Rebirthing Simpson's Vision

Being a Mirror of the Coming Kingdom

2011-01-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

Is there a way forward from cultural withdrawal on one hand (20th century pre-millennialism) and recurring optimism (21st century post/a millennialism) on the other? Yes, I believe that what is known as classic pre-millennialism gives us a way to meaningfully engage society. Classic pre-millennialism recognizes that conflict with society is endemic to a fallen world. The world is indeed ruled by evil principalities and powers and people not only seek their own interests but also will harm others for no reason. This mixture of demonic presence and original sin creates the cosmos, the world which John warns us against loving. This cosmos is a spiritual construction and its deconstruction can only occur by a supernatural event, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This event has occurred already in Jesus Christ, but its full manifestation awaits the Christ’s appearance at which time death – which is the spiritual lynch pin of the whole world system -- will be defeated.

Thus for God's people there is a true waiting, a true anticipation of an event yet to come, the inbreaking of God in Jesus Christ. However, while waiting Christians are not to be quiet or passive in their interaction with the world. They are instead to be agents of the Kingdom, agents of the second coming. And yes, this calls for the aggressive expansion of the church as the work of announcing this good news of the Kingdom is aggressively around the world. While doing the work of evangelism the church must also display the coming Kingdom.

What I mean by display is that the world should be able to look at the Church and see what the future kingdom will be like. The Church is the called out people of God and as such should be a mirror, so to speak, of the coming Kingdom. In the lived community of the Church we should find the old order of the world, with its lust for power and aggrandizement, in other words all the things that are driven by the fear of death, disappearing, and in its place a robust growth of all the things that grow from a belief in the resurrection.

Let me give a try at an example. An exclave is a part of a country that is surrounded by another country. And example is Ceuta, an exclave of Spain which is surrounded by the country of Morocco. Spain proper is across the Strait of Gibraltar, but this small spot of territory, surrounded by Morocco, is part of Spain. For me this is a partial picture of the church, in the world as some have said, but not part of it; a foreign country within a foreign country, with real and dynamic connections to the real country, for Ceuta - Spain, for the Church - The Kingdom of God, but in dynamic relation with the surrounding country, Morroco in the case of Ceuta, the world in the case of the Church.

So, in summary, the world is structured by sin, rooted all the way back in what we call the fall. This structure finds its operating principle in the fear of death, which the Bible shows as the primary motivation of this present age. And finally, it is evilly empowered on the supernatural level. While, as I stated above, this system can only be changed by the supernatural action of God in Jesus Christ the risen one, it can be affected, its evil can be mitigated, and by God’s grace, good can be accomplished in its midst.

I believe this is the way forward; to cross the border of our exclave and bring the grace and goodness of our God to the culture. I am not sure of Hunter’s eschatology, but I believe he has something like this in mind when he speaks of “faithful presence.” He gives this quote from the Prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 29:4—7:

4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5 "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.
7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Hunter sees these instruction to the Children of Israel in exile as being instructions to Christians who are “strangers in a strange land.” Christians need to be involved as citizens, they need to have a theology of work that praises the jobs that people have, they need to live in ways that bring the grace and presence of Christ to those around them.

Not that these thoughts are new, but in the current deteriorated state of Christian thinking about the surrounding society they need to be restated and re-explored.

Hunter spends a great deal of time calling for a theology of work which includes seeing ones work as a calling, a vocation. Here he is especially concerned with what he perceives as the stance of the neo-Anabaptist movement which in his opinion denigrates work, especially work that is part of the capitalistic system – which is most work. This commitment to a vague economic model where there are neither poor nor rich means that all the business people in the church and all the ones who are working for them are simply aiding and abetting the anti-god powers of this age.

Instead we need to instruct people that they have been called to their field of work to be the presence of Christ, not only in the workplace, but in the culture.
I must say that our own movement, the Alliance, has to an extent reflected this sense that if a person goes into full time Christian work, that is golden, but what others do is not really a concern of the church. Thus our people may lack a sense of spiritual fulfillment in their work and as a result the local church frequently competes with the community and the workplace for time and attention.

Hunter uses the old categories of the true the good and the beautiful to divide up human activity. All that humans do falls into one of the three categories, or, is opposed to one of them. Those working on the true are those who, among other things, comment, write, teach, and establish laws. The good are those who care for our health, maintain our cities, houses and machines, work on public policies – it is a wide category. The beautiful is perhaps more obvious as it is those who create art and media in all of its variety.

So, the exhortation “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart” applies to the Christian at work, that is, we are to do all our work as a service to the Lord. This is the first response and it shapes us in the work place because we do not work to rule, we do not simply work to get by, but we seek to make our work an offering to Christ.

In this way we do not enter into a false reaction against the proper work of the Church which is to speak the good news of Christ to people, to invite them to faith, to initiate them into the church and to teach them to obey all the things that Jesus taught. I see this false reaction growing in a number of places and so I want to speak against it with some vigor. It is a betrayal of our commission to downplay evangelism, to make the mission of the Church the changing of the ills of this world, to project that somehow we can in fact obliterate disease, heal the environment and bring justice for all. No we cannot, for those things are tied to, are outgrowths of, the primary architecture of the cosmos. One day they will change, they will in fact be shattered, but not by our doing. So, to throw out the work of evangelism, of church planting, of discipleship, for these goals is to go off mission so severely that the Church itself will be in danger of being lost.

Instead of this false reaction we act as agents of the kingdom that is still yet to come. Christianity Today interviewed James Hunter and asked him for an example of “faithful presence.” He asked us to imagine if 20,000 Christians in the state of Illinois signed a petition in which they pledged that they, the undersigned, would be willing to adopt any child, regardless of race, creed or state of health, and then said, as a summary: “there are no unwanted children in Illinois.” This, Hunter said, would be a faithful presence response to the issue of abortion, and I would add that it is a response devoid of resentment, free of anger, and which abandons the will the power. It is a response that mirrors a whole new order, a new Kingdom that is yet coming.

I believe this is a way forward.

Several wonderful comments have been left and I will try to say some things in response in future posts.

Stop Driving in Circles, Turn on a GPS

2010-12-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

I am going to take another trip. Where am I going? And what will I do when I am there? The answer shapes the means of travel, cost, time etc. The destination is everything. We have to know the final destination, and we have to know how to get there. Yes, I am one of millions of men who will be forever grateful to whoever invented the GPS.

The evangelical church seems to be driving without a GPS. In fact, we seem to have left the map at the last rest stop. What is the end? What does it look like? How are we supposed to get there? Does anyone have any idea?

For the church, what we believe about the end times is determinative in setting priorities and putting into play the methods we use. Somewhere in the mid-1980’s evangelicals became so fried with useless bickering over the fine points of eschatology that they fell into what I would coin as an "a-eschatology" which in reality is a solid step toward anti-supernaturalism. But I don’t want to get into that here. Instead I want to think about the fact that the very phrase “to change the world” is inherently eschatological, and therefore we cannot think deeply on the topic without surfacing our own eschatological assumptions and without examining their impact on whatever ministry project we are engaged in.

Here is my take on the relevance of eschatology to James Davidson Hunter’s book: To Change the World.

Hunter speaks of the Christian Right as having taken a position toward the current culture as “defense against.” He does not deny that there is good reason for this as the current culture is extremely harmful on many fronts to faith and also to people. I wish to ask, apart from Hunter, does the eschatology of the Right influence this “defensive position?”

Through the early twentieth century two factors shaped the evangelical stance toward society. First, liberalism, which proclaimed social engagement as the way to bring in the kingdom, caused evangelicals – including A. B. Simpson and Alliance leaders, to react by abandoning social engagement. Second, the rise of dispensational eschatology provided a theological underpinning for a stance that can be described as social non-involvement. It worked out this way. Please be aware that I know that the following summaries are not nuanced and are overly brief.

Dispensationalism positioned itself this way: if Christians are going to be raptured, and if then immediately thereafter a terrible and earth devastating tribulation is going to erupt, and if, after that Christ is going to return and rule, then there is no need to be involved in the improvement of society, no need to seek to establish justice or work for peace, because all of those efforts are going to be swallowed up in the tribulation. Christ will establish justice and peace when he comes; hence the main work of the church is to evangelize so that as many people as possible are spared from the future tribulation. Thus evangelism became the one and only focus of the evangelical church.

No one should gainsay the impetus to evangelism which this view inspired. However, there were two factors which evangelicals were not thinking about when they disengaged from culture. First, culture is the air we breathe and just like air we are not always aware of it. Evangelicals were in a culture which, while not an evangelical culture, and not a Christian culture, was nonetheless tied to enough Christian reference points to create a certain illusion of being a Christian culture. Consequently, evangelical cultural disengagement from approximately 1900 through the 1970’s was done from within a certain cultural comfort zone, however illusory that comfort zone might have been. Thus, they disengaged, but their disengagement did not leave them with a sense of danger.

When Francis Schaeffer pulled the fire alarm with How Shall We Then Live? everything shifted. Evangelicals suddenly tuned into culture and saw serious and real threats to their lives and their children’s lives. For Schaeffer the flashpoint was abortion; for Dobson, the rise and legitimatization of pornography; and other issues were targeted by other evangelical elite leaders, all of which triggered the rise of what we now identify as the Christian Right.

At the same time, Hunter points out; one of the tactics of evangelicals was to attempt to shield themselves from the culture by setting up what Hunter calls a parallel culture. The mainstream culture has rock music; we can do that with Christian rock! And entertainment stars? We can do that too. You want publishing companies, and television shows, even comedians; we can do all of that. In this way, through the creation of a parallel evangelical culture, we maintained the defensive postion of dispensationalism. Withdrawal from the world, withdrawal from the surrounding culture while we wait for the cataclysmic end, continued as the order of the day.

While trying to stay safe in its parallel evangelical culture, evangelicalism also took a cultural offensive by becoming involved in the political right. I would suggest that this shift from political non-involvement to involvement was caused by a weakening of dispensationalism and an uncritical absorption of the program of alternate eschatological matrixes. This weakening happened in part because of the excess of dispensational writers in predicting the end of the world, and also in interpreting current events and predicting that various end time events such as the rise of the antichrist were going to happen within the immediate future. When these predicted events did not occur, some pastors and theologians found themselves ready to move on to a different eschatology. For many this void was filled by the resurgence of post/a millennialism.

Enter post/a millennialism. These old relatives who had been banished to live in the evangelical basement now began showing up for dinner dressed in newly pressed tuxedos. I put these two together because while there are differences as far as the interpretation and timing of the appearance of the Antichrist, the conversion of Israel, etc., there is a commonality in regards to the possibility of a worldwide presence of the Kingdom of God which does not arise as a result of the sudden and cataclysmic coming of Christ, but instead arises from the work of God’s people in fulfilling the creation mandate and by the evangelization of the world. This I believe is at least one of the sources of language which speaks of “building the kingdom” and it seems to underlie much of the current talk about being a “missional church.” Many emergent church writers reflect this view which is clearly articulated by N. T. Wright.

At the same time there is a dissonance in current talk about the Kingdom and the missional church. This dissonance is found in the obvious disjunction between the call to reject the Constantinian project of making a Christian society, and the desire to see the kingdom of God fill the earth. I would ask some simple questions. In relation to the environment: how do Christians hope to see the environment restored without the whole world culture becoming Christian in the sense of being a people who see the environment as a gift from God and understanding that we are charged with caring for it? Likewise, justice for women, the end of poverty, -- how are any of those issues to be finally, once and for all resolved without a worldwide Christian society? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. In essence the a/post millennial project is the Constantinian project.

If I may I would like to risk reducing all of this to a small sentence. The project of the post/a millennialist is to bring in the Kingdom rather than to bring back the King. This brings us to Hunter’s forceful points, that while this or that particular effort at change may be successful, in the final analysis this is a neo-Constantinian project with the ultimate goal of changing the culture of America/Canada/the world into a Christian culture, a project which in reality is failing and cannot succeed. And, I will add, this is something that A. B. Simpson and Karl Barth both clearly understood.

I believe the shock with which Hunter’s book is being received by evangelical leaders is because there is an underlying awareness that Christians are not accomplishing their “change the world” agenda. At the same time there is a cry, a shout, to try harder, sign this petition, write a letter -- and on and on. Some of that is needed, but it can be just a continuation of the power agenda. On the other hand, should we go back to cultural withdrawal and wait for it all to burn? Should we collapse into Christian quietism? Who wants that?

Surely there must be a way forward.

No One Evangelical Hot Dog Stand Has All The Answers

2010-11-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

Outside of Rogers Stadium are a number of hotdog stands. Whenever my wife and I attend a Blue Jays game we head for one, because eating on the street is to us a cool part of the experience, but not for everyone. Some like to eat in one of the many restaurants along Front Street, others wait for the game to start then bring hotdogs and beer to their seats. And even among the “street eaters” there are subtle differences in the hotdog stands. Those further away are cheaper, but if you buy near Gate 14 you may ensconce yourself in a tiny park and quietly munch away.

I see our pastors as milling about, ready to go into the game, but hungry. Around them are choices, and usually, instead of picking the best from each vendor, they become fiercely loyal to one. The Religious Right which is currently dominated in the United States by Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson, and in Canada and the United States given theological underpinning by a resurgent five point Calvinism, presented by Mark Driscoll, John Piper and others, represents if you will one family of choices for the church leader.

Another is the Left which is perhaps more popular in Canada. For awhile the writings of Brian McLaren and a whole raft of others calling for new paradigms in church and a re-orientation of denominations, doctrine and the Christian life received great attention in Canada.

Looming perhaps larger in Canada than in the United States, and particularly the Alliance in Canada, are the Anabaptists writers and thinkers such as Allen Hirsch who, while not Anabaptist, have a message which seems to resonate with the Anabaptist paradigm in certain interesting ways.

A brief synopsis of Hunter’s analysis of the three movements is that they have all succumbed to the dominant cultural motif of the politicization of everything. Hunter writes:

Politics has become so central in our time that institutions, groups, and issues are now defined relative to the state, its laws and procedures. Institutions such as popular and higher education, philanthropy, science, the arts and even the family understand their identity and function according to what the state does or does not permit. … Issues gain legitimacy only when recognized by law and public policy. It is only logical, then, that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them. (p. 103)

When one boils it all down, politicization means that the final arbiter within most of social life is the coercive power of the state. (p.106)

Hunter’s analysis is that the Christian Right and Left have both plugged into the politicization of everything in the culture in that they not only look to the state for solutions, but they also seek political power. While the Anabaptists eschew involvement in the body politic they define themselves as not being part of the body politic.

The Right seeks change by going back to what was. For Canadians the Christian Right is quite weak partly due to the backlash against its visibility in the United States. However, I sense a residual longing for what might be called the myth of a pristine past, a Canada defined by the Protestant consensus of the United Church and by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Left seeks a future which conforms in some sense to the Enlightenment ideal of a society where there is economic parity and libertarian social justice. Although the Christian left is not as strong in the United States as it once was, it is still very powerful in Canada. The Left has accepted the liberal concept of progress which Hunter points out as originally a secularized notion of Christian eschatology. (p. 134) However, the Christian Left has also capitulated to a motif of resentment and a will to power.

Thus, according to Hunter, both the Right and the Left are following along the well trodden path of Nietzsche in being motivated by resentment and having a will to power.

This leaves the neo-Anabaptists who have a growing appeal among younger Christians in both the United States and Canada. Historically the Anabaptist movement has self-identified as a church that stands apart from the world and its structures. Through history, with a few exceptions, Anabaptists have refused to be involved in politics, even to the point of refusing to vote. Government is seen to be an institution of the world held in thrall by the “principalities and powers” of this age.

To literally demonize such powers as the State and the market means that the neo-Anabaptists draw much of their identity and purpose from a cosmic struggle with, and dissent from, the state and the larger political economy; as those institutions are represented in the culture of late modernity. Thus, for Hunter, the neo-Anabaptist identity depends on the state and on the state's powers being corrupt. And the more unambiguously corrupt those institutions are the clearer becomes the identity and mission of the church. (p.164)

To what extent then are we influenced by the agendas of the Right, Left and neo-Anabaptists? As I pointed out above, in Canada the Right has not had as much influence as it has in the United States. Canada is the only major country in the world with no law governing abortion and there is no powerful movement to change that; same sex marriage came into law with little more than a whimper; and Canadians of all persuasions see universal health care as the right thing to do. In my opinion this is because the Left, i.e., the United Church and the Anglican Church, have driven the communitarian agenda for decades. Yes, in Canada, those churches certainly had dense networks of elites in high prestige locations.

For evangelicals the most pointed influence is from the neo-Anabaptist movement as it is filtered through various contemporary writers. As is to be expected such influence has, in my opinion, both a positive and negative aspect.

The positive aspect is the neo-Anabaptist examination of the contemporary evangelical church for spiritual coldness; an examination conducted from the platform of the church's need to stand in antithesis to the principalities and powers of this present age. From this analysis the neo-Anabaptist is able to identify spiritual coldness in the following: the evangelical church's symbiotic relationship to corporate structures, producing a consumer driven church which commodities ministry and, the lack of concern for the disenfranchised of society, i.e., a lack of concern for justice.

Having heard this piercing analysis I think there is a growing desire among many to move from such coldness into a place of renewed spiritual vitality. In some writers this desire is translated into a call for the church to be “missional,” – a label that seems to mean different things to different people – and a desire to more truly relate to people outside of the church by bringing love and compassion to them. Note, I did not say “bring love and justice…” and the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the evangelical church has for so long endorsed the surrounding culture that it is having difficulty identifying violations of justice and is having even more difficulty articulating how injustice should be addressed apart from the will worn paths of politics.

Negatively the influence of the neo-Anabaptists may possibly be seen in some of the following trends. Here what I say that it is very difficult to prove so these points should be taken as my private read of the current situation. Take it or leave it.

First, I see the naïve rejection of the institutional church with the hope for an ideal church that somehow is like the pristine pre-Constantine church, as a negative product of the neo-Anabaptist influence. This attitude: “I am above and beyond the institutional church” pops up in many ways and places, but has Hunter points out; it reveals an amazingly weak ecclesiology as well as a total lack of understanding of sociology. Institutions have a reality and are critical to the functioning of society. The church, from its beginning, is both a heavenly or spiritual entity and an earthly institution. Both its earthly structure and its heavenly dwelling must be embraced by Christians.

Second, I see the gradual drifting from doctrinal anchor points which give identity to both the Christian faith and particular church communities as arising from this movement. One spin off of the loosing of doctrinal moorings has been a deep controversy among those who work among people of other religions and a call for the use of a methodology that in its extreme at least flirts with syncretism. I am referring to the contextualization debate in missiological circles. Another is the growing inability to identify error and deception which continually presents itself to the church.

A legitimatization of compassion work (seen as a proper work of the church) and a commensurate de-legitimatization of evangelistic work (seen as a concentration on the individual which is a result of enlightenment thinking) is another by-product, so that, as a denominational leader, I can raise over one million dollars with a single email for any disaster that is highly publicized by the media, but must beg to raise an equivalent amount to sustain the training of young people in our university college or to sustain our worldwide evangelistic effort. Let’s be honest. Evangelism is virtually dying out in Canadian evangelical churches. And I can bring forward empirical data from our denomination to back this statement up.

The three segments, The Right, The Left and the neo-Anabaptists have each addressed legitimate issues, have raised consciousness in regards to those issues, and have created some legitimate responses. However, they have not delivered on the promise to change the world, or America, or even Canada. Next let’s pull together the reasons why.

Why We Are Not Going to Change the World -- Hunter's Sociological/Theological Analysis

2010-11-12T08:40:00.000-08:00

After giving some of my own experiences with the three motifs for change presented by James Davidson Hunter in his book:To Change the World, I will now continue to present some of his key ideas.

To the thesis that individuals can change culture James Davidson Hunter presents a counter thesis: culture changes individuals. Cultural change does occur but not in the ways we as Christians have thought. We have thought that a great individual, acting alone has at various times changed the culture. We have thought that certain key ideas have changed culture. We have thought that if enough people became Christians and in so doing changed their values, culture would change. However, culture is changed very slowly, and with conflict “…through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at the high-prestige centers of culture production.” (p. 274).

This statement is worth careful consideration.

Dense networks. Hunter gives example after example of dense networks throughout history that have worked together. Almost always there are key people within those networks, people who formulate and articulate concepts and modes of action, but without the network they would be mere voices in the wilderness. (For an excellent discussion of this read Malcome Gladwell, The Tipping Point.)

Elites. Culture, says Hunter, is about how societies define reality, and the capacity to do that is not spread evenly throughout the society. “Deep-rooted cultural change tends to begin with those whose work is most conceptual and invisible and it moves through to those whose work is most concrete and visible.”(p. 41). Thus there is what Paul Ricoeur spoke of as a sedimentation process. Picture a lake with various streams coming into it. The input contains various chemicals, minerals, salts, etc. which hang in the water, but which eventually sink to form the sediment. The input, says Ricoeur, is innovation. This is what Hunter’s elites do. They live in universities, they head major corporations and control the media. As they work and play together their ideas gradually sink down to form the sediment of society, that is, the culture.

Within institutions. One of the failures of contemporary evangelical thinking, in my opinion, has been to naively underestimate the importance of institutions. This, as Hunter points out, is especially true of those who do not grasp the importance of the institutional side of the church. Institutions, be they churches, universities, charities, various societies such as The Order of Canada, are places where elites can form networks, and are a vehicle for the elites to transmit change into the culture.

High-prestige centers of culture production. Culture is produced in many places, but there are places which have high prestige, and the culture production that comes from these places spreads. Thus, the high prestige place for theatre is New York City, movies, Los Angeles, social and political commentary, the Eastern seaboard, and much of that influence spreads to Canada from those centers. Canada’s social and political commentary as well as its media production is based in Toronto.

Culture production that comes from dense networks of elites operating from high prestige locations becomes the texture and fiber of society. Christians, but in particular, Evangelicals, have failed to be part of this production. Evangelicals have not produced enough elites to form dense networks, and they do not locate themselves in prestige locations. Hunter gives a stunning and, for an evangelical, embarrassing rundown of what appears to be almost a conscious effort to do the exact opposite, that is, to place ourselves as far from the centres of influence as possible; to maximize our marginalization in the culture.

Briefly:

• While there is evangelical scholarly work that is good, much of it is published by evangelical presses, not by high prestige presses.
• The works of literature produced by evangelicals are huge in volume, but are seldom reviewed in prestige publications, i.e., The New York Times.
• There is not one evangelical research university.
• There is little evangelical presence in the media, in any location.

So what’s the point? Is the point that we should, as James Dobson says in one place, work harder? Should we take Hunter’s analysis, absorb it, figure out what we are doing wrong, raise ten billion dollars and launch a new strategy to create a Christian culture, to change the world? No. Give it up. It’s not going to happen. Hunter points out that America has never had a Christian culture. And in my opinion Canada has never had a Christian culture. And, even if everything was done right it – elites were enlisted, culture production from high prestige locations began, etc., it would take about three hundred years to bring about the true culture change that is envisioned. And that won’t happen because the main problem with all of this will continue to be a problem -- sin, or, as Hunter puts it, the corruption of power.

This is the irony that lurks in the title. Those who have embarked on this project are quickly enmeshed in what Nietzsche called the will to power. This is especially true for the Christian right and the Christian left, but surprisingly it is also true of the neo-Anabaptist movement also. I might here recommend SJS' comment to my "If not Chicago, how about Detroit" post.

Next, a closer look at Hunter's analysis of the Christian triad of Right, Left and Anabaptist.

Institutions Can Be Change Agents

2010-10-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

I have written of my own experience with the first two ways by which evangelicals believe they can change the world, namely, through evangelizing enough people to reach critical mass, and through changing values by gaining political power. Hunter also speaks of the institutions of society.

Those of us who have only a passing acquaintance with sociology sometimes overlook the crucial role that institutions play as they mediate between the body politic and individuals. I have been involved with many institutions through the years. I was on the board of a small Christian school in Chicago and in Detroit much action occurred through community organizations. However, those organizations seemed to be exclusively focused on being agents of influence on the political machine.

After our daughter was killed in a crash my wife and I became involved in one of Canada’s best institutions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD. In my opinion the people who run MADD really know what they are doing. They understand how to act on multiple societal fronts at the same time, how to bring about political change, and how to influence a change of values in society.

MADD caries on a continual political lobbying effort. They gather statistics, they make presentations and apply pressure. As a result they have seen a gradual change in laws that have raised the penalties for drunk driving while lowering the legal tolerance level.

MADD also seeks to change the values of society. They do this through advertising and through presentations. My wife and I have spoken at The Rotary on behalf of MADD and we also coordinated a contest among school children in Grey County whereby children drew a billboard against Drunk Driving and the winning design was actually turned into a billboard and displayed.

MADD also cares for people who have lost family members to drunk driving. This was in fact our first contact as a nearby chapter called us and offered support.

What we see from this institution is an example of a number of things which Hunter speaks of. MADD speaks to the cultural forming elites of society. Because harm from drunk driving is no respecter of persons they have been able to enlist the support of a number of people who are part of Canada’s elite opinion making class.

As a result society has begun to change its values in regards to drinking and driving. Drunk driving is no longer a joke, it is no longer socially acceptable to drink and drive. That is not to say it does not happen, it happens all the time. But society no longer considers it to be permissible behaviour. And this real shift in attitude is largely credited to MADD which effectively, year in and year out, harnessed the power of the opinion making elites. Thus, as I see it, they have functioned brilliantly as an institution by mediating between the political sphere on one hand and seeking to influence the value system of individuals on the other. And further, to a limit extent, they have sought to give care to people at moments of great vulnerability.

MADD however understands its limitations as an institution. It does not, as far as I know, set as a goal the one hundred percent elimination of drunk driving. Nor does it seem to be tempted to go off mission and become involved in other worthwhile causes. Thus MADD seeks change but seeks it within a reasonable framework.

One more thing should be added from my perspective. Many of the people who are active in MADD are people who have lost part of their lives to a drunk driver. And this fact is ever before the organization. Yet, in spite of its title, the majority of people who compose MADD are not consumed with anger, or what Hunter would call resentment. They are people who wish to spare others the horror that they have experienced. This has added to the institution’s impact.

I do see in mediating institutions a way to bring positive influence on society.

If not Chicago how about Detroit?

2010-10-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

In my seventh year in Chicago, while in the midst of the Vietnamese refugee re-location project, I was called by David Clark, District Superintendent in another district, and asked to consider coming to a church in Detroit’s inner city. This was quite a different situation from Chicago in almost every way. Chicago, under Mayor Daley, was a well run city. People worked, raised their families and were frequently involved in community organizations. Even so there were of course massive problems in Chicago, problems large enough to challenge thousands of pastors and workers for their entire lives and I don’t wish to understate that reality.

Detroit however sat in contrast to Chicago, for Detroit was then beginning the slide to its current decrepitude. Riots has seared the soul of the city. White flight took on epidemic proportions and was encouraged by various policies. City government had as its goal to establish political power and to skim money. I will never forget walking into a city hall office and reading a large sign which said something like this: “Employees are forbidden to talk to the FBI without permission of their supervisor.”

The church itself was a result of the split of Central Alliance -- the old mother church of the Alliance in Detroit. Wayne State University wished to buy the old church to make a parking lot and so the congregation sold and moved to Dearborn. But a small group stayed behind and took up residence in another large building which was already owned by the city and slated to be demolished for even more parking.This "stay behind" group was the church that called me. I answered the call and went.

When I arrived the whole city was politicized in a way which has only recently become familiar to wider society. The presence of the city government was like humidity on a hot day and I knew that we would not be able to establish ourselves or have any relevance without becoming immersed in the political milieu.

And so I did. To this day I display in my office a plaque of appreciation given to me by one of the community organizations. Voter registration drives, court injunctions to stop this or stop that, appearing before City Council and being on a first name basis with many, including the now well known United States Senator Carl Levin, I was there, fully present and active, I worked the system.

It was generally accepted by many that community political action was going to save Detroit. Individual houses would be spared demolition, work programs would be brought in, prostitution bars closed and “hot bed” hotels zoned out – by community action. And all of this happened, and more. If political action could save even a local society, Detroit would have been saved. But Detroit was not saved.

Perhaps Detroit activists have moved on from those dreamy days of believing in change through politics. An article on Detroit in The National Post September 13, 2010 reveals the current state of affairs. Individuals act to plant gardens or to develop farms, art projects are erected in empty areas, and local people band together to push out drug pushers from their neighbourhoods. Promises from the government are met with scepticism, a scepticism that I totally resonate with. From the article I sensed that there may be glimmers of hope, not that yet another Federal grant will be obtained, but that a modest sense of community may be formed in this once great city. People are doing good things, seeking to live healthful lives, bringing healing and joy where they can.

It seemed to me as I read The National Post article that the people being described were practicing something like what Hunter calls “faithful presence.” That is, they are trying to breath life into their society. This is something for us as Christians to think about in Canada. Can we breath health, temporal health and eternal health, into Canada?

Could I At Least Change Chicago?

2010-10-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

Church planting in Chicago first brought me face to face with questions of the involvement of Christians/church in the world. Race, war, poverty, the environment, it was all on the table and Christians around me where trying to be relevant. As part of my Ph. D. studies at Northwestern University I was in classes at a seminary where the students were trying to apply the theories of social involvement which they drew from their studies of then contemporary theologians – trying to develop their praxis as some would say. A fairly large group of them decided to have a sit-in at the seminary to protest the development of a certain coal burning power generating plant in Chicago. As I walked by one day I noticed that the whole area of the sit-in was thick with cigarette smoke. Later I asked one of the participants if he did not think this a bit odd, that they would protest air pollution yet pollute each other’s air. He didn’t see my point. Of course now, everyone sees that point. This incident really brought home to me that Christians –desiring, as they do. the best for others-- are quick to get on bandwagons, right or left, without considering the wider ramifications.

As my wife and I planted a church, we faced the question: what should be our attitude toward the issues of the day? I took the stance of focusing on planting a church, believing that a church, a group of people committed to Jesus Christ, could best address the issues of the neighbourhood. Thus, most of our programs were in some way or another slated as “outreach.” Friday youth night with a full basketball program run by volunteers from Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Door to door visitation, small group Bible studies by the dozens. I kept a written log of my time and sought to spend fifty percent in evangelism. As a result my wife and led more people to Christ and baptized more people than we have at any other point in our lives. It was an amazing period in our ministry.

However I did very little with the structural issues of the community. I would say there were several reasons for this. During that time the government answer to poverty was welfare, and I saw welfare destroy people’s lives. I also observed some effective government sponsored programs, such as one that trained youth in marketable skills. Ironically, that particular program was cancelled during a period of budget cutting while programs that produced few results continued.

In was for sure in Chicago that I developed a deep cynicism toward almost all government run/sponsored anti-poverty programs. At the same time I learned to respect the lives of the working people around me. My father was a member of a union and worked his whole life. The people I knew in Chicago were not rich like the people in the suburbs, but most of them brought home a paycheck and lived happy lives and hoped for better things. At the same time, teens dropping out of high school, a rising gang presence, the insidious entrance of drugs, these and other community dysfunctions were an incoming storm.

In the end I left Chicago for Detroit realizing that just being a church like all the churches I had known growing up was not enough for the tumultuous seas of the inner city. By then I had worked on a number of things beyond youth basketball night, but was still trying to see how the church could truly be a church and truly be a place where people’s lives could be holistically changed.

The Thesis: Our Key Assumptions on How to Change the World are Wrong

2010-10-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

As a sociologist James Davidson Hunter begins To Change the World with an analysis of the social theory that has guided Christians (it needs to be kept in mind throughout that while Evangelicals are highly profiled, Hunter is including both Mainline Protestant Churches and Roman Catholics in his critique) through the past one hundred years or so. To do this he first gives a synopsis of the project of “world making” by which he means the creation mandate given to Adam and Eve to cultivate and keep the garden and subdue the earth, which he interprets to be the whole human enterprise of creating culture. Theologians have traditionally spoken of this as the creation mandate and there is general agreement that sin did not lift this mandate and therefore culture is an outcome of our mandate to “make the world.”

Currently Christians are not happy with the culture that has been created, especially Christians in North America, and Hunter agrees with their analysis that the Christian culture of yesterday has been severely eroded. Because he is writing for the American church, I will humbly undertake to comment on how I see the relevance of his analysis to Canada. I will venture to say that Christians in Canada also are not happy with the culture in which they live, and that they desire to change it.

Later we will notice that this is precisely what Hunter advises us not to do, that is, we need to stop desiring to change the world. But first, how do we think we can change the world and how has that shaped our action?

Essentially Christians have accepted the very popular understanding of culture that has been widely adopted by politicians and by educators. Hunter says:

"The substance of this view can be summarized something like this: The essence of culture is found in the hearts and minds of individuals—in what are typically called “values.” Values are, simply, moral preferences; inclinations toward or conscious attachment to what is good and right and true. Culture is manifested in the ways these values guide actual decisions we individuals make about how to live.He says: . . . . By this view, a culture is made up of the accumulation of values held by the majority of people and the choices made on the basis of those values.” P. 6

Thus, in this view, the culture changes when individuals change their values. Change the values, change the culture. In the past one hundred years Christians have approached this project of changing the values of individuals in three ways, choosing one method exclusively, or working a combination.

First Christians have approached the project through Evangelism. The impact on values that is made when a person is truly transformed by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit and discipled can be profound. Thus, through evangelism Christians have sought to change the culture by seeing one person at a time become a Christian, one person at a time re-orienting their personal values to the values of Scripture. In so doing they have hoped that somewhere they would reach critical mass, that is, if enough people in Canada would be truly converted, become true and devoted followers of Jesus Christ, then the culture of Canada would shift back to a Christian culture. The success of the past sixty years of evangelism (post World War II with the rise of Youth for Christ and Billy Graham through the campus ministries and the Jesus People movement until today) is obvious. Around the turn of the century I recall reading an article in the New York Times that spoke of the Christian resurgence as being a third Great Awakening. However pollster George Barna gave Christians of all denominations a rude awakening when he noted in several books that Christians display values that mirror those of the surrounding culture. So "change individuals -- change culture" is not working.

The whole project of evangelism has come under withering attack in recent years by certain voices in the evangelical left (Brian McLaren to mention one) and the Anabaptists. In the name of the Creation Mandate they call for us to notch evangelism down on the priority list and to ratchet up the renewal of cultural forms. That is, if evangelism is the pathway to changing the culture of North America, it has failed, so these voices say, so let’s try something else.

The call to substitute, or downplay, evangelism for the Creation Mandate is worthy of a lengthy critique. But here, a few words. First we should remember that C. S. Lewis stood against this morphing of evangelism into renewal of culture when he pointed out that cultural forms do not exist but that individual people exist, that is, individual people have ontological status. So, “the laboring class” or what have you cannot be saved and will not live in eternity, but individual laboring people can be saved and live in eternity. Later Hunter argues that when Jesus told us to “obey” all that he had said that this would include the Creation Mandate. I am a fan of the Creation Mandate, and certainly it is part of the Christian’s obedience. But, evangelism, that is the evangelism of individual people who can be immersed into the waters of baptism, is the heart of the Great Commission.

Hunter does not call us to abandon evangelism – he is totally in favor of evangelism. What Hunter says is that by itself bringing people to Christ will not change the culture. The focus on the conversion of people which we find in the book of Acts is absolutely critical, but I personally have learned the hard way how resistant the overall culture is to change and agree that evangelism by itself will not bring such change about.

Second, Political Action. After evangelism, political action is the strategy of choice to change the world for Christians.

The logic is simple. Values are shaped by law, and law is shaped by the values of law-makers, i.e., legislators, judges and heads of state. So, when Christians sit in those positions with Christian values they will make good laws which in turn will create a Christian culture.

While Hunter affirms politics as a legitimate sphere of human activity and one in which Christians are properly to be involved he sees the current situation where “politics is the tactic of choice for many Christians as they think about changing the world” (p.12) However, he says, politics by itself does not shape culture. I would point out that politics, as part of the on-going stream of human activity, does play a role in shaping culture, and for this reason the hard work of political leaders should not be minimized as being either unimportant or ineffective. However, while I agree with Hunter that politics by itself does not shape culture, in Canadian culture politics is the focal point for power, perhaps even more so that in the United States because the Canadian people look to government to solve many of life’s problems.

A second issue in regards to the Christian involvement in politics is the question of Christians and power. Politics and power walk hand in hand, so many Christians (again—not only evangelicals) in America have faced the question: “does the cultural mandate call for us to brazenly seek power-- to have a “will to power?” and many have answered “yes.” The ironic implications of that decision are playing out before our eyes.

Third, Social Reform.
In every society there are various institutions which mediate between “citizens and the state and market.” (p.14) These are voluntary institutions and they have been used to bring about moral reform by “addressing particular problems with the family, schools, neighborhoods and civic associations.“ Illustrations of these voluntary social movements include, among others, “the fatherhood movement, the marriage movement, the character movement, the teen-abstinence movement.” (p.14) Hunter points out that these movements have contributed to culture but again have not created the desired cultural change sought by Christians.

Thus these three activities: evangelism, politics and social reform are the three projects of choice for Christians to change the culture to a Christian culture, to change the world if you please, by changing the values of individuals one person at a time with a goal of reaching a critical mass at which point the whole culture will shift. Hunter says:

"At the end of the day, the message is clear…. If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world. This account is almost wholly mistaken.” (p. 17)(emphasis mine)

Let’s Discuss – Can We Change The World?

2010-09-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

For my money James Davidson Hunter has been putting out the keen analysis of evangelicalism for the past thirty years. Now his life’s work is finding a focus in calling Christians of every confession, that is Baptists to Roman Catholics, to change the way the stand in relation to the surrounding culture. To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in a Late Modern World, Oxford University Press, 2010 calls us to abandon the enterprises that have been foisted on us by: The Christian Right (including the Roman Catholic Right), the Christian Left, and the neo-Anabaptists, and in their place to re-formulate what living as Christians in the world might mean. Hunter admits that this is a mammoth undertaking and that all he can provide is a sketch. But the sketch he provides is one of health and significance with a realism that can be followed. As well, his proposal actually could provide substance for the word “missional” without falling into the vagaries of what has rapidly became a cliché.

In a series of blogs I wish to explore and comment on Hunter’s book. I do not pretend to expound it completely for it is a dense book and deserves the careful attention of thinkers who are much more gifted than I. But I would like to add my affirmations, some caveats, and also begin to think about what the implications might be for local churches, and in particular local Alliance churches in Canada. To do that I will also present some autobiographical material so that the reader might know a bit of the context of my thinking.

Steps Toward Being a Missional Church

2009-07-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

How does “missional” become something other than a buzz word? How can the Alliance, as well as churches from other traditions, carry out the mission of God? Here are some thoughts, which I humbly offer as simply food for much needed further and deeper discussion for those churches that have crossed the bridge to being missional, not in word, but in deed.

Being missional requires intentional strategy, and this strategy must be more sophisticated than simply saying that we will have "need-based" evangelism. The problem with “need-based" evangelism is that it may shape up to be simply a response to a neighborhood problem that is staring a local church in the face. It’s good to respond to what is staring us in the face, but that alone is not enough to be truly missional. For example, we learn that there are lots of divorces in our city, so we respond with a divorce recovery program. To be missional is much more than this. It is to figure out how to speak the gospel to the multi-layers of life in the community in a way that brings, however slowly but surely, what I would call kingdom transformation of individuals and their way of life together.

I propose a multilayered look at the community around us in order to develop, under the Spirit’s direction, approaches to bring the presence of Christ to every person. What am I talking about? As an illustration, if you were to open up the liberal arts catalog for a nearby university you might find departments like geography, sociology, perhaps anthropology and business. Each of these departments looks at and analyzes the world from a particular perspective which, theoretically, contributes to a wholistic understanding of humanity. My proposal is not to master all of that knowledge, but simply to look around us and see these various layers of life and of life-interaction --as represented in this simple illustration by university departments -- as they are occurring in real time with real people in our city.

For example, I can look at the city where I live geographically. What is its climate, and what is the impact of its climate on people’s lives? One snap of the finger answer is that my area has a four-season climate and thus people do a lot with recreation. More deeply I might ask: how does geography affect how people earn their living. And another quick answer would be that the city’s centrality has made it a transportation hub, which allows for industry. Sociologically what do I see? I see immigrants who are here because they can be connected to transportation and industry. Further questions can follow: what is their economic status and what businesses and jobs are they involved in? The list of these questions can go on and on.

Here is what I am wrestling with. This geographic/sociological analysis is probably step one in developing an in-depth strategy, but it is fraught with hazards. For the rest of this blog entry I will deal with the hazards.

This kind of strategic work was commonly understood in missiology, but was presented to pastors by Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Church when he talked about doing evangelism strategy by creating a composite of the kind of person who lives in the area around a church and about shaping the church's programing to reach those people. Some pastors thought that this meant that if the church was surrounding by a young family demographic then the church should ignore ministries to seniors, or whatever. Pastors who think like that have failed Junior High School Strategic Planning for that of course in not what Warren meant. What he did mean was that an attractional model required an understanding of who the local church primarily wished to attract, which for him was young families, so the church offered programming to young families. Warren never meant that people who did not match the area’s aggregate demographic should be ignored.

However, even with this disclaimer it seems to me that building a program focused on attracting a single slice of the surrounding demographic is hazardous for the following reasons.

First, single demographic strategy ignores the complex fabric of society that I am alluding to, the subtle but real dynamic of day to day interaction that people have in their homes and in their work places. Thus the church, in seeking to “reflect” its community can end up doing the opposite, that is, it end up being an exclusive club that screens out all who don’t fit in.

Second, and here I am spinning off from the above fundamental problem, while seeking to address the felt needs of the community the church may end up missing the felt needs that are experienced by people around them. This is because the deepest felt need in any community is simply to be a community, to find a way of coming together, and in that coming together to address the micro-community of the family, to be a village that raises its children, to provide love for the very elderly who are nearing the end of their journey. This cannot be done when everyone who is “alike” huddles together.

Third, the church, in trying to focus on a particular group to the exclusion of others runs counter to strong biblical mandates and examples. Every picture that we have of the early church shows people who are slaves and slave owners, craftsmen, farmers, Jewish heritage and gentile, the gentiles being sub-divided into many language backgrounds, as well as male and female. This demographic mess was responded to by the Holy Spirit who inspired the greatest writings in history on love and unity. The church today is called into the same mess, and the same struggle.

Please allow me to place one more disclaimer here. I am not speaking against first generation immigrant churches that worship in their language of origin. Many reasons can be given as to why this is not only necessary, but good. However, down the road, if they are true to the gospel, these language churches are called to establish a ministry that reaches out beyond their own group. I am so thankful to say that this is happening.

If a church considers itself to be exploring new models and thinks of itself and being beyond the attractional paradigm, my challenge is that it consider if this is truly so, or is it simply re-painting the old mono-demographic church with new colors.

Allan Hirsch and the Attractional Church Model

2009-07-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

Allan Hirsch is credited with coining the word “attractional” to describe the way evangelical cutting edge church has been done from the 1980’s until now. The Alliance in Canada has been into this model in a fairly big time way since the mid-eighties and only recently is beginning to experiment with other possibilities. The pure attractional model seeks to draw people into the church building so that they will have a specialized need met, and in the process of having a need met enter into meaningful human relationships, and then hopefully they will be pointed to Christ, enter into a saving relationship with him, and finally be integrated into the life of the congregation. Doing church like this is certainly superior to the forties through seventies model, which was to hold church services of various kinds, such as Sunday AM and PM services and Wednesday night prayer service, and assume that now and then someone would walk in with a need for God. The attractional model was a brave departure and is based on the words of Jesus who tells us to go out into the highways and by-ways and to compel people to come in, “come in” meaning “come into” the church building and then into the church’s life.

The attractional model began by capitalizing on what in business is called good-will, that is, a good reputation in the community as a place of peace and a place where help could be found. So, parents were willing to allow their teens to attend the youth meeting at the local Alliance Church, and they might even drop in and attend the Christmas musical.

Several problems have, however, emerged from the use of this model. First, its usage seems to relentlessly pull the church to shape its message so that those whom it wishes to attract are not pushed away too soon, that is, before they become Christians. I personally have felt this pressure, and I have defended Bill Hybels against the accusation that his message is watered down, but few anymore deny that the attractional model tempts church and preacher to conform to the world, at least a bit. Currently in my office we are taking a look at statistics regarding baptisms in various churches in the Alliance in Canada as one way of trying to take a snapshot of the relationship between people hearing enough biblical instruction to actually follow Christ in baptism and the style of outreach.

Another difficulty is that the washing away of good-will for the church in Canada has made the attractional model much less functional. The rise of militant atheism, the demise of the United Church, the tiresomeness of the religious right in the States, and probably most notably, the residential school scandal, have all contributed to high levels of distrust for churches resulting in ever higher levels of resistance to anything done by any brand of church resulting in fewer and fewer people being attracted to significant encounters with people or God within the four walls of the church. Its just gotten really hard to coax people to come to church for any reason whatsoever. Really hard.

Which leads to the last and saddest difficulty which has been present from the beginning of the rise of the attractional model, the fact that most of the attraction was to other Christians because it pandered to the baby boomer's predilection to shop church. The demand for choice is part and parcel of sociological post-modernism, and the lack of commitment to truth is part of philosophical post-modernism, and both of these created a climate where people who were raised as Baptists would leave the church of their heritage in a heartbeat once they figured out that the Pentecostal church had a better nursery. Thus we have the scene of large evangelical churches being large because their programs attracted Christians from smaller, not quite as up to the minute, evangelical churches in town.

So, when people like Allan Hirsch turn withering, sarcastic criticism on this model, we should not be surprised, but should be humbled, and we should be asking the Holy Spirit what needs to be done.

Having said all of that I will now say that I personally do not find the solutions that Allan Hirsch puts forward to be particularly compelling. For example, Allan promotes the house church movement as it occurred in China. From time to time house church movements are promoted for use in North America, and, from time to time some of them meet with modest success. However, it is my opinion (note – opinion, not fact based judgment) that societal conditions are radically different here than in China and that while house churches may be planted and continue to live, a movement of house churches is not likely to flourish in North America.

Yet more to come.

Listening to Allan Hirsch

2009-06-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

I have at last returned from a long journey back and forth across the country visiting our pastors in conference and I will comment a bit on the input that was given by guest speakers.

Allan Hirsch was the guest speaker in an April conference. Hirsch writes from a background that includes a Jewish heritage and also a denominational heritage from the Restoration Movement as it finds itself in Australia.

In one of his blogs David Fitch includes Hirsch in what he calls a “neo-Anabaptist” movement. Calling Hirsch a neo-Anabaptist may be stretching things a bit but there is certainly some crossover between the Restorationists and the Anabaptists in their claims that it is possible to discover and to present pure New Testament Christianity, or what is sometimes known as primitive Christianity. Thomas Campbell, one of the founders of the Restoration Movement, went from being a Presbyterian to a Baptist, and from there became even more radical in claiming that it was possible to “restore” the church to its New Testament simplicity in governance and in practice. From this effort some of the points restoration churches are noted for emerged such as a denial of creeds, self-government of the local church, and not being regenerated until baptised by immersion (for which the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch is seen as the defining model), and in the Church of Christ, no musical instruments in the church. www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/restmov.html

In The Forgotten Ways Allan Hirsch relies on the restorationist meta-narrative that the New Testament church was pure in all things but at one point in history, identified by him as the conversion of Constantine, everything went wrong, and has continued wrong. This meta-narrative has been challenged since the origin of the Restoration Movement in the very early 19th century and I will not discuss it further at this point. One should note that Hirsch sees a recent exception in the house church movement in China.

So much for background. Personally I find that when I peel back the restorationist meta-narrative that Allan Hirsch has many powerful insights and I think these should be listened to. At the same time, all of his work should be subjected to strong critical thinking. And finally I have this recurring question: is either “neo-Reformed” or “neo-Anabaptist” the place where we want to go?

More to come.

Some Hope at Last!

2009-03-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I really like a book I might say: “This book makes me swoon.” But in this case “swoon” might obliquely link, even through a pun, to the “swoon theory” of the resurrection. None of that for N.T. Wright’s masterful and magisterial Surprised by Hope, Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. So, could I say that I want to jump up and down for joy or some other really happy thing as a response—I’m sure you get the idea.

First, of apologetic interest is Wright’s very up to date defense of the resurrection. Considered to be one of the foremost New Testament scholars of our day, Wright not only speaks of what we might call the standard defenses for the resurrection of Jesus, but also shows how the Greeks did not view resurrection as life after death, but as something that referred to “life after whatever sort of life after death there might be” (p.36). The Greeks rejected this possibility, as did the Sadducees. Wright goes on to show how the early Christian view of resurrection was distinct from the Jewish view in six ways. And then he discusses the credibility of the resurrection narratives, pointing out that the gospel narratives should sound quite different if they were made up somehow by post-Pauline writers, for if they are post-Pauline we would expect them to try to prove what they were saying from the Old Testament, but Old Testament references are not prominent in the resurrection narratives of the four gospel writers. Other points that one would not expect from a made up story, but which are there, are the presence of women as the witnesses, and to me quite interesting, the portrait of the risen Jesus as not being luminous, which one might expect if one were casting the story based on Daniel, but as having a body that is in some ways “quite normal.”

Certainly if anyone needs to deal with current Gnostic-revivalism such as “The Gospel of Judas” or the da Vinci Code industry, this and other works by N.T. Wright is the place to go for solid rather than haphazard answers.

But all this is the infrastructure Wright’s wonderful exposition of the hope of the resurrection of the body. Someone told me that this book is controversial. Certainly I do not agree with everything in his a-millennial panorama, but that is not the part I want to praise. What came to me was for the first time hearing an echo of my own decades long frustration at the view of heaven and the afterlife that is virtually a zeitgeist in churches, both evangelical and otherwise, a view that when we die we go to heaven and that’s it, wonderful stuff ever after, streets of gold and all that. The vivid teaching of 1 Corinthians 15 and I Thessalonians 4 seems to elude, or confuse, not only people, but pastors.

And here I will say something personal, which I seldom do in this blog, but as someone who has lost people whom he loved more than life itself, the comfort of heaven is only comfort if there is a resurrection, for if it is only heaven, then death has won. The comforting words that Paul encourages us to seize are that “the dead in Christ shall rise” and then “we shall forever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4: 16,17).

Wright masterfully integrates all of this with an a-millennial view (never tagged as such) of the impact of the resurrection on the new heaven and the new earth. The tie in for this blog is that A. B. Simpson’s pre-millennial eschatology was not a dispensational pre-millennialism, partly because that view while being developed during his career, had not gained the kind of force that it did in ensuing decades. Instead, Simpson saw the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the explanatory feature for the millennium, the presence of Jesus the resurrected Lord would in the millennial age be the power by which all that was dreamed of by the prophets for a better world will come to pass. Wright calls his own eschatology “inaugural” which brings us within shouting distance of Simpson’s view that even now we can experience the power of the resurrection in our holy walk – sanctification – and in experiences of signs and wonders, most notably, the healing of the body.

I can’t think of a better book to read as we approach Easter, the day of hope and joy.

A Tipping Point for Christianity?

2009-02-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

In The Tipping Point, which continues to be on The New York Times best seller list, Malcolm Gladwell poses the question: why do some things, whether they are consumer preferences for a particular brand of shoes, or epidemics such as AIDS, suddenly jump from minor status to the thing that huge numbers of people are buying or being infected with? This is a pop sociology/marketing book that has some pointed (pun intended) insights for the Christian apologists who desires the news about God’s Kingdom to spread. But, this is also a discussion that should cause reflection in both Christian apologetics and Kingdom communication.

First Gladwell sets forth “the law of the few”, the few being people whom he calls connectors, people who have formed brief but solid relationships with other people, lots of other people. From this I learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, if you want to be a person who has influence, having many acquaintances is more important that having a few close relationships. That is not to say, of course, that a person should not have close relationships. It is to say that connectors reach way out beyond that circle so that scores, perhaps hundreds of people are acquainted with them and operate with them at a level of trust. Think of connectors as people sitting in the middle of a large web of acquaintances and when they shake the web everyone, even those on the edge, gets the message.

Perhaps one of the problems with Christians is they have become more and more isolated from everyone in common life. The program church has many advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that it totally absorbs the life of its key workers leaving little time or energy for them to coach or play kids sports, to sit on school councils, or to join in meaningful community activities. Thus, those who could be connectors are unplugged from the wider populace. It’s not much good to have an apologetic if we don’t know anyone to speak it to.

Gladwell also brings up the “stickiness factor” as to why some ideas or things take hold in the general populous, that is, some ideas seem to capture the imagination, they become part of common speech and are uncritically accepted as true. This concept is a bit harder for the apologist to apply, for even though we all know that an idea needs to stick there is no way to know ahead of time what will and what won’t stick, and the apologist may or may not ever figure out why one idea stuck and another fell onto the road just at the moment it was needed.

An example (you may love or hate this) is the phrase “purpose driven life.” Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life gave the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Back in the autumn of 2008 Rick Warren invited the then candidate, along with others, to Saddleback Church for a forum, and they all came. Why? Because “purpose driven life” had stuck, not only as a bestselling book, but as a phrase that has imbeded itself in our culture. While there is no way to know ahead of time what will and what won’t stick, we need to realize that as communicators – whether it be by writing, verbal, film, or whatever, stickiness needs to be part of the goal in the crafting of the communication. And, it needs to be part of the prayer of preparation, for while we can never know ahead of time, God does know what will stick, and what won’t.

The last thing I wish to comment on is Gladwell's discussion of “the power of context”. This is really worth study because it applies very much to the apologetic situation and is related to what Newbigin discusses as plausibility structures. Gladwell uses as an example the problem that the New York subway system had with shrinking ridership.People began to stop using the subways because it had become commonly believed that they were unsafe. Think of Gladwell taking Newbigin’s discussion on plausibility structures and applying it to this problem. The people who ran the New York subway system saw that they had to change the reality and also the perception of safety in a way that people understood the change. So, they demonstrated that they were restoring law and order by getting rid of graffiti and by stopping people from cheating on fares (fare jumping). When people saw that trains were clean and that young hoods weren’t jumping over the turn styles the message that it was once again safe to ride the subway began to take hold, and ridership increased.

Likewise, we are living in a time where a great deal of effort is being spent by proponents of secularism to create the perception that, in accordance with the plausibility structure of the western world in 2009, Christianity is in fact implausible. Christianity is an unsafe place, don’t take any rides there -- that is the message. Certainly it is important to deal with this on a logical basis, but that might be like the subway people trotting out bar graphs in news conferences and using them to convince commuters that it is just as safe on the subway as it is walking down the street. Logic has its place, but perception is powerful, and so facts and logic are not enough of a context to establish plausibility. As part of our effort at communication we must lend a hand at seeking to show that Christianity is plausible in ways that are perceptible, for social context is a major influence on the conclusions that people draw.

What steps would help us to re-establish a plausibility context? To do this we need to move beyond the obvious generalities such as show compassion and love. I think these are the key, but we really have to figure out how that should work out and how to offer a cup of water in the name of Jesus.

I recommend that church leaders read Gladwell’s book in order to glean insight into communication of the message of

APOLOGETICS AS SPIRITUAL WARFARE

2009-01-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 4
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

An aspect of apologetics that is sometimes overlooked is its role in spiritual warfare. For some time thinking and discussion about spiritual warfare has been limited to exorcism and praying against the influence of the devil on a person’s life or on particular events. All of that is proper and worthy of careful spiritual consideration. But there is more.

1 Timothy 4:1
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons( Peneumasin planois kai didaskaliais daimonion)

Perhaps it is part of our enlightenment mindset, so deeply bred in us all, that we want to appear gracious and loving in our defense of Christianity, and to do so we wish at all times to show respect and honor to those who oppose us. This is proper. However,we must be careful lest we simultaneously be lead to discount the reality that the teaching we are up against is not respectful, but has been viciously constructed for the sole purpose of entrapping people in Satan’s web.

The truly great apologists understood this and taught it. Again I will refer to C.S. Lewis as an example. Spiritual warfare runs through his writings, from works of imagination to the great teaching works.

Lewis’ teaching works are carefully constructed arguments addressed to the skeptic, or at least to the inquiring mind. He, gracious apologist that he was, always assumes that his readers mind is open. However, in Miracles we learn that he believed that reason is in itself a miracle, that reason is not part of nature, but part of supernature. Thus, when the apologist reasons with people, she is addressing that part of the listener which is from beyond this natural world.

In a truly bold stroke Lewis ups the stakes by inserting many of his arguments into his works of imagination as intellectual encounters between a diabolical presence and a soul. In Perelandra Ransom battles with the Un-man for days as Weston carries on a protracted temptation of the Lady. Ransom then realizes that spiritual warfare must, in this case, be more than spiritual, and begins to fight physically. But then, the persona of Weston is allowed to appear, and the dialogue morphs into a moan about the horrors of the afterlife, and ends with Ransom telling him to “Say a child’s prayer if you can’t say a man’s. Repent your sins…”

After almost drowning, Ransom finds that : “Suddenly and irresistibly, like an attack by tanks, that whole view of the universe which Weston (if it were Weston) had so lately preached to him took all but complete possession of his mind. He seemed to see that he had been living all his life in a world of illusion.”

Here Lewis suddenly speaks of that part of apologetics as spiritual warfare that we would rather not discuss, the warfare of Satan for the soul of the apologist. In an essay he once confessed that after presenting the case for Christianity in an open forum, it was not infrequent that he would himself have doubts. But, he knew the source of those doubts. Ransom hears a noise coming up through the hole in the floor of the cave. “He fixed his eyes upon the dark opening from which he had himself just emerged. And then—‘I thought as much,’ said Ransom. And sure enough, out from the hole crawled the Un-man, and the battle, begun already in Ransom’s mind, begins again and continues until Ransom conquers.

I could go on and talk about the encounters in Narnia, especially between the Witch – arguing that what is present is the only reality and that everything else is mere fancy -- and Jill, Scrubb (Eustace), the Prince and the sturdy Puddleglum whose words “had a rousing affect” and brought the children out of their daze. (The Silver Chair)

But the greatest presentation of spiritual warfare is of course The Screwtape Letters. What is tempting (pun intended) about Screwtape is to think of it only as an imaginative portrayal of our inner moral dialogue. But Lewis makes clear in his introduction that he does believe in a real devil. Thus, this moral discourse truly does make us aware of the devil’s devices. And these devices are not only moral, but are aimed to keep the soul from faith.

The point here is Lewis’ conviction that apologetics does not occur in some sort of intellectual vacuum. Theoretically, the on-going dialogue of science should occur in such a vacuum, that is, devoid of prejudice, self-interest, prejudice, or emotion. Apologetics in an enlightenment framework may mistakenly be framed this way, as simply an exchange, carried on by gentle people. In reality however apologetics is anything but, for in every apologetic encounter the eternal destiny of people is at stake, and because of that four parties are present: the apologist, the one with whom the apologist is in dialogue with, the Holy Spirit, and Satan. The arguments that the apologist is seeking to counter are not simply arguments of well intentioned people, they are diabolical arguments, designed for eternal harm.

Thus, for us to do apologetics in this time requires us to again learn the discipline of spiritual warfare. To learn prayer, to learn discernment, and to learn the power of holiness. This is our calling.

Response on Atonement

2008-12-25T08:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to NewWord and Jonathan for their responses to the blog on cruciform apologetics. I remember how positively I responded when I first read Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor and his defense of what had been known as “the ransom theory” of the atonement which Aulen dubbed “the classic theory.” I believe there are real strengths in this theory and that there is New Testament grounding for the assertion of ransom, victory and liberation being results of the cross.

However, to see the ransom theory as the key to understanding the cross leaves several questions/issues unanswered. First, Anselm’s question “Why the God-Man” in my opinion is not adequately answered. The original iteration of the ransom theory perhaps answers this better than later modifications. Adam’s sin gave Satan ownership of the human race. Out of love Christ appeared as a man and was offered to the Devil as a ransom. However, the Devil did not realize that this was the eternal Son who would overcome death. So, the ransom was paid by Christ dying, but the victory was won as Christ rose from the dead. Those who have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe immediately recognize this scenario. In this form we can see that it took the God-Man to win the victory. Only he could be perfect and it is his perfection that allows him to rise from the dead.

But, the idea of “tricking” the Devil has not found a lot of acceptance in the past few hundred years. And if the deception is eliminated the encompassing power of the ransom motif is weakened, for why would the Devil accept a payment that would have such catastrophic results for his nefarious kingdom?

If “paying the Devil” is left behind, then the second question is simply this. What is it about the cross that brings about victory or liberation? It is simply not enough to say that liberation happened, there has to be some kind of grounding in cause and effect. If a ransom was not paid to the Devil, and if the wrath of God was not satisfied (as in substitutionary atonement), then what happened? What, precisely was it that occurred at the cross that set us free?

The third question builds on the previous two. What are we set free from? Does the cross set us free from sin? From guilt? From feeling crummy about ourselves? From capitalism? From … what? Can this question be answered without a really solid answer to the first two questions?

This brings us back to substitutionary atonement. I agree with Jonathan, that each theory of the atonement provides a window through which the atonement may be viewed. Thus, the New Testament does speak of the defeat of the Devil and the destruction of his works. Very powerfully we are told that we are ransomed and set free. And this kind of affirmation can be said of all the other theories. However, the work of theology is to find the central truths which bring all else together in haromony. This harmony of the other viewpoints of the atonement is the truth captured in the Greek word uper – “for, on behalf of." The concept of substitution rests on this word. So Paul simply states in Romans 5:8 "Christ died for us."

Finally, I would like to comment on the thought that talking about the cross creates the impression that Christ is absent to the unchurched. To me this is not true at all. It is the cross alone that enables me to understand that God is neither silent nor absent. How can we talk of a God who is “present” but who is not present in the horrors of the twentieth century and of the opening decade of this century? Of what relevance is a God who is not present to the private pain that each individual feels?

This is the good news of the cross. Christ is the Man of Sorrows. In Christ God has come and taken all our suffering on himself at Calvary and overcome it at the empty grave. How much more present to the people of the world could he possibly be? This is why Paul said: "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2. Truly there is nothing else to know or proclaim.

Healing

2008-12-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

A large section of A.B.Simpson's vision was "Christ for the body," which means that Jesus Christ brings healing to his people. At our General Assembly we close with a Lord's Supper/healing service. Recently I received this testimony about healing at our July 2008 General Assembly. As part of "rebirthing Simpson's Vision I share it here.

To Dr. Pyles:
I need to tell you something amazing that happened to me at General Assembly during the communion healing service. I have been a migraine sufferer for 10 years. As you were asking people to stand who had on going or long term physical problems I was to timid to stand. I knew deep down inside that this was my moment to be totally healed from this ailment. As people were praying all over the room God touched me. I have been headache and migraine free since GA. No more medication. No more trips to emergency for IV treatment. No more long, extended isolation in bed. I have been totally free! Praise God.

LeeAnne Lloyd
Immanuel Alliance Church
Peterborough, Ontario

Cruciform Apologetics

2008-11-22T07:44:00.000-08:00

I believe that, along with a powerful understanding and presentation of the resurrection, we must have a firm grip on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Some current evangelical writers find this teaching to be out of sync with post-modern times. The concept of God needing sacrifice is abhorrent to them as it was to the fathers of liberalism in the 19th century. However, for the apologist, substitutionary atonement speaks to the following objections to the Christian message.

First, substitutionary atonement speaks to the objection that it is a logical contradiction that a loving God who is infinite would create a world in which there is suffering.

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement teaches us that evil is not an inherent trait in creation. God did create a world that is good. Evil arises within creation by free choice.

The presence of evil is abhorrent to God. However,the elimination of evil requires a very deep response from God. Here the depth and complexity of Christianity must be grasped, for it is so easy to retreat into what Lewis, in his drinking analogy, called “Christianity and water”. No, Lewis is saying, you must take your Christianity straight.

Evil produces actions that violate God’s holiness, righteousness and justice, that is, God’s core nature. Evil actions harm people, the creation and the evil person himself. To overcome evil God himself had to become involved in the fullness of his Trinitarian life. This involvement went to the length of joining with humanity in the Incarnation, and satisfying the justice of God in death.

Second, substitutionary atonement speaks to the objection that we suffer and God could help but doesn’t. Substitutionary atonement removes the god who somehow is distant from our suffering, unable or unwilling to intervene to stop it. I believe God is grieved, that when Jesus wept he showed the sorrow and suffering of God for all our suffering. But God the Father did not stand by somewhere out there and watch disease and famine spread and wars be waged.

The LORD said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…” Exodus 3:7, 8

Christ came to rescue us. Christ took on himself our grief and our sin so that it might in the end be swallowed up in his victory. I would propose that the concept of Christus Victor is totally empty, simply a metaphor (for what?) without substitutionary atonement. But,Christus Victor is a powerful reality as we see Jesus our Pascal Lamb, who was on the cross in my place, who overcame the grave so that I also might participate in his life, and be given everlasting life. Truly, Christ meets me in my suffering and overcomes it.

Finally, substitutionary atonement speaks to the re-definition of evil and guilt. The sacrifice of Christ Jesus is the reason our guilt is removed. This culture has listened to Freud and believed him when he taught that there is no real guilt. If there is no God, then it does follow that there is no guilt. And, if there is no guilt there is also no evil. But people know better. The category of evil inserts itself into every morning newspaper, and sociopaths are the only ones who do not groan under the weight of wrongs done to others. The forgiveness of God does not come simply because “that is his job.” No,to overcome evil sin must be dealt with, and sin can only be dealt with by God himself taking sin on himself, which he has done in the sacrificial death of Christ at the cross. Because this sacrifice is final and complete we can truly come to the throne of grace for help in time of need.

This is why many, and I think rightly so, consider John 3:16 to be the key verse of the Bible: for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes on him might not perish but have everlasting life.

God responded to our plight because he loves us, and he did not respond with a metaphor. He responded by entering our pain, taking the guilt of our sin upon himself, and by washing our guilt away with his blood in a sea of mercy, forever. Because of the cross we can understand and experience, as Malcome Muggeridge somewhere said, that the universe is awash in love.

Ultimately then, we must not think for one moment that an effective 21st century apology to Canada will hide the cross, or come to the cross later, after many warm things are said. Rather, we must understand that a 21st century apology to Canada must be cruciform, shaped by the cross and cross centered.

The Resurrection as Theodicy and Plausibility Structure

2008-11-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, Karl Barth famously attacked the natural theology project by saying that it came up with a god, but not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What he meant by that was that one can propose an argument that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore if there is something – i.e., the universe -- the universe must have been brought forth by something other than itself, and that we would call God. Barth agrees that this argument could lead a person to affirm a creator.

However, there is no way to continue the argument in order to demonstrate that this creator holds us morally responsible, sees our misery, makes promises and covenants. Barth robustly asserts that the god of natural theology, or, if you will, the god of the philosophers, is not the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

C. S. Lewis and others recognize this issue and shifted their apologetics from creation to those attacks which specifically sought to deny the historicity of Jesus, his divinity, and his resurrection. It is somewhere in the middle between the proofs for the existence of God and the defense of the historicity of Jesus that I sense a weakness. And the spot is, as Lewis puts it, in the problem of pain.

To bring this out let us turn our attention to a recent review by Douglas Groothuis of William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's "God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist" in the summer issue of Books and Culture. Groothuis, in his review, points out that Craig’s theodicy fails to convince the atheist, but does convince him, the Christian reviewer.

"The nub of the argument over evil seems to boil down to Craig's argument: (1) If God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist. (2) God exists. (3) Therefore, gratuitous suffering does not exist.11 Craig's strategies for God's possible justification of evils are merely speculative unless one has previously made a strong argument for a metaphysically and morally thick theism through natural theology. That is, background knowledge weighs crucially here. Since Sinnott-Armstrong denies the success of Craig's arguments for God, Craig's explanation for evil rings hollow and desperate to him. But if one takes Craig's overall, fivefold case for God to be strong (as I do), this defangs Sinnott-Armstrong's objections."
Douglas Groothuis “The Great Debate” Books and Culture July August 2008.

One is forced to ask, what good is an apologetic that only convinces Christians? Groothuis adds:

"Since Craig argues forcefully—if briefly—for the resurrection of Jesus as part of the cumulative case for God's existence, it might have served him well to invoke Jesus' resurrection as part of the solution to the problem of evil as well. If Jesus has been raised victorious over death and sin, the world is not without hope. Evil does not have the last word."
Ibid.

Indeed! I would go so far as to say that there is absolutely no theodicy without the resurrection. In fact, I would disagree with Craig and say that suffering that arises from evil is gratuitous, that it is without cause, for if it had a cause it could be justified, and it is not justified if it is evil. However, there is pain that is not in itself evil. But let us stay focused on suffering that arises from evil. This is what the cross and resurrection are all about. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, and that is how he did it. I truly believe that this needs to be tirelessly presented as our apology in the 21st century. We need to be aggressive in proclaiming and defending the truth that God has seen our misery and taken it upon himself at the cross and overcome it at the empty tomb. And further, that he intends to restructure the world itself and the world order, and that preparing for that is the duty of the Christian community, the church.

In so presenting this core teaching we establish the Christian plausibility structure that Newbigin points us to. True, we cannot, in an enlightenment way, prove that Jesus rose from the dead with logic, and even less, prove the meaning of the resurrection as the overcoming of evil. But, the resurrection as a fact can be defended, and its meaning taught as a structure by which the world may be understood.

C. S. Lewis clearly understood this. In his essay “Meditation in a Toolshed” he speaks of being in a tool shed where light streams in from a crack in the roof. One does not sit and seek to see the light, rather, one should stand in the light and by it see everything else. I would propose that this is Lewis’ way of speaking of Newbigin’s “plausibility structure” built by the knowledge of God and the Christian teaching about God.

Thus, for Lewis the resurrection is not something one proves. One can defend the historical existence of an historical person, namely Jesus. But, one accepts the resurrection (the act of faith) and in so accepting it all other parts of life are understood.

My Apologies (not my apologetic!)

2008-10-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry dear readers, but I am out of country. I will continue next week. Thank you for your patience.

C.S. Lewis and Changing the Plausibility Structure

2008-10-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Two areas of apologetic activity by C.S. Lewis are little known any more, yet they occupied a great deal of his time. The first is live debating. Every week, he met with what was called the Socratic Club at Oxford and debated atheists. He writes of exhausting the phonebooks looking for atheists to debate because after awhile they did not wish to come. Well, to be honest, who would? With his baritone voice, quick wit and mastery of literature and philosophy, Lewis was a formidable opponent by any measure. But, like Francis Schaeffer who engaged in thousands of evangelistic conversations with students, Lewis demonstrated in the debates that Christianity was not to be simply blown off, but had to be seriously engaged by anyone who styled themselves as an honest thinker.

I really believe that debate and engagement is an area that has not been adequately explored in Canada, especially on university campuses. While there has been some, usually sponsored by Inter Varsity, there is room for much more aggressive action here. The results might not be immediately apparent, but in the long run, it would enable Christians to engage the pretensions of atheism in a direct way once again.

The other area not fully appreciated is his professional writing as a scholar of medieval and renaissance literature. Works such as his magisterial study of allegory (The Allegory of Love) and his study of Paradise Lost are consciously written as a Christian, but marvelously meet all the criteria to be taken with absolute seriousness by the scholarly community. Two things come to mind in how he used his scholarly writings as an apologetic tool.

First, he sought, as always, to build the Christian worldview. As an example, in his book The Discarded Image he portrays the worldview of the medieval times and how that affected its literature. As he discusses this, the contrasts with the worldview of the twentieth century become painfully obvious.

At the same time, he loves to debunk cultural lies in these writings. I might add that in common use one might say “debunk myths,” only that use of the term “myth” would probably be offensive to him. For example, in several places he refutes the concept that people in the first century and afterwards considered the world to be flat. And on it went. He truly believed that Satan had embedded many lies into cultural discourse to make it difficult for the truth of Christianity to be perceived. In truth, what Lewis was doing in this part of his project was trying to re-do the plausibility structure of which Newbigin speaks. He was not content to simply work within the twentieth century plausibility structure, he wanted to change it. Thus, in a number of places, he calls for Christians in every profession to remember that they are Christians when they write, whether they are scientists or professors in the humanities. He earnestly felt this would do more in the long run than any other effort.

This, of course, leaves us to ask if his challenge has been taken up. There is now a flowering of evangelicals in academia. I myself have not, and am not able, to peruse their writings, or even to sample them. But in my own small way, I would echo Lewis’ call to write consciously as Christians, for in this way, slowly, you contribute to a paradigm shift in the cultural understanding of plausibility.

Imagination -- Opening a Door to The Holy

2008-10-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

The power of the imagination as a pathway for God was something C. S. Lewis would testify to from first- hand experience. Before he was a Christian he purchased a paperback copy of George MacDonald’s Phantastes and, in his words, experienced holiness. What he meant was not sanctity in the sense of moral goodness, but holiness as spoken of by Otto in The Idea of the Holy. Otto spoke of holiness as that sense that we have of something absolutely OTHER. The awareness that there is something, or Someone, behind the world as we ordinarily experience it. From that moment when Lewis had this experience he began to travel a road that led him finally to Christ.

Soon after his conversion Lewis forayed into imaginative writing with the allegory The Pilgrim’s Regress. Personally I love this book, partly because it is a veiled autobiography of Lewis’ spiritual-intellectual journey up to that point, and partly because it contains so many barbed critiques of the English intellectual landscape of the 1930’s, barbs that still have not lost their edge.

Regress was imaginative, but the best was yet to come. From 1938 on through the mid-fifties Lewis blew the doors off beginning with Out of the Silent Planet and moving on in rapid succession to both Perelandra and The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape put Lewis on the cover of Time Magazine and brought him international readership and fame. And yet The Chronicles of Narnia still lay ahead.

What needs to be considered is that all of this was part of his intentional work as an apologist. He believed that there are certain archetypes in the universe and that these form the foundation of our thinking. These archetypes find their expressions in myths. (It should be noted that Lewis claimed to be an expert in myth, and he did not believe that the Gospels were myth.) Thus, myth could carry truth about God to a person who might even be hostile to the truth on another intellectual level. And one of the results might be that the reader will have an experience of The Holy as he himself had had when he read Phantastes. It is worthwhile to mention here that his fellow member of The Inklings, J. R. R. Tolkien, agreed with this approach.

It is hard to measure the impact of these imaginative works on the minds and hearts of millions of readers. Certainly they have reached a mass audience through film that either Lewis or Tolkien would have found hard to believe. But, do they point people to Christ?

To answer that question we have to go back to the train platform where Lewis first picked up Phantastes. He never claimed that it pointed him to Christ. What he claimed was that it unexpectedly opened up his mind to a new dimension of reality, and that once his mind was thus opened he could not resist the gradual intrusion of a presence who brought to him the greatest surprise of his life – joy.

Since the time of Lewis and Tolkien there has been a profusion of fantasy/imaginative writing in pop culture. Some of it has been quite good. Some of it carries a Christian worldview. And, some, like the Philip Pullman trilogy, promotes atheism. In Canada, and in the world, we await the rise of more writers who will effectively carry on the groundbreaking work of Lewis and Tolkien, writers who will tell stories that open the door of the mind and heart to The Holy.

The Complete Apologist

2008-10-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have been invited to introduce Ravi Zacharias when he gives a lecture on apologetics at Tyndale University in Toronto in 2010. I am honored to do this. From time to time Ravi graciously recalls conversations that we have had together about C. S. Lewis. They began when we sat together once on an airplane and I commented how wherever I went, when I spoke on evangelism or apologetics, almost inevitably someone would come up to me afterwards and testify about how they had come to Christ by reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.
I would call C. S. Lewis the complete apologist. In his day he practiced apologetics in every way that it could be done. He not only saw it as an intellectual activity, but as spiritual warfare. Furthermore, when I say he practiced apologetics in every way it could be done, I mean that not only did he practiced the defense of the faith on a wide intellectual front, also he opened up a new area of apologetics when he ventured into addressing the foundational structures of thinking which psychologist Carl Jung was labeling as myth. And more, he also aggressively used more than one way of delivering his apologetic to the marketplace rather than to the limited academy. In this he moved beyond apologetics as pre-evangelism to evangelism itself. And, in so doing he clearly understood that he was conducting spiritual warfare.
My own debt to Lewis cannot be overstated. Simply put, my ministry career has been one of protracted reading of most of what he has written.
In previous blogs I have noted that key evangelical apologists have followed the path of logical refutation of atheistic assaults on Christianity with variations on theistic arguments. In spite of the claim that post-modern thought rejects this line of defense, I have pointed out that the current aggressive atheistic arguments that have reached a mass audience follow the classic line from Hume to the present and that the response by current apologists are well done and well deserved.
Certainly C. S. Lewis considered himself part of this company. He wrote a number of carefully thought out apologetic essays and two closely argued books, Miracles and The Problem of Pain. In a previous blog I mentioned Alvin Plantiga’s argument against naturalism published in the summer 2008 issue of Books and Culture. Of interest is that he says that he is building on the argument which C. S. Lewis put forward in Miracles.
These two show Lewis’ instinct for the issues of the day, day here meaning the entire 20th century and at least the beginning of the 21st. Why is there pain? Why do people suffer? Could not an infinite God who also loves have made it so that we all lived happily? And, attached to the last question is the denial of the possibility of God, who by definition is outside the natural system. Lewis takes these questions on directly. In Miracles and PofP Lewis aggressively asserts that the presence of pain is not something that is incompatible with the existence of God and that Hume made serious errors in asserting that God could not at once be outside the natural system but act within it.
Personally I think these are wonderful books. I have read each a number of times and each time I have been encouraged and strengthened. Further, they are works that do not allow a person to think of Christianity in an off-handed manner, as something that may be contemplated outside of oneself, but point the reader toward encounter. This is especially so in the final chapter of Pain where Lewis opens the discussion of heaven, a discussion carried forward imaginatively in both Perelandra and The Great Divorce. To be honest, I do not know of a single writer who has written about heaven with the power that Lewis has. To read all of his writings on that fair land is to be filled with longing, or, as he might put it, to recognize the longing that fills our every waking moment.
However, back to my conversation with Ravi Zacharias, I have never had anyone tell me that they came to Christ because they read either Miracles or The Problem of Pain. Instead they tell me that they came to Christ because they read Mere Christianity.
Mere Christianity is the next step in understanding Lewis as the complete apologist. It is a compellation of addresses given over the BBC during World War II. One can almost hear air raid sirens in the background as one reads thinly veiled attacks on the world view of the Nazi’s. However it is so much more than a morale booster, even though apparently that is what some at BBC originally had in mind. It is a straightforward presentation of Christianity.
Here Newbigin comes back to mind. Lewis does not feel that somehow he should get people to “accept Jesus” and then, down the road, teach them the basics of Christian doctrine. Rather, he teaches doctrine, and then from within the doctrine the listener/reader is expected to see the whole truth and how she personally is part of that truth.
Most of us are familiar with this work. It begins with what is known as the moral argument for the existence of God. I feel that this is a very powerful argument and attempts to overcome it by arguing that “we can be good without God” because morality can be explained with evolution are in fact answered by Lewis and the answers resonate with many. Lewis moves on into Christian morality, with a discussion of such things as marriage, sin, forgiveness, incarnation and the Trinity, to mention a few. One of my favorite quotes is as follows:
Very well then, atheism is too simple. And I will tell you another view that is also too simple. It is the view I call Christianity-and-water, the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right—leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption. Both of these are boys’ philosophies. (Mere Christianity, Chapter 2, 1st paragraph)
It is, he is saying, the very complexity of Christianity, and Christianity’s willingness to face the hard reality of life that commends it. And all of this is aimed at the cabdriver, the mother, and the young teen ready to leave for basic training, as they quietly sat by the radio in the evening. No one really knows how many thousands have turned to Christ because of this one work.
And yet, he did not stop here. He pushed out into totally uncharted territory for apologetics; he pushed out into the sea of imagination.

Defending the Factuality of the Resurrection

2008-10-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Newbigin’s third point is also worthy of consideration. It is the attempt, as he puts it, “to neutralize any affirmation of the truth.” It is the contention, almost accepted as a truism in our day, “that the truth is much greater than any one person or any one religious tradition can grasp.” Thus, when this is accepted the exclusive claim of Jesus Christ, and of the gospel, can be immediately discounted, for even if it is accepted as truth the gospel may only be a segment of a much larger truth.
Clearly it is this assumption of the post-modern world that creates the possibility and the plausibility of the “pluralist society.” And, every single person who is seriously seeking to communicate the gospel in Canada today is aware that this assumption is a foundation of the contemporary Canadian worldview.
Newbigin takes some time to dismantle the credibility of this assumption, and does it masterfully by showing that the claim to relativity requires a claim to actually know full reality. The question we have to face is this: how does one speak when a commitment to relativism is part of the plausibility structure of the person to whom one is speaking?
Newbigin’s answer is to stand with the unbelieving neighbor and look at events which the believer sees as communicating God’s actions and will, and to ask the unbelieving neighbor: “stand here with me and see if you don’t see the same pattern as I do.” As an example he calls our attention to the liberal theological interpretation of the resurrection as found in the last century. In an attempt to make the resurrection story “acceptable to contemporary thought” it was explained as something that was generated by the pre-existing faith of the disciples. In other words, nineteenth century liberalism said that the disciples so believed in Jesus, that after he died they interpreted their belief by means of the story of the resurrection. This, Newbigin brilliantly points out, is the exact opposite of what the Gospel writers present. They present disciples snared in unbelief who are brought to belief by the reality of the resurrection.
I would only add here that in relating the story to audiences the disciples also squarely faced the challenge that they were delusional, that they were mistaken, had only seen a vision or an apparition, that they had lied and actually moved the body, or that Jesus was not really dead and had merely recovered after swooning. In short, every objection to the veracity of the resurrection account from either a Hebrew or Greco/Roman perspective was answered. Thus they recognized that it was incumbent upon them as witnesses to establish by means of all accepted criteria that the resurrection was a fact.
So, my first conclusion is that I agree with Newbigin that “we have no reason to be frightened” by the fact that relativism is part of the plausibility structure of our day. Relativism cannot stand up logically. However, that is not enough in itself, for the concept of relativism has power in spite of the fact that it is snared in a logical fallacy.
I believe that the old apologetic practices of proofs and evidences as they arise from the biblical narrative must still be used. If they are not then we will be perceived as offering a story that only gives a perspective on a greater truth. Instead we must make it clear that the narrative of the resurrection is the core narrative that explains and gives coherence to all of history, including the personal history of my unbelieving neighbor.
Having said that I must further make it clear what I am not saying. I am not saying that giving the proofs and evidences for the resurrection constitute in any way the whole work of apologetics and/or evangelism. Instead, I am saying that before we invite our neighbor to stand and look at the narratives of God’s saving actions and to consider that the Bible brings a new way of understanding and interpreting life, we must be ready to defend the reality of that perspective by defending the factuality of the narrative, i.e., the factuality of the resurrection.

Plausibility Structures

2008-09-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

Few writers lay out the groundwork for speaking of Christianity to a post-enlightenment epistemology than Leslie Newbigin. His book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is rightly hailed as a classic, if for no other reason than his careful explication of the epistemological issues. Here I wish to highlight these and comment on them and their relevance to communication of the Gospel in the pluralist society of Canada.
Newbigin opens with a discussion of dogma and doubt, which is part of a wider discussion of plausibility structures. In brief, one of the key moves of the enlightenment was to place everything in doubt. Everything especially included traditions, dogma, and prejudice as things to be disregarded in the quest to know reality. Thus arose various attempts to give “the assured results” of science, or scientific historical inquiry, higher criticism, and other results of inquiry that could be verified and or tested.
Without belaboring the history of epistemology, it has been shown that the attempt to find absolute certainty fails. This is sometimes misunderstood as a collapse into relativism. As we shall see below, a door may be opened to relativism in new epistemological paradigms. However, there is at the same time an attempt once again to explore the role of tradition, dogma and prejudice in knowing truth.
Newbigin brilliantly summarizes this part of the project in three main points. “1. Every kind of systematic thought has to begin from some starting point. It has to begin by taking some things for granted. In every domain of though it is always possible to question the starting point, to ask “Why this rather than another?” or “What grounds are there for starting here?”… No coherent thought is possible without presuppositions. … 2. Every society depends for its coherence upon a set of what Peter Berger calls “plausibility structures,” patterns of belief and practice accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to its members and which are not…. 3. Finally, what may be considered to be an opening of the door to relativism in the establishment as a philosophical commonplace that “the truth is much greater than any one person or any one religious tradition can grasp.” Newbigin critiques this commonplace rather harshly.
I will make a few comments on each point in relation to speaking the gospel in a Canadian pluralist society.
First, Newbigin considers Christian dogma to be the starting point, the set of presuppositions, for the Christian’s thinking. Certainly Christian teaching functions as a framework for all the thinking of a Christian. However, from the standpoint of knowing, should we accept dogma as a starting point? There still has to be a place where believers and non-believers begin, where they agree that to do otherwise is to collapse into meaninglessness. Having said this I recognize that Newbigin assumes this and when he speaks of Christian dogma as the starting point he means that once we have agreed that knowledge is possible then Christian dogma shapes interpretation of the world and in so doing creates the plausibility structure. Newbigin is quite clear about reason:
"The faculty which we call reason, the power of the human mind to think coherently and to organize the data of experience in such a way that it can be grasped in meaningful patterns, is necessarily involved in all knowing of any kind." (TGIAPS, p.10)
Second, the social conditions of belief, the “patterns of belief and practice accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to it members and which are not” is not, Newbigin says, “reason” operating in a sort of vacuum. Rather, reason must operate within the context of “the tradition of a community which cherishes and lives by the story of God’s saving acts.”
Nevertheless, I would point out that the New Testament strongly connects to the plausibility structures and standards, not only of the Hebrew world which found dreams, visions and prophecies as things that created or enhanced plausibility, but also to those things accepted by the Greeks and the Romans as creating plausibility. For example, eyewitness accounts, reference to specific dates, referents to historical people, referents to specific geographic locations and sites (such as David’s grave), as well as local customs and laws. At the same time there is a strong counter-cultural thrust in the rejection of myth. And finally, for both the Greco/Roman world and the Hebrew world, signs and wonders did not require a plausibility structure to be understood, but instead they contributed to the plausibility structure. In other words, in both the case of Jesus and the apostles, healing the sick was accepted as an affirmation of the truth of their message.
It would seem to me that this second point of Newbigin’s is pivotal for any consideration of communication in today’s Canadian society. What is it that contributes to the plausibility structure of this society? Perhaps readers might be willing to join in this discussion.

Do We Also Need To Do An Apologetic For Logic?

2008-09-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

There is also at this time a renewed interest in the work of Francis Schaeffer. I was present at Wheaton when he presented the sermons which later became the book: The God Who is There. Schaeffer had a profound and beneficial effect on my thinking and my spiritual walk. There is a core part of his methodology that needs to be thought through again.
Schaeffer was one of the first to wrestle with both apologetics and evangelism to what we now call post-modern people. He understood the central issues of post-enlightenment thinking and was able to marvelously illustrate them from the arts. He also grappled with the work of the Holy Spirit and of the Word of God and the reformed rejection of natural theology, which is the attempt to prove the existence of God apart from the revelation contained in Scripture.
However, he believed that apologetics is not only possible, but biblical. For him John 20:31 “but these are written that you may believe” is an invitation to apologetics-- the giving of reasons to believe, which is more than a defense.
Schaeffer spoke of “taking the roof off” of a person’s intellectual and spiritual house and letting existential rain come in. What he meant by that was that logic should be used to demonstrate the flaws in a non-theistic worldview, especially a worldview that we would now speak of as post-modern but which he spoke of as being “below the line of despair.” He saw the “roof” as the delusion of post-modern man that they can have modernism in science but post-modernism in ethics, art and spirituality. Once the roof was off, the rain could come in, that is, the reality of what the world really would look like if one actually lived out this worldview.
I think this approach, which he used in thousands of evangelistic conversations, has much for us to consider. The respectful approach that does not fear to engage a non-theistic or non-Christian worldview is very important. Further, when Schaeffer exposed the devastating consequences of post-modern thought and its linkage to the existential pain frequently being experienced by the people to whom he spoke, he would go beyond apologetics into soul care and soul cure.However, there also seemed to be in Schaeffer a need to convert people from a post-modern/Hegelian (below the line of despair) epistemology to a modern epistemology as part of “taking off the roof.” Schaeffer saw this from a non-acceptance of logic to an acceptance of logic, i.e., accepting that A cannot be non-A. This raises for us the issue: is it possible to do Christian apologetics without first doing an apologetic for a preferred epistemology?

Relational vs. Logical Apologetics

2008-09-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

Once I taught apologetics in an Asian country, and there was some concern that I would bring western rational apologetics which were completely irrelevant. Through the years, I have considered this more and more to be a just concern.
Much of the apologetics that has been written in the past fifty years by evangelical protestants has been based on apologetics written to counter the enlightenment. An example would be the early E. J. Carnell, Gordon H. Clark, and later Norman Geisler who presented logical defenses for the existence of God and for the Christian faith.
However, current writers (David Fitch for example) who desire to engage our culture, decry the classical apologetic project as “modern” and therefore by definition unable to address a post-modern society. In sum, what is meant by this critique is that the defense of the Christian faith to modern or enlightenment thinking is done so using enlightenment assumptions and methods. Hence, as more and more the enlightenment project is considered to have failed, the Christian apologies written against the enlightenment are seen to have actually been co-opted by it and therefore share in its failure.
In the July 2008 issues of Christianity Today and Books and Culture carry articles on apologetics and articles that are in and of themselves defenses of the Christian faith. Consistently, the writers argue for the faith. Alvin Plantinga presents a logically thick attack on naturalism. Other apologists are featured or referred to because they are answering various atheistic attacks presented in the past year. These atheistic attacks are not framed in a post-modern motif, but are classic modernist attacks which seek to refute the core claims of Christianity on the basis of empirical evidence and logic.
Thus the rise of an aggressive, logic/empirical atheist apologetic demonstrates that there is a continued need for a hard-core logic-based Christian apologetic response. As dense as argumentation like Plantinga’s is, it is not simply an intellectual sport, it is a spiritual activity of tearing down strongholds. Some might argue that an argument such as his does little in the arena of evangelism. I would counter by saying that the opposition arguments have done much in the promotion of atheism, so we should not discount the effect of a tightly argued Christian response. However, there is more to the problem than the perfection of argumentation. More in the next blog.

The Golden Apple of Relevancy

2007-07-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Two years ago everyone was eager to preach on the Da Vinci Code, and I suppose there might be a sermon here or there this summer on Harry Potter, the last book of the seven appearing as it is. The need to address what is current is ever with a preacher, and those preachers who ignore what is happening in the world soon pay the price, for their sermons not only seem to be irrelevant, they actually become irrelevant.

Ahh relevancy. The golden apple of communication, or Snow White’s stepmother’s apple, filled with poison. Add to this the need to be relevant to those who do not believe. The Jim and Casper go to church project reminds me of the project of the Anglican Church in Canada which a number of years ago contracted with one of Canada’s foremost atheists, Pierre Berton, to ask his opinion on what the church should do to be more relevant. The result was Berton’s book The Comfortable Pew in which he said many of the things we hear from Casper: forget religion, go out and do good.

When Erwin McManus tells Casper that he won’t understand much of what is going on during the Mosaic worship service, Casper is offended. But actually McManus is in principle correct, for our eyes are blinded to the meaning and relevancy of the Word of God until illuminated by the Holy Spirit. This would also hold true for the worship service to the extent that the worship service is a proclamation of the Word. That is, what is truly understood, in the sense of gaining knowledge of God, is understood because of a gracious act of the Holy Spirit.
I think in our preaching and in our church services we need to return to deep dependence on the Spirit. In saying this I do cringe, because it has been such a cliché. And, wow, aren’t we all dependent? So, I don’t mean to say it as an accusation, but as a way of saying, we have done this, but we need to revisit what we are doing in seeking the Spirit and revitalize the very act of seeking. Or, become seekers before we can preach to seekers. Otherwise, everything is irrelevant by definition.

Jim, Casper and St. Benedict Go to Church

2007-07-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Benedict left the life of Roman society, where he had been born to wealth and privilege, to please the Lord. He tried to live a solitary life, but as others came to be taught by him, we might say “discipled by him” he established thirteen monasteries over which he became abbot. He gave to these a book of rules, now called Benedict’s Rule, which established a routine of prayer and the reading of the Psalms. Benedict’s Rule is became the guiding rule for monasteries across Europe. It is believed that Benedict died in 547. No one has ever found fog machines mentioned in Benedict’s rule.

Randall Holm is a professor of Biblical studies at Providence College in Winnipeg. He writes in a recent issue of TESTIMONY, the magazine of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, that he went to visit an Anglican Church in Winnipeg called St. Benedict’s Table. He notes, from their website, that they describe themselves as “first and foremost a Eucharistic worshipping community that is rooted in the ancient future.” Holm describes the service, rooted in audible reading of Scripture, minimal instrumentation for singing, singing songs that seem “calm and quiet the soul,” silence, and of course the Eucharist. He says: “I confess, I walked away from St. Benedict’s table refreshed. I experienced what the Taize community describes as a “holy stop, a sabbatical rest, a truce of worries.”

One of the things lost in the current discussion about church, seekers, worship, is that from the beginning Willow Creek drew a distinction between the worship service and the seeker service. The concept was that Christians would surrender their “right” to worship on Sunday and instead worship mid-week, so that seekers could come on Sunday for a meeting geared to share the gospel with them, but which was not a worship service.

Willow faithfully followed this philosophy and reaped great results. But, few other churches truly followed them in a pure way. So, the Sunday service in most churches became “seeker” which meant a worship service that is not really a worship service, but which is, on the other hand, still a worship service. The results have been mixed. Mixed because what happened too often was that the elements of worship went out the window so that seekers might find a comfort zone.

Is this part of the problem that is creating Barna’s Revolution? That is really hard for me to make a comment on. But, in reading Jim & Casper go to Church I think that it has contributed to the problem. Christians who have grown up in the stripped down worship service find that, in spite of music that is on the edge, and technology that has a wow factor, their souls have not come to a holy stop.

To be honest, I have to say, I don’t think they came to a holy stop in the average evangelical service in the sixties or early seventies either. That is why the Boomers jumped at contemporary music with its streams from African-American worship, Pentecostalism, rock, and folk and probably some other streams as well. And, it has and remains good.

But I hear from Jim and Casper and many others that something is missing, and so missing that they are just simply quitting church.

So, we had better figure out what is missing, and get it back.

Casper and Jim... continued

2007-06-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Casper says: “Certainty is boring. Certainty is closed off. Certainty is against new information. Certainty is a kind of orthodoxy, really, and it was those kinds of “certainty” moments – when I would hear a pastor or others in a church declare themselves absolutely certain of heaven, God’s existence, truth—that I would get a little riled.” (p.153).

Yet, Casper says that he is certain that the U. S. involvement in Iraq is wrong. “However, if he had been in favor of the war in Iraq, well, we would have had a real hard time being friends, Christian or not.” Jim nails him on this, “That sounds somewhat less-than-open-minded, Casper.” (p.90)

This so much reminds me of hearing Francis Schaefer tell how followers of Jean Paul Sartre bowed their heads down and wept when they heard that Sartre had signed the Manifesto of the 121, a declaration from one hundred twenty one French intellectuals which condemned the French war against the Algerian insurgency. In signing Sartre violated the basic premise of his existentialism, that there are no standards, no morals, that one can only gain authenticity by an act of will.

The pull of existentialism, which has contributed more than one card to the hand of what we now call post-modernism, has been like a magnetic north to twentieth century theology. Coming late to evangelicalism, it holds out hope of some refreshment with its emphasis on becoming an authentic person, but also poses powerful dangers.

One such danger is the dilemma of either an irrational leap of faith, which results in “faith in faith” as Schaefer characterized it, or a smugness of certainty in a system that, once discovered, seems to answer all questions. I would propose that this is a false dilemma.

I think the dilemma is false because I see the Bible presenting a middle ground. God has acted in history, and there are witnesses. Yet, we are called upon to risk our eternal souls on their credibility. In the end, faith is faith, but it is not faith leaping into the unknown, it is faith in a God who truly exists, who truly sent his Son into our world to live, die, rise, ascend and come again. Thus, after the Bible, our most ancient document begins with Credo – I believe, and after that, all the things I believe in.

We truly need to hear a condemnation of smugness in stating our beliefs. We need to be honest that we are beset by doubts and assailed by fears. But, we must also say that our belief is not something that has been made up to make us feel better, but something that can be inquired into and about which an assessment of truth can be made.

Casper, Jim and Barna

2007-06-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

Of high interest is Jim & Casper Go to Church, published by Tyndale, 2007, a Barna Imprint. The premise is simple. Casper is an atheist from San Diego and Jim, who runs a ministry titled Off the Map contracts with Casper to visit a number of churches, discuss them, rate them, and produce this book. In spite of the fact that the book essentially supports Barna’s thesis in Revolution, and probably Jim Henderson’s thesis as well, the book produces great insights and profound challenges. Every pastor should read it.

What I like is the Q & A at back.. It seems to be a Q & A with Henderson, but it picked up some of my challenges and thoughts as I read through.

The book caused me to consider the following.

Is the imitation rock concert that we call a worship service, really a worship service? Casper wants to know if Jesus told us to buy those fog machines. I can see that if rock concerts are the culture of today, then we need to worship in that culture. But, has this picked up the same deadness as the Hammond organ worship service of the mid-twentieth century?

More deeply, what is a worship service?

Then, is our preaching nearly as relevant as we think it is? Casper is really difficult to challenge with a sermon. After hearing a sermon he counters with questions relating to overall biblical context and application to life. His critiques make me think more deeply about my sermons, and make me want to do way better.

And, in total resonance with Barna, both Casper and Jim want to deconstruct the church to what my son calls a pre-ecclesiology. Virtually echoing Barna, they want to know if the main mission of Jesus was to establish a church.

In this I hear a faint echo of Kierkegaard’s question: “how in Christendom can one be a Christian?” Is it really what God wanted – that we should all gather every week, sing, take an offering and listen to a sermon – and the Eucharist in some churches? Or was being a disciple intended to be something else? That is the challenge that Barna, and now Casper, are throwing down to us.

This blog is open for comments.

A Wall of Remembrance

2007-05-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Gracia Burnham who was the lone survivor after the Philippine army, in attempting to rescue her, her husband and a Filipina nurse, Mark Bowden says:

“The raid had been characterized by many in the press as a debacle, but Gracia lived up to her name. She thanked the Philippine people for their prayers, and she thanked the government for her rescue. She talked about how much her husband had loved the country.”
(Mark Bowden, “Jidahasts in Paradise” The Altlantic Monthly, March 2007).

I picture Hebrews 11 as a long wall dedicated to memory. Perhaps the first was the
Vietnam Memorial, quiet and long in its display of names. But since then we have seen walls of remembrance spring up after catastrophic events. Pictures, notes, letters, are pinned to them. I see Hebrews eleven as somewhat like that and pinned to it are the names of all the people of faith. The writer walks up and snatches off a piece of paper with a name on it – Able, turns to us and says a few words, perhaps reading from the note itself. And then, Abraham, and Sarah, and after them he begins to walk along the wall and read various names, almost randomly, adding here and there a comment. And there are more he says – too many to read all of them, but they are there. And from the time he wrote the epistle until now the wall has continued to fill up. Patrick, who brought Christ to the Irish, and Luther, and yes, a village pastor who preached even though it seemed no one cared, and a mother who prayed without ceasing for her daughter. On and on it goes. Gracia Burnham who endured unspeakable agony, only to see her husband and friend die in the end. And now three brothers in Turkey who were faithful to the end. Is there a piece of paper up there with my name on it? What does it say?

Gifting or Office?

2007-02-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

The following brief exchange is in response to my pastoral letter which may be found under President at www.cmacan.org The letter concerns the authority of a pastor over the teaching of the Word in the church. Sharon's concern is that I have stated that, with all proper disclaimers in place, the word is the word of the Lord. She asks if this is actually a reference to the prophetic gift.

I don't usually respond... but this time I couldn't help it. I was wondering where the gifts of prophet,apostle and evangelist fit in with this ministry of pastor. I think in a practical sense that we combine these roles and gifts -- pastor/evangelist or pastor/prophet. But I don't know anymore if this is really the right understanding or the best way. In the last couple of paragraphs of your letter I think you have combined the gifts of pastor and prophet. I would like to argue for more separation -- we need the prophet in our churches, in our denomination. But I don't necessarily agree that the pastor IS the prophet. I would love to see this conversation continued on your blog and see what others are thinking. Sharon

OK, I’ll move it over to the blog. But briefly what we have here is a distinction between office and gift. So, a pastor may not have the gift of prophet etc. but he is in charge of the teaching in his church by reason of office. And, no matter what, when he preaches he should expect the anointing for that moment. Now, what about pastors who have no giftedness in either prophecy or teaching? One really has to ask if they should be in the position of teaching every week, i.e., should they be the lead pastor? I don’t think so. With Sincerity, Franklin

Marks of the Church II

2007-02-03T12:03:00.000-08:00

Marks of the Church II

Marks of the Church II

One of the respondents asked for a fuller presentation of the Marks of the Church. Thomas Oden’s Systematic Theology, Life in the Spirit, Vol. 3, gives an excellent summary. The Reformed tradition identifies Word (true teaching), Sacrament (proper celebration of Lord’s Supper and Baptism), and Discipline. Earlier creeds identified the church by Unity (founded in Jesus Christ – 2 or 3 gathered in his name…), Holiness (set apart from the world), Catholicity (not bound to a particular place or time) and Apostolicity (grew out of and continues the teaching and ministry of the Apostles). Oden combines the two streams into a “consolidating thesis: That ekklesia in which the Word is rightly preached and sacraments rightly administered and discipline rightly ordered will be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”

This is very important because we have those who say that we should do mission first, that is, simply proclaim the gospel, and not worry at all about what comes out of it, i.e., the church. At first glance this may seem attractive. But in fact the church begins at Pentecost and it begins with the true preaching of the apostles, with baptism and the breaking of bread, with unity, for as the converts scattered they understood their continuing unity in the Holy Spirit, and with holiness.

This is the core. If we recapture it, then we can stop wasting ink telling each other that a church can be a church even if it meets in a cave or a garage and even if it uses a different format and on and on. Of course it can. But, it can’t be the church without the above marks. So I would beg you that when we talk about how the church needs to change etc. that we start here with the historic understanding of what is being talked about when we say “church.” From here the discussion has promise of being very fruitful.

Marks of the Church

2007-01-22T17:51:00.000-08:00

In late November 2006 the Saturday National Post Toronto magazine ran an article titled “God finds a home on Bay Street.” King-Bay chaplaincy, a ministry with a long a solid history, is featured, but also the fact that small groups that focus on prayer, Bible study or both, are beginning to proliferate in the financial district of Toronto.

For some these spiritual oases, as one person describes them, almost function as church. George Barna, in his book Revolution, says that this sort of this is what is beginning to replace traditional church. So the question: when is a group a church?

I think Barna might say that the question is irrelevant. The theological concept of identifying what is a church and what is not a church is simply a misconception. His perspective is completely modern, that is, focused on the individual. The individual must move forward in discipleship, becoming a person who meets the marks of a disciple as found in the New Testament. That is all that matters. Any means by which an individual can get help in doing that is fine. There is no need to worry about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the service provider, so to speak.

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I think the church is something in and of itself. The New Testament seems to make this clear – but in this piece I don’t want to go into a lengthy exposition of that. So, on that assumption, the church does have a particular place in the economy of God and her health and well being are matters of both concern and interest.

There are things which only the church can provide. These constitute the marks of the church. They include sound teaching that has an accountability structure behind it, and the sound administration of the sacraments, among other things.

At the same time the proliferation of groups and ministries in the market place has to be one of the most exciting spiritual things to happen in Canada in decades. People can and are moved forward in discipleship in these and other venues.

So, I wish to affirm and ratify such things. But, until the full ministry that God wishes to provide is provided through them, they are not church nor are they a substitute for church.

As I write this I am trying to do checks on myself to make sure that I am not doing “bunker mentality” stuff. If anyone wants to correct me, I will listen. Marks of the Church

Staying in Touch

2007-01-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

Downfall, a German film about he last days of Hitler, presents some of the most disturbing images of the second world war that I have ever seen. Hitler and his staff are in a large underground bunker as the Soviets advance on Berlin. As news comes of the collapse of German defenses, Hitler continues to order armies to move forward in a pincer movement and drive them back. The only problem? Those armies no longer exist in a meaningful fashion. The total disconnect is highlighted by Eva Braun’s writing to her sister telling her where items of jewelry have been left for repair, and what bills to expect. On the city streets it is obvious that there won’t be bills from any jewelry shops for quite awhile.

This event is perhaps the origin of the phrase “bunker mentality.” It is to take “believing in yourself” and “following your dream” to a place where only destruction awaits. It is to now listen to advice, to eliminate contrary information, to form a death wish rather than allow change.

Leadership requires that “bunker mentality” be resisted absolutely and rigoriously.

Rebirthing Simpson's Vision

2007-01-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

Rebirthing Simpson's Vision

Church as a Moral Project

2006-09-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

The National Post on Saturday September 23, 2006 published a very provocative column by Andrew Coyne on dual citizenship. Currently in Canada there is a debate on whether people should be allowed to be dual citizens, i.e., Canadians and whatever. Coyne said that Canadians have begun to look upon the nation as a service provider and hence they join in order to receive certain benefits. Instead, he argues, a nation is a “moral project” and people should join because they are committing to this moral project.

I have had to set aside the obvious question: “what is Canada’s moral project” because I can’t seem to come up with an answer. But my mind has turned on this intriguing thought to other commitments. For example, church.

In the nineties the presentation of church as a provider of services loomed on the horizon, and by the turn of the century was probably the most accepted profile among evangelicals. I don’t think it has made its way into formal theological expression, but certainly it has become a working ecclesiology.

And, while that was happening, the same motif was adopted as a definition of denominations. They are, in this motif, the next level of service providers. Denominations, and their subsets, districts, diocese, what have you, are there to provide resources and other services to the church, which in turn is there to provide resources and other services to the people who attend.

Like all concepts, there is of course a large element of truth in this. Churches have always provided for many needs in the lives of people, both individually and communally. For example, the church has frequently been a place for the training of musicians and for musical expression. This is a need that people have, that is, a need for beauty and artistic expression, and people still have this need. Many other felt or unfelt needs could be listed.

This is all fine and good. What I am wondering is this. To what extent have we lost the concept of the church as a moral and, I will add, a spiritual project? That is, the church as something which we join because we believe in what is happening there and we want to be part of making it happen?

As I write this I can already see the responses that will remind me that “this generation does not want to join – they are suspicious of organizations and reluctant to commit.” Perhaps I can jump ahead in the discussion and ask – are we as the church part of the problem? Have we contributed to this non-commitment/individualistic mind set? And, is it possible for pastors and people to find their way back to a concept of local church and denomination as being a project to which we commit?

Religious Passion and Modernism

2006-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Last week as I traveled across a land entry to the United States I noticed that the officer seemed tense and preoccupied. Amazingly American Customs/Immigration officers are usually relaxed and friendly. Perhaps it is part of putting a person at ease so that more truthful answers come – I’m not sure. After my journey was complete I learned of the disruption of the terrorist plot in London. Was I ever glad I was driving that day, and not flying!

On cue the head scratching began in the media. These were young men who were born in England. And one was not of foreign extraction, but was a convert to the religion. Then, the now too commonplace talk about extremism and youthful alienation, but underneath one hears an unsettled befuddlement.

Truly the transformation of young British lads into terrorists is sad. But perhaps sadder still is the fact that our ruling elites, in government and media, operate on an assumption, a myth if you will, that modernism is so attractive that anyone who comes in contact with it, anyone especially who is raised in modernism, will be infected by it. But perhaps the infection works the other way.

The bacillus of tuberculosis is surrounded by a waxy substance that protects it from being killed even by many harsh chemicals. For this reason it can survive and slowly multiply in many environments. The waxy shell can even preserve the bacillus from the digestive capacity of human white cells, so that, when it first enters a human the white cells ingest it, but, inside the white cell it may live, and even multiply, and eventually eat the white cell from the inside.

The medieval religion has a strong, almost impervious shell around it, which, for want of a better word I will simply call religious passion, an absolute single minded conviction of being right.

Our elites have smugly assumed that the white cells of modernism can mop up this--and other--religious passions. Progress, modernism teaches, is inevitable. Hence, a medieval religion, with its belief in the supernatural, a code of conduct, authoritarian government, and a rejection of the very category of the secular, will, when exposed to modernism, be assimilated. But, to our elites' horror, the medieval religion is eating away at modernism from the inside. And the toys of modernism, its cell phones, chemicals, and its airplanes, are used to mock it by turning them into weapons.

So, if we, the evangelical elite, are sitting back hoping that these folks who have immigrated will just wake up and smell the coffee in our wonderful land, we too have bought into the myth of modernity. Do we think that if they just hang around long enough eventually they will wander into one of our rock and roll praise services and accept Jesus? Perhaps its time for us to wake up and smell the coffee.

What is to be done? Well, to start, I am right now reading the holy book of the medieval religion. I hope to have read it cover to cover by late fall. That is how I am starting. Why? Because I need to get serious about having intelligent, meaningful conversations about God with these folks. And I suspect that when others, perhaps hundreds our thousands,also begin such conversations,we will discover how shallow our modernist and our post-modernist apologetic are, and then perhaps we will begin a new hermeneutical journey and the design of a relevant apologetic.

In my blogs I am trying to raise questions, rather than give solutions. I am thinking out loud, which as I understand it is part of what blogs are for. I invite any who stumble across this to join in this thinking.

Is How I Treat a Housecleaner a Justice Issue?

2006-07-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Some time ago a pastor asked me how churches could become involved in justice issues other than lobbying government. It is an important question, for the Bible, especially Romans 13, clearly indicates that government has been established, ordained, by God to mind the business of justice.

Perhaps lobbying strikes church leaders as a tainted activity, given its association with bribery, both subtle and overt. But, in a pure sense, to be present with leaders, both those who form policy and those who implement it, is a good thing. We must always keep in mind that while we are to submit to government, in a democracy each of us bears responsibility for government actions. Thus, when we speak to government we do not do so as supplicants, but as stakeholders.

But is this all? That is the question. I think we also must look at how we act in our own lives. What are the justice issues that we encounter, if not day by day, at least now and again?

In a review/discussion of You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again by Suzanne Hansen, Caitlin Flanagen (The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006) delves into the question of justice towards those who work for us. The use of hired help, of servants, is becoming more and more prevalent in our society. People hire house cleaners and lawn cutters, and having a nanny is not all that uncommon.

Flanagan points out that these people are frequently mistreated, especially if they live-in or are present on a regular basis. Flanagan quotes another writer, Cheryl Mendelson in Home Comforts (a book my wife is gradually reading through) – Mendelson points out that people who work in our homes frequently have a job with ‘no health benefits, no pension plans, no vacation pay, no job security, no hope of advancement, and no redress for grievances and injustices except to leave a job they may desperately need.”

So, one of the things we can do about justice is examine any employer – employee relationships that we are involved in. Because it is our pocket book, do we in any way exploit them? Do we fulfill basic responsibilities for their well being?

Here is a thought. Perhaps this could be approached from the stand point of stewardship. A steward in an ancient household had servants under him. But, he knew that he was acting on behalf of his master. Thus, as employers, we should only see ourselves as stewards representing Christ in the employee/employer relationship.

Final quote from Ms. Flanagan: “When a wealthy woman hires an eighteen-year old girl as a live-in nanny, she has bought herself some help, but she has also – if she is a decent person—given herself the responsibility of taking a motherly interest in the young person.”

Historic tension between evangelicals and modernism

2006-07-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

David Fitch recently spoke at a seminar that I attended on the need of the church to leave modernism and connect with the post-modern world. Of interest was his thought that the belief in healing of the physical body, which was a teaching of A. B. Simpson, is not modern. Not that it is post modern either, but the doctrine does imply that science does not have an explanation for everything, which at least resonates with, shall we say, unspoken assumptions of many who class themselves as post modern.

This has caused me to reflect that while much of the evangelical way of doing church is a reflection of modernism, there are also many teachings, and some practices, which have always been in opposition to modernism. This is evident in more than one area, although the belief in miracles, healing and the affirmation of sign gifts, such as speaking in tongues and words of knowledge are the most obvious. I would, for starters, also note the following two.

The continued affirmation of creation as a special act of God. Evangelicals in particular have been reluctant to give up the Genesis account. The overall belief that God acted to create, and the rejection of a position sometimes called theistic evolution, has and continues to be a point of contention with modernism.

The belief in the inspiration of the Bible and the belief in its stories as having actually happened is as well an on-going point of opposition to the modern world view. While it could be argued that the doctrine of inerrancy is at its core a modern philosophical stand, it was an attempt at meeting a modernist challenge. My point is, that here, as in many other places, the methodology of modernism was adopted in order to address modernism.

Atonement

2006-05-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

Atonement

The May issue of CT contains an article "Nothing But the Blood" by Mark Dever. Dever notes a resurgence in alternate views of the atonement, alternate that is to substitutionary atonement. A facination with alternate views can be picked up in some of the "emergent" writers. In their desire to see more community they seem to edge away from people becoming Christians as individuals, and want to attach that to a view of the atonement that presents as something other than individuals having their sins forgiven. Some of the historic alternate views are: Christus Victor, Christ won the battle over principalities and powers -- usually read with a demythologized hermeneutic as sociologically principalities and powers, i.e., powerful social structures and contructs which enslave people, especially the poor and powerless, but which could as well be read from a supernaturalist hermeneutic as demonic forces; and variations of the moral influence theory -- that in viewing the cross we realize that God really loves us and so we want to be more like God.

Dever is right when he asks: "...why pit these theories against each other and discount, ignore, or diminish biblical language that describes the death of Christ?" That all the various theories have some biblical support was presented so well by Roger Nicole in his chapter "The Nature of Redemption" in Christian Faith and Modern Thought (ed. Carl F. H. Henry, 1964). Nicole lists six key terms that describe atonement and shows that they are all interconnected: Sacrifice, Reconciliation; Propitiation; Battlefield; Purchase; and Court of Law.

I believe that each of these is important, but if there is one that is the keystone it is propitiation. Unless there is propitiation the demands of the court of law are not met, we are not redeemed (I reject the notion that it was Satan who was paid -- no, it was God the Father), and no reconciliation. Because their was propitiation there was indeed a victory over demonic powers, not because they were paid off, but because their right of access is removed. And, there is moral influence, because I am in awe that such a price was paid and I understand that it places me under obligation to the one who paid it.

But, if propitiation is not what happened, then I beg someone to give to me a phenomonology -- a pure description -- of the dynamics of what did occur. How exactly does it work that the death of this perfect man defeated the evil powers -- be they demythologized sociological structures or whatever, or supernatural demonic forces. And more, if there is no propitiation, then why would I ever see the cross as a sign of God's love. I would join those who would see it as a horror, a kind of cosmic child abuse. And, by the way, I have always hated the illustration of the man who let his son be ground up in the gears of a draw bridge to save the passenger train for that very reason. It is not atonement.

Without propitiation we either romanticize the cross, or we dismiss the cross and fall into legalism, or some kind of combination of both. I wonder if some of the problems that the emergent writers are concerned with actually arise out of evangelicalisms losing its grip on the meaning of the cross as substitution rather than the opposite.

Rebirthing Simpson's Vision

2006-04-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

Rebirthing Simpson's Vision
Years ago I sat with my highschool classmates while a representative from General Moters invited us to join the annual car design contest for high school students. I, like tens of thousands of boys, tried to draw a new car. But, the logistics of finally producing, from scratch, a 1/12 scale dream car in wood overwhelmed me, and I looked for a different future. But not everyone. Some went on. In the current issue (March 2006) of Car and Driver Patrick Bedard reviews a new book by John L. Jacobus: The Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild. "GM wanted innovators...who could predict the future with their dream-car designs." And some did. From the contest came some of GM's top designers such as Virgil Exner Jr, Charles M. Jordan and Terry Henline. Sadly, GM killed off the Guild in 1968 when it decided it "was in the business of manufacturing and selling cars, and not in the business of teaching America's youth the intricacies of automotive design."

Reviewer Bedard comments: "But maybe the teaching worked the other way. The rise of guild graduates within GM, to about 35 percent of its stylists in 1957, suggests that it was the youth of America doing the teaching."

And I might add, that perhaps this tells us why GM has produced unbelivably boring cars for the last twenty years. They stopped being taught by teens, they stopped developing a talent pool from high school up.

Currently the evangelical church is, rightly, concerned with the training of leaders. What I notice is that this concern is focused primarily in two places. First, on those who are already in leadership positions. Who are the bright and shining stars? Send them for more training. Who are the ones who are OK -- the B level leaders? Coach them. All fine and good. I have no complaints.

The second point of concern is with college/seminary training. Here the waters muddy. Why can't they turn out the highly polished leaders that require no further work? Or at least, that is what I hear. Nevertheless, I am deeply a believer in formal training for ministry.

But, what about before college/seminary? What about the youth, the high school level? Have we forgotten them? Have we turned the youth programs into sophisticated spiritual kindergartens? Is everything focused on appeasing parents who want a safe place for their children? Are we being taught by, as well as teaching, the youth of our churches the intricacies of Bible study, world changing prayer, preaching (yes, I said preaching), evangelism - including cross cultural evangelism (which is more than hauling a bunch off for a Short Term Mission Adventure), peer-counseling? And the list could go on.

Even more, and I know this can sound like a cliche, are we willing to learn from them? Fisher Body Guild judges looked at a lot of ho-hum entries, and I am sure many that were laughable, but year after year, there were some fresh concepts presented that shaped the look of future cars. Are we listening to the high schoolers of today? Do some of them have things to say that can shape the church of 2015?

Beginning

2006-03-27T14:24:00.000-08:00

Recovering the Vision of A. B. Simpson is, to begin with, a small homage to the Canadian Theological Seminary publication Rebirth of a Vision. It was then our desire to explore the nuances of Simpson's thought and apply them to the church in the eighties.

So long ago! But, the desire still remains. Actively I hope to comment on current trends, thoughts, books, articles and perhaps even movies and T.V. shows, as well as give thoughts of my own. The idea is to add stimulation to the on-going conversation in the church, especially the Canadian church, on how, once again, we can be part of the holistic vision of a leader such as A.B. Simpson. But, I will seldom actually be referencing Simpson. Instead, the reader should understand that his life and thought form a backdrop, perhaps even a stage, for the thoughts and dialogue which I hope will occur here.