology Theology

TGD Quiz: Knowledge

Here’s a quiz for today. Who said the following:

Look for him [God] by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is who within you makes everything his own and says ‘My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.’ Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, rests without willing, becomes angry without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him [God] in yourself.

(a) Oprah
(b) Dr. Phil
(c) Robert Pirsig (author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”)
(d) Deepak Chopra

Continue reading to see the correct answer.

Continue reading “TGD Quiz: Knowledge”