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Academic Culture Interviews James K.A. Smith Photography and Music Spirituality

Conversation With Jamie Smith: Part 2

This is Part 2 of my conversation with James K.A. Smith (Part 1 is here).  The occasion for this conversation is the introductory essay to Jamie’s book The Devil Reads Derrida, “The Church, Christian Scholars, and Little Miss Sunshine.”  Thanks very much to Jamie for doing this!

Dave: It’s interesting that you mention finding your way into the Reformed tradition starting with “Old Princeton.” So where did you go from there? The Evangelical mainstream — if there is such a thing — as well as the intellectual leaders of the Evangelical mainstream, remain rooted in Old Princeton, at least concerning epistemology and scripture. This can be a significant tension, which I think is commonly experienced. A big part of the community holds pretty strongly to the belief that common sense realism, combined with B.B. Warfield’s concept of Biblical inerrancy, are vital and sufficient for Christian intellectual engagement. Often this is coupled with a very strong sense of cultural antithesis, so that opposition to these ideas is viewed as opposition to the Kingdom of God. But for many people, myself included, the more you poke at it, the more Old Princeton starts to look moldy and crumbly. It may have been an important for its time in the Nineteenth Century, but the paradigms it offers don’t hold up very well against many advances in learning from other fields of inquiry. What alternative paradigms exist for Christian scholars who hope to remain within the historic stream of Christian thought and belief?

Jamie: When I started my graduate studies, I landed at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. I knew this was a philosophical graduate school “in the Reformed tradition,” which is why I was attracted to it. But given my formation to that point, “Reformed” for me just meant Edwards, Warfield, Hodge and gang. Little did I realize that ICS was rooted in the Dutch philosophical tradition of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd–and that they’re philosophical framework constituted a trenchant critique of the “common sense realism” of Old Princeton! In fact, when I was at ICS we started with a week-long “boot camp” that was basically a baptism into Dooyeweerd. And already in that week I saw the prim, tidy edifice I had erected crumbling around me.

Perhaps one could just say that the Old Princeton paradigm does not stand up to the critique of rationalism that was articulated in the 20th century, whereas Kuyper and Dooyeweerd were articulating a critique of the idols of reason well-before Heidegger, Derrida, et. al.

So “where did I go,” you ask, after Old Princeton? Amsterdam! Now, I didn’t exactly settle down there, but the Dutch side of the Reformed tradition offered a model of the Christian scholarly project that seemed much more nimble and attuned to contemporary challenges. It’s this tradition that would later produce folks like Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga and George Marsden. And if I recall correctly, Kuyper makes a significant cameo in Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Indeed, Andy Crouch’s new book, Culture Making is kind of “Kuyper for Evangelicals” (and much preferred to Colson’s rendition of the same in How Now Shall We Live?).

If anyone wanted to follow up on this, I would still recommend Kuyper’s Stone Lectures at Princeton, published simply as Calvinism. But I might also recommend a little-known book that looks at classic figures in Christian thought (from Clement up to Gutierrez) from within this paradigm: Bringing into Captivity Every Thought: Capita Selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of Non-Christian Philosophy (University Press of America).

Dave: I really appreciated “The Secret Lives of Saints: Reflections on Doubt,” which is included in The Devil Reads Derrida. But I’ve had trouble distinguishing “doubt” from “unbelief” from “scholarly skepticism,” and I wonder if you could comment about that. Academe is all about asking questions. Some think this results from relativism in the universities, a belief that there is no ultimate truth, but that hasn’t been my experience at all. Most of my academic colleagues, at heart, are passionate truth-seekers, though they might believe that ultimate knowledge of the truth is humanly unobtainable — or that Christianity simply isn’t true. Offer them a pile of steaming apologetic skubala and they’ll throw it right back at you. I’ve been covered in it more times than I want to admit. So this mindset forces us to ask questions: “who says,” “why,” “why not,” “where’s the evidence,” “what about this,” and so on. I might even say that this is our job as scholars. Yet an important part of our faith as Christians is confession — “I believe….” How can a Christian scholar start to integrate these apparently competing postures of “question” and “confession”?

Jamie: Well, this probably won’t make you happy, but I’m going to deflect this question a bit. While I don’t at all want to denigrate truth-seeking (!), I sometimes think the questions of skeptics are a cover for deeper, more affective issues they not articulating. I think there’s a place for evidence and demonstration and argument, but I also think there can be times (quite often) where this amounts to casting pearls before swine–not that our interlocutors are swine, but that they’re not really in a place to receive the arguments because, ultimately, it’s not the evidence that’s at issue. It’s love. I still think Christian scholars are doing their apologetic best when they model love–not by defending their beliefs but by living a peculiar life of love that is winsome, attractive, alluring. The fact of the matter is, despite all my philosophical proclivities, I was loved into the kingdom of God. And while skeptical interlocutors amongst are academic colleagues might be (sincerely) articulating questions and concerns in our debates with them, it might just be the case that what’s at issue is not really “intellectual.”

In this respect, I’m reminded of Augustine’s conversion in Book VIII of the Confessions. By that point, it’s not at all a matter of knowledge or conviction. Augustine knows what’s right; you might even say he believed it. What was holding him back was the will–he wasn’t willing to pursue a way of life. Christianity is not an intellectual system; it’s a way of life.

Dave: If you had to identify three books that Christian thinkers should read this year (besides the Bible or your own books), what would they be?

Wow. Tough question. By “this year,” do you mean new books that have just come out? That’d be tough to say. Let me stall by suggesting three classics that I think every Christian, not to mention Christian “thinkers,” should read at some point: Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (“On Christian Teaching”), and Augustine’s City of God. Yeah, I think Augustine’s pretty important. Whether you could read those “this year”–well, that’s another question.

If you meant new books out this year, I’d recommend Graham Ward’s forthcoming book, The Politics of Discipleship (Baker Academic), D. Stephen Long’s new book, Speaking of God: Theology, Language, and Truth (Eerdmans), and Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love (U of Chicago).

Dave: Can I just ask one follow up on the question you deflected?! So I understand and agree for the most part with what you’re saying about responding to external non-Christian critics — though I might cite something like Merold Westphal’s “Suspicion and Faith” for the notion that we need to learn from our critics. What I meant to get at a little more is the “internal” check. As you describe your experience at ICS, you met with skepticism about the Old Princeton paradigm, for example. As Christian Scholars, these teachers of yours were asking skeptical questions of competing Christian paradigms in order to encourage you to develop what you’ve come to believe are richer Christian paradigms. This is part of the discipleship of the mind, as I see it — asking hard questions, and taking hard questions seriously, in ways that help refine our thinking in the process of (or as part of the process of) every thought being taken captive by Christ. But this can result in the tension between question and confession. Your confession of some Reformed distinctives won’t mean exactly the same as the confession of someone within the Old Princeton paradigm, for example, because of the questions you’ve asked. Some people who disagree with how you think of some issue of theology or Bible interpretation will suggest you fail to believe the Bible or God against those questions. Maybe my (long winded) question is this: how do you, as someone who is a bridge between the questioning world of Christian scholarship and the confessing world of the Christian Church, distinguish between “faithful” questions and questions that represent affective problems of the will?

Jamie: Oh, OK: I better appreciate what you’re asking now. I guess I would be hesitant to set up these two different worlds–the “questioning” world of Christian scholarship and the “confessing” world of the church. I think there’s inseparable intermingling here. Or let me put it this way: every question is its own kind of confession. Even our questions are articulated from somewhere, on the basis of something–however tenuous. And some of our best confessions are questions: Why, O Lord? How long, O Lord? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As I think about it, the confessions are not boundaries that mark the limits of questioning; rather, the creeds and confessions are the guardrails that enable us to lean out and over the precipice, asking the hard questions.

I sometimes suggest that the Reformed tradition is like a Weeble. Do you remember those toys? “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” These were egg-shaped toys with a heavily weighted bottom. You could press the toys in any direction and they could lean out, but then return to center. I think of the church’s creeds and confessions as the weighted bottom of my theoretical questioning: they provide a center of gravity that enables me to lean out into the hard questions. Granted, our churches often are not comfortable with fostering an ethos of curiosity and questioning, even though God is not at all frightened by such things. Again, I think it’s important for Christian scholars to model what faithful questioning looks like.

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Academic Interviews James K.A. Smith Spirituality

Conversation with James K.A. Smith on Christian Scholarship

Here’s the first part of our conversation with James K.A. Smith about Christian scholarship.

Dave: As I’ve read some of your work, I see some similarities in our backgrounds: Plymouth Brethren upbringing, small Christian college, efforts to develop a more generous and rigorous perspective while retaining the core vitality of that simple faith. I’ve seen a similar pattern in some other Christian scholars, thinkers and provocateurs whose work I appreciate. I wonder if you could describe a bit of how you became “called” to the vocation of Christian scholarship?

Jamie: It’s a bit of a convoluted path, but I think there’s an underlying thread of continuity. I should say that I was not raised in the church. I was converted to the Christian faith when I was 18, through my then girlfriend’s (now wife’s) family who were Plymouth Brethren. So my welcome into the church was through one of its most sectarian portals. As you know, a Plymouth Brethren assembly can be a pretty intense immersion in Scripture, and I was quite intentionally discipled by Deanna’s uncle and father. Within a year, I had abandoned my longstanding plans to be an architect and was on my way to Emmaus Bible College, a Plymouth Brethren school in Iowa.

My sense was that I was called to be a “teacher”–but when I left for Iowa, I could only imagine that as a “pastor-teacher.” In short, I thought I was called to be a preacher (my wife thinks I still am!). But in the course of my studies, I discovered systematic theology. More specifically, I discovered the Reformed tradition–though at that point, this was the tradition of “Old Princeton.” I read W.G.T. Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology with hungry awe. And I started to get an inkling that maybe my vocation of “teaching” could look different, along an “academic” track. (I should note that I also started preaching when I was 19, and those opportunities as a ‘circuit rider’ in southern Ontario provided lots of feedback which seemed to confirm that I might have gifts in this direction.)

I suppose the turning point came when I finished my degree in pastoral theology. At that point, I received a call from an assembly to join them as associate pastor (well, they were Brethren, so they didn’t use that term!). But at the same time, I was contemplating graduate school. I went through a couple of weeks of internal struggle about that decision. But eventually I felt God had confirmed my calling to a more academic vocation, and I felt peace about that decision. But I suppose I still think of being scholar as basically a way of being a “teacher.”

Dave: In your “Little Miss Sunshine” essay, you address what I’d call the “relational” aspects of Christian scholars vis-a-vis the local church. In my experience, those relational issues can present some difficult emotional tensions — times of feeling isolated, worries that you’ve “gone too far,” confusion and even anger from the people you hope your perspectives will serve, and direct opposition from popular leaders and teachers who don’t undersand you or your work. I’m curious how you navigate those tensions, and what advice you’d have for other Christian scholars and thinkers about this aspect of the scholar-church relationship?

Jamie: Great question. It has not always been rosy. Indeed, in the Plymouth Brethren, young people were encouraged to pursue all sorts of education except theological education, which was seen as inherently corrupting. (I can still remember a “prophecy” teacher who used to make the rounds. His self-published book proudly displayed “Ph.D.” after his name on the cover, despite the fact that his doctorate was in chemical engineering!) When I began my graduate studies, I continued preaching in a number of Brethren assemblies. One by one, I was called before boards of elders who were concerned about my orthodoxy. I can still remember a gang of them showing up at our house, and my wife having to endure seeing me subject to their inquisition–after which I was banned from preaching there. Eventually, this sort of exclusion became a reality at my “home” assembly. (The tipping point was a sermon I preached entitled “Trivial Pursuits: Or, Things That Bother Us that Don’t Bother Jesus.” I basically suggested that maybe the pre-trib rapture and women’s headcoverings were not the most important aspects of Christian faith. That was enough, I guess.)

I also have some letters in my files from my former Bible college professors in which they describe me as a “student of Judas Iscariot.” Every once in a while when I need a reality check, I pull those out. (I could be a lot more bitter than I am, don’t you think? 🙂

Of course, the tension here is not all “their” fault. It was undoubtedly the case that in my mid to late twenties, I was an arrogant prick at times (if you’ll excuse my French). The Apostle Paul, that insightful psychologist, was acquainted firsthand, I think, with the ways that “knowledge puffs up.” In some ways, I just had to grow up.

But I would encourage emerging scholars in the church to keep a couple of things in mind: First, if you are called to be a Christian scholar, then you are in some way called to serve these brothers and sisters. Not everyone has the opportunity to develop the expertise that you’re developing, and so you can’t possibly expect them to know what you know. But you’ve been gifted with the opportunity which means that you need to be a steward of that opportunity. Second, being a scholar means developing expertise in a particular field. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we know everything (we just act like that!). The fact is, there is wisdom in our congregations which we might never possess. Let me give you just one example: While I might have arcane knowledge of French philosophy, that certainly doesn’t make me an expert father. In fact, in my congregation will be assembly line workers who’ve never attended college but in fact have deep wells of wisdom about parenting. If I want to make myself available to teach my brothers and sisters, I also have to be teachable. I need to sincerely trust and believe that the Spirit has distributed gifts throughout the body and that I’ll be a student more often than I’m a teacher.

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Academic Interviews James K.A. Smith Spirituality

Conversation with James K.A. Smith: Intro

This post is an introduction to a bit of conversation we’ll be having with James K.A. Smith.  Jamie’s work has had a substantial impact on my thinking.  I appreciate how he finds consilience between aspects of postmodern thought and Christian theology, and his two books on Reformed theology and Radical Orthodoxy (here and here) are very helpful.  I’ve also enjoyed many of his commentaries and thought pieces in popular publications such as Christianity Today.

The occasion for this conversation is the introductory essay to Jamie’s book The Devil Reads Derrida, “The Church, Christian Scholars, and Little Miss Sunshine.”  It’s a wonderful discussion of the tensions inherent in being a Christian scholar, particularly for those of us in the evangelical tradition.  His vehicle for exploring those tensions is Frank Ginsberg, a character played by Steve Carrell in the movie Little Miss Sunshine.  Frank is the self-described “preeminent Proust scholar in the United States,” yet he becomes embedded in the shenanigans of his sister’s low-brow family on their way to a tacky child beauty pageant.  Along the way, Frank learns to take himself a little less seriously, and even to love his sister’s family, without losing — in fact, while enhancing — the fullness of his life as a scholar, family member, and human being.

So often, those of us who attempt to labor at serious scholarship, and who feel called to this work as our Christian vocation, feel like Frank at the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine.  As Smith notes in the essay, “I’ll be the first to admit that I am often exasperated, frustrated, and embarrassed by my own faith community — that there are days when I can’t stomach being described as an ‘evangelical’ because of the guilt by association.”  Yet, he goes on to say

if [the evangelical community has] bought the paradigms sold to them by voices on Christian radio that I think are problematic, then the burden is on me to show them otherwise.  My responsibility is not to condescendingly look down upon them from my cushy ivory tower, but to take time to get out of the tower and speak to them — and, please note, learn from them.  Christian scholars would do well to be slow to speak and quick to listen.

There are so many things like this that I find helpful about this essay.  If you’re interested in the vocation of Christian scholarship, or if you’re a pastor or church leader trying to figure out where a scholarly-minded congregant is coming from, I’d urge you to chew it over.

In our next couple of posts in this series, well talk with a bit with Jamie Smith about the vocation of Christian scholarship and the roles of Christian scholars in the Church.

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Biblical Studies Interviews Science & Technology Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Concerning the image of God, you mention Wolfhart Pannenberg. I notice that in the book you make a few references to Jourgen Moltmann. Most evangelical readers will be unfamiliar with these names. I suspect that the few who have heard of them will associate them with theological liberalism, and worse, with panentheism and process theology. But anyone who serioiusly studies Christian faith and the natural sciences will need to grapple with Pannenberg and Moltmann. So:

Do you see any dangers in Pannenberg’s and/or Moltmann’s concepts of God and creation? How (if at all) would you distinguish your understanding of God and His relation to creation from their views? Or, maybe a better way to put this: do you think Pannenberg and Moltmann’s views of God and creation are consistent with Nicene orthodoxy, or is some version of patripassionism required for a Christian understanding of evolution?

Daniel: You might want to elucidate which views of Pannenberg and Moltmann you mean (they write pretty extensively on God and creation!). As for patripassionism, its rejection, I think, presumes too strong a categorical understanding of the Trinity than is demanded. In other words, that Jesus is God who dies on the cross while the Father is God who receives his prayer and expends his wrath is nevertheless both God who atones and God who satisfies. Moltmann, to my recollection, does not suggest that God the Father is crucified, but rather God the Son who is one with the Father is crucified. (If this isn’t Moltmann’s position then it is mine and one that squares with Nicene orthodoxy . “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5.19). ). This is an important distinction as well as one of those Trinitarian realities that defy logic.

That this is necessary for embracing evolution entails recognizing that death has been part of organic life from the beginning (whether you believe in six-days or six billion years). And thus nature as characteristic of God entails a God for whom death is part of his character. I think Moltmann’s “crucified God” (albeit in the ways I interpret above) would provide for such a God.

Dave: Specifically on the image of God in humanity, Pannenberg says in his Systematic Theology that “[i]n the story of the human race, then, the image of God was not achieved fully at the outset. It was still in process. . . . If we think of the divine likeness as being already achieved in Adam’s first estate, we cannot view it as our final destiny in a process of history.” Can you explain a little more how you apply this sort of theory from Pannenberg to your theology of human nature?

Daniel: Not having Pannenberg in front of me, I nevertheless read the quotation as emphasizing that the image of God cannot be attained as a process of history because it is an act of God. “New creation” can never be a product of evolution. I assert that our ultimate “image of God” is attained by the redemptive work of Jesus, which was part of the original plan (Rev 13:8–KJV). Evolution points to a very good but incomplete creation that groans as it awaits its redemption, even from the beginning. God created a free process creation that resulted in free willed creatures who freely rejected God’s overtures and thus made redemption necessary. As a God who loves sacrificially, he always had redemption in mind, even at creation. (Just don’t ask me why. Although it does help explain how it is that Adam could have ever sinned in the first place.)

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Biblical Studies Interviews Science & Technology Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Let’s consider a question that’s the “Big Kahuna” for many evangelicals — and I admit, a tough one for me: the evolution of human beings and the Biblical account of Adam and Eve. A friend of mine reminds me that Genesis 2:4 describes what follows as an “account” — a tol’dot or “generational history” — though of course I remind him that it’s a different history chronologically than Gen. 1! Theologically it seems that the literal-ness of Adam has been a line in the sand, particularly for folks committed to a Reformed understanding of original sin. You seem to lean towards a “recent representatives” view in your book. A few specific questions here:

Is it difficult or uncomfortable for you to come to a view that’s not strictly monogenistic? Does this mess significantly with your theology of scripture, the image of God, and original sin?

Daniel: No, not necessarily. As for the image of God, if you are willing to assert that God creates with evolution (which I am willing to do), then the image of God becomes a result of that, and thus people evolve as a reflection of God’s own creative and free character. However, in line with Pannenberg, I see the imago dei as destiny rather than starting point. So God creates people in his image; that is, he makes us with the potential to become (as with creation itself). At the same time, God’s plan includes redemption from the beginning. In Christ we are fully the image of God.

I’ve never been one who thought of original sin as genetic (and clearly neither could have the Reformers). Once Adam and Eve go for it, the human race is tainted to be sure, but remember, I see creation as something started and not yet finished, not something perfect that then went awry.

Dave: More than a few people have suggested to me that accepting a non-literal or semi-literal view of Adam is a rejection at least of evangelical Christianity, or worse, the loss of something essential to any sort of authentic Christian faith. How do you respond to such concerns?

Daniel: I do think that an historic Adam and Eve seem to be as essential as an historic Jesus, at least given Paul’s treatment. I grant that adam could be a metaphor for humanity as a whole. But if your concern is the authority of Scripture, having Adam as a person (chapter 2 account) describes what Gen 1 does poetically as a prologue. Still, if Adam turned out to be fictitious (and how would we ever know this?), I don’t think all would be lost. In the end, Christianity rises and falls on the resurrection, not on the garden of Eden.

Dave: How persuaded are you really that the “recent representative” view might be true? I have to confess, it seems to me a stretch to suggest that Adam was a Neolithic farmer or something along those lines.

Daniel: I do think it “might” be true and surely as well as anything at preserving a reading of Scripture in line with a reading of evolutionary biology. And yet it is, like all of this, provisional. If it is the case that people emerge as evolution teaches, having God inject homo sapiens into creation seems just as odd given all that would be required to mask its injection as natural rather than supernatural. But, if Adam is a precursor of Christ, I guess God can do whatever pleases him. My point is that we don’t have to get caught up in defending a literal Adam. We have options.

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Interviews Science & Technology Theological Hermeneutics Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Daniel, one of the things I appreciate most about your approach is your focus on integrity and truth as key theological values. But the first response from many evangelical readers is likely to be: “exactly — and only in the Bible can we find inerrant truth. If supposed ‘truth’ from science conflicts with claims in the Bible, we must presume that the scientists are operating with inadequate presuppositions. The only ‘true’ science will be science that begins with the belief that the Biblical record is true.” Many evangelicals who follow this line of argument insist that young earth creationism is the only viable option, while others accept an old earth but believe the Biblical references to the creation of separate “kinds,” and particularly to the special creation of Adam and Eve, rule out Darwinian evolution.

It seems to me that this line of argument touches on a seam in evangelicalism that runs close to the boundary between groups historically considered evangelical or not-evangelical — the inspiration and authority of the Bible — which in turn hits on an underlying fault line concerning epistemology. We see in contemporary evangelicalism ongoing ferment about precisely how to define the implications of Biblical inspiration and authority, and the appropriate use and limits of human reason in exploring the ‘human’ aspects of the Bible, evidenced by the row over Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation.

In your book, you say “[t]he Bible says ‘six days,’ but there’s no way that’s right unless astrophysics and geology are patently false . . . correctly interpreted scientific discovery will always agree with correctly interpreted Scripture and vice versa.” Can you elaborate a bit on the epistemology and theology of Biblical inspiration and authority that underlie your approach?

Daniel: When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we speak of Scripture and not our interpretation of it. An infallible Bible does not make its readers infallible too. Therefore, any stance on Biblical truth is always a provisional one. We see through that glass darkly (!) and we walk by faith. To me, this is where science can be of enormous assistance. If science correctly perceives nature, and nature bears witness to God, then science can assist in those places where Scripture is ambiguous or disputed because all truth is from God. As for “correct” interpretation, correctness in the case of Scripture depends on corroboration from history, experience and ultimately eschatology, while in science, correctness depends upon further discovery, replication and corroboration across disciplines. In both cases, revelation relies in some part on a consensus of many people across culture and time (which is why evolution and the resurrection are both so influential today).

Dave: Well, ok, but let me push back a little more, if I may, with a long-winded follow up question. Sorry it’s a long question, but I know it’s important to me and to many of my readers who above all crave authenticity in how we respond to questions like those you deal with in your book.

Let’s take the example of when the Biblical writers speak in terms of Ancient Near Eastern cosmology — a three tiered universe, a disk shaped earth with pillars supporting a solid-dome sky, etc. Is the hermeneutical task vis-a-vis the contemporary sciences here a matter of interpreting what they really meant notwithstanding surface appearances to the contrary? Or is it more fair to say that they most likely really mean what everyone else in the ANE would have meant, which we now know is inaccurate?

It seems to me that this question sits on top of some important fault lines in evangelical theology. Does contemporary science in this instance (a) help us understand the true intention of the Biblcal writer; (b) help us understand that God accommodated the writer’s incorrect background assumptions in communicating an infallible message; (c) help us understand that the historical-literal-grammatical hermeneutic is too flat for discerning the revelatory content of the text, (d) vindicate Barth’s notion that “revelation” and “text” are not coeextensive; (e) all of the above; or (f) something else?

I have to be honest — I have a hard time swallowing that the Biblical writers and redactors really intended to communicate that life on earth, including human beings, evolved over billions of years, and that contemporary science illuminates that intent. It seems clear to me that the Biblical text reflects a distinctive Hebrew version of the prevailing ANE creation myths, and that the authors / redactors had no notion at all of a slowly evolving universe. I tend to think that if an evangelical theology of the inspiration and authority of scripture can’t deal with this, then it’s not a theology that is dealing in reality.

So the question: accepting the scientific reality of biological evolution has to impact evangelical theologies of Biblical inspiration and authority beyond just the old concordist approaches, doesn’t it?

Daniel: I wish I typed better…

Let me begin by asserting that the “word of God is living and active” meaning that revelation through that word is not static. Getting to original intent is extremely problematic in my view.

Nevertheless, I would argue that the as far as the ANE is concerned, I would hold that the genres in which Scripture come to us allow for a] a factoring out of acculturated terminology– whether that’s a three-tiered universe or any other artifact of that period in which the Bible was written, and/or b] interpretation that remains true to what we believe the authors (may have) intended while incorporating contemporary understanding and further revelation/illumination.

I like Barth, and I’d probably add as to c] the caveat that the h-l-g hermeneutic is partial rather than “too flat.”

I take for granted that nature has always operated under the same principles it currently operates (which is what evolution teaches) and had the Biblical writers had access to modern science, their work would have read differently while communicating the same “word of God.” So yes to your view. Concordism is mostly a dead end. But I don’t think that means that the Bible is locked in its ancient timeframe which is why it remains such an amazing book and a powerful “sword.” Heb 4:12.

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Interviews Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell: Motivation and Reception

Following is the start of my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of Nature’s Witness (things in italics are my questions).

1. What motivated you to take on this project?

Theological integrity demands that whatever we think about faith and life correspond to the way things actually are as opposed to how we want or wish things to be. God is the God of reality. If evolution is real, then to reject it presents difficulties for Christian faith and theology. A proposed alternative is to assume that ultimate truth resides in the heart and mind of God and to assume evolution to be part of that truth (“all truth is God’s truth”). Based upon confirmed scientific data, a flourishing, robust Christianity stays faithful to the Biblical narrative as its source for theological reflection, while at the same time heralding scientific discovery as an accurate description of the universe on which theology reflects.

2. What sort of responses / reactions did you encounter from other Christians as you were exploring your approach? To the extent there were positive responses, how did they encourage you? To the extent there were negative responses, how have you manged them?

Overall, I have a received very positive responses. This may be a result of living and working in Boston with so many universities where people of faith are motivated to find areas of convergence between their beliefs and their academic interests. The most encouraging responses are those form people who are excited about being able to think theologically about evolution. The most negative from those for whom evolution=godlessness. Inasmuch as those folks are open to discuss, the conversations have been excellent.

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Interviews Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation with Daniel Harrell About Evolution and Faith — Why Do This?

This post introduces a series in conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness:  How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.”  Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA.  Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Some readers of this blog, or other friends, colleagues or fellow church members who might stumble across it, might wonder why I’ve been diving into this topic.

First, let me say that I hope I can discuss the relationship between Christian faith and the natural sciences without being divisive.  Obviously, many people within the evangelical tradition, which I claim as my own, including some friends and family members, hold strong views that differ from mine.  I don’t write to dismiss those people, whose fellowship I greatly value.

At the same time, I understand my calling, training, and life’s work to be about exploring Christian faith and culture.  This involves dialoguing with people oppose or are indifferent about the Christian faith concerning the truth and relevance of the gospel, as well as contributing to the spiritual and intellectual vitality of the Church, as God enables me.  If the Church is failing to live up to some of the cultural challenges presented to it, or is not engaging questions of truth with integrity, I believe it’s part of my calling to offer whatever small contribution I can, relating to areas God has prompted and enabled me to study, towards reforming how we as the Church contextualize the gospel and represent Truth.

I hope it doesn’t appear that I have some delusion of grandeur about my own role in this process.  It’s easy to come across as condescending when one has developed strong opinions after a period of careful study.  There is a great array of Christian scholars and writers who are far more diligent and capable than I on any faith-and-culture issue you might name, some with perspectives different than mine, from whom I hope to continue learning.

Yet — I do believe that the evangelical tradition I love so much is facing something of a crisis of legitimacy because of the natural sciences.  Our posture towards truth discovered in the natural sciences has too often been defensive, disingenuous, and dishonest.  These are obviously strong words, and I use them, as we lawyers like to say, “advisedly.”  But I think we need to be clear-headed about what is at stake.

As Christians we believe in Truth, with a capital-“T”.  We should, of course, be appropriately chastened in our epistemic claims about what we think we know of ultimate Truth.  Indeed, I think the “strong foundationalism” of some kinds of evangelical theology is part of our problem.  Nevertheless, we are not after mere existential fantasies or illusory emotional states.  We believe and proclaim that Jesus Christ is the center of a reality created by God, not of our own making.  If we tie that proclamation to untruths about the nature of the material creation, we at best dilute our message and at worst make ourselves into hypocrites and liars.

Moreover, particularly in the global North / West, we live in an age that craves authenticity.  Anyone under age fifty today in North America can smell dissembling a mile away.  I believe our failure to accept truth from the natural sciences, and our apparent inability to reflect in a theologically robust and mature fashion on such truth, is a significant reason why Christianity has become more and more marginalized in North America.  Is it any surprise that people suspect us of pulling a fast one when they realize that, in exchange for the warm comforts of faith, they have to check their brains and education at the church door, deny the reality of natural history, and buy into an incoherent alternative pseudo-science?

Finally, I think the 800-pound gorilla that is faith-and-science is unsettling to many faithful evangelical Christians in ways that represent a significant failure of pastoral care within our tradition.  A reasonably smart and informed person who digs in to the stock “answers” he or she is likely to receive regarding these questions in an evangelical context will find them lame.  For many — and I can testify that this was true for me and for many other people I’ve met — this can prompt significant spiritual and emotional turmoil.  This gorilla cannot be ignored or it eventually will squash many fine Christian people.

The good news is that, in the best tradition of evangelicalism, increasing numbers of evangelical scientists, pastors and theologians are beginning to discuss evolutionary science openly and clearly.  Daniel Harrell, I think, is one such person.  These conversations actually have a significant history in evangelicalism, going back to some contemporaries of Darwin who did not think his theory an inherent threat to faith.  Even so, church history demonstrates that it can take hundreds of years to develop a robust, widely accepted consensus on challenging questions.  There are some significant theological challenges inherent in biological evolution, and there is not yet a clear or simple solution to every challenge.  These challenges shouldn’t be feared, because retreating from Truth is not an option.  Rather, we need to try to meet them humbly with every grace God provides.

Next post:  starting my conversation with Daniel Harrell.