As you should know by now I'm a huge baseball fan and as such I found myself spending my Sunday afternoon watching the Pirates vs. Reds game on tv and watching the Orioles game via mlb.com gamecast. During the telecast on FSN one of the announcers began to discuss baseball tradition and the important role it plays in helping teams and the game. The announcer also made the point that it is becoming necessary for the teams to bring in the players of older championship teams (i.e. the '79 Pirates) to help create some sense of belonging and connectedness to the organization with the younger players.
As I thought about this it seemed like a good idea to me, I long for the winning ways of the older Oriole teams, the days of the Oriole Way with Weaver, Palmer, Powell, the days of legend that I don't remember but that I've heard about time and time again. I also thought about football, of course I would love the Vikings to rise again and become the Purple People Eaters of yore.
It seems to me that Sports fans constantly talk about and long for tradition lived out in their teams. It seems that this desire is part of the torture of having a team relocate from one city to another. If a team moves then in a sense the tradition dies, the character seems to be ontologically changed and thus it just isn't the same. Think about when the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. Why did they change their name? In part is was because the city filed a suit against the NFL to retain the name and the records. Thus when a new team came back into Cleveland the name and records were in place and the tradition of the Browns could pick right back up where is left off with the dog-pound intact and everything.
It seems that it's not just sports fans that long for tradition either. Towns and communities seek to keep various traditions alive, our nation has traditions like the 4th of July and all the local customs that are entailed with that. Tradition is everywhere and is commonly held as a good thing to sustain within our culture, but the question I must as is, "Why is the church an anomaly to this?"
You may have though that this post was going to just be about baseball and football but really the aforementioned baseball commentator started getting me thinking about why if society (via sports and other things) values tradition so much then why does so much of the American church seek to rid itself of any sort of Christian tradition?
Why over the past 20+ years has American Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) pushed to rid itself of the life-giving traditions of the Church? Why have we stopped following the Christian calendar? Why have we stopped fasting? Why have we left the songs of the faith and tried to push all forms of tradition out of our churches?
Granted the Emergent movement is trying to remedy this, but the problem with them is that they see tradition as merely something ascetic and enjoyable rather than an authoritative life practice. The problem with the Emergents is that they can embrace the traditions but they appropriate them in such a matter that they continue in their heresies and blasphemies just like the Nestorians and Arians of old.
I have heard the Jaroslav Pelikan once said that "traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, tradition is the living faith of the dead." I would add to that that the true faith of the Church is found in her traditions as they live and breathe among us. In fact our Holy Scriptures are very much a product of the tradition of the faith and we have them in part because holy men and women saw fit to preserve these letters and gospels and pass them on as authoritative texts.
Yes, there is a danger that the life-giving traditions can become dry and stale examples of nothing more than traditionalism, but it is our job to remember these things, to live them and to allow them to be authoritative to us so that we may be able to live in the heritage of the Christian faith.
Just as the FNS announcer saw it as a good thing for the Pirates and Reds to bring in their "cloud of witnesses" to attest to the younger generations the heritage of their organization so we must never forget our ways and embrace the traditions of the faith or else we risk forgetting the faith altogether. Why evangelicals see it as necessary to abandon tradition in hope of winning converts is beyond me. We do these hypothetical converts a disservice when we initiate them into a tradition-less faith that is devoid of the truth and the power of the gospel. Obviously we want to remove hindrances but in order to be of any salvific good we must live and breath the language of faith and then explain that language of faith with peace, patience and love to those who see the fullness of truth that is found in Christianity.
Showing posts with label Relevant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relevant. Show all posts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Shared Experiences
Much of what is below is still a work in progress (especially given I just started thinking about this about 3 minutes ago) but I wanted to throw it out there before I forgot it (as I usually do).
I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.
After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.
I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.
As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.
I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)
The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?
If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).
Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).
My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.
While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.
- Ben
I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.
After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.
I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.
As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.
I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)
The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?
If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).
Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).
My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.
While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.
- Ben
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Flippancy with Orthodoxy
I'm writing a paper this semester on the addition of the "Filioque" clause (for a more detailed explanation click here) in the Nicene Creed. While this may seem like a really nerdy project, and indeed it probably is, the reason I've elected to write on it is because this is a topic that is historically important but also one that I find to be very important for personal piety - especially if I am going to lead a congregation in saying the creed some day.
One may think that this is just a creedal variant and thus it only makes a difference in the deep realm of theology and not in that of the average church. Let me say that I agree with the early church fathers when they often argued that godliness (holiness) were one and the same with correct belief. They taught that out of correct belief comes correct action. While I don't want to get into the deep ramifications of the Filioque insertion, I do believe that it affects our view of the Trinity and thus it effects our view of God. Since I believe we should try to think rightly about God I also believe that I should be concerned with this issue, especially since I hold the Nicene Creed close to my heart as a definitive statement of Orthodoxy.
Since I'm not sure how this inserted statement lines up with scriptural orthodoxy I have chosen to err on the side of not saying "and the Son" when I recite the Nicene Creed. Please know that I'm not saying all this to condemn those who don't think about this, I simply bring it up for two reasons: 1. it's something that I've been thinking through for the past year or so and 2. I catch a lot of crap for thinking this way.
The second reason is the one that I would like to address. Most of the crap that I catch for thinking so intently on this subject are from good friends who joke about it in good fun. I have no problem with this. I don't think it's sacrilege and I can take a joke. I'm sure I've probably been more sacrilegious than all of them combined. However, I am concerned with the number of people who flippantly don't care about this issue and joke about it based on that.
I don't want to be condemnatory toward the laity but I very disappointed in the seminarians who openly mock the notion that one would seriously think about this issue. This is seminary, this is the place where we are suppose to think on these sorts of things and I find it extremely disheartening that there are people on our campus that will argue about our ethos statement against drinking but will not think seriously about the creed we recite and what is says about our God. I am even more depressed when I think about being on chapel team last year. I was on a team that was supposed to lead the community in worship, of which the creeds were occasionally a part, and I was openly mocked by the team for declining to lead the congregation in the recitation of the Nicene Creed because I didn't want to lead them astray one way or the other.
I am amazed with the flippant nature Orthodoxy is treated with among the student body. I allow that this may be a "small issue" (though historically it may be the largest) but there is also a great deal of contempt that is shown toward historic orthodox doctrines in an effort to be creative and think outside of the box. While it is ok to think critically I find it disturbing when we treat historical Christian orthodoxy as chains from which to be freed. This even occurs among the faculty at times. I was in class the other day with a highly published professor and he closely approached the Arian line as he openly pondered if there was a point in eternity before creation at which Christ was unbegotten. He was very careful to say that there was always a Trinity (and thus avoided complete Arianism), but that there may have been a point in eternity when Christ was not begotten of the Father.
I shudder when i think about the generation of Pastors this seminary is training. We are neglecting the substance of the faith in an effort to create pastors that are able to memorize their sermons, use good illustrations, and learn how to be 'relevant'...and for what? So that they can recite sermons without substance from memory? So they can illustrate and perpetuate a form of weak Christianity? So they can lead people away from the Holy Faith and straight into nominal Christianity, in a nominal way?
Lord Have Mercy!!
May God save his people and bless his inheritance!!
One may think that this is just a creedal variant and thus it only makes a difference in the deep realm of theology and not in that of the average church. Let me say that I agree with the early church fathers when they often argued that godliness (holiness) were one and the same with correct belief. They taught that out of correct belief comes correct action. While I don't want to get into the deep ramifications of the Filioque insertion, I do believe that it affects our view of the Trinity and thus it effects our view of God. Since I believe we should try to think rightly about God I also believe that I should be concerned with this issue, especially since I hold the Nicene Creed close to my heart as a definitive statement of Orthodoxy.
Since I'm not sure how this inserted statement lines up with scriptural orthodoxy I have chosen to err on the side of not saying "and the Son" when I recite the Nicene Creed. Please know that I'm not saying all this to condemn those who don't think about this, I simply bring it up for two reasons: 1. it's something that I've been thinking through for the past year or so and 2. I catch a lot of crap for thinking this way.
The second reason is the one that I would like to address. Most of the crap that I catch for thinking so intently on this subject are from good friends who joke about it in good fun. I have no problem with this. I don't think it's sacrilege and I can take a joke. I'm sure I've probably been more sacrilegious than all of them combined. However, I am concerned with the number of people who flippantly don't care about this issue and joke about it based on that.
I don't want to be condemnatory toward the laity but I very disappointed in the seminarians who openly mock the notion that one would seriously think about this issue. This is seminary, this is the place where we are suppose to think on these sorts of things and I find it extremely disheartening that there are people on our campus that will argue about our ethos statement against drinking but will not think seriously about the creed we recite and what is says about our God. I am even more depressed when I think about being on chapel team last year. I was on a team that was supposed to lead the community in worship, of which the creeds were occasionally a part, and I was openly mocked by the team for declining to lead the congregation in the recitation of the Nicene Creed because I didn't want to lead them astray one way or the other.
I am amazed with the flippant nature Orthodoxy is treated with among the student body. I allow that this may be a "small issue" (though historically it may be the largest) but there is also a great deal of contempt that is shown toward historic orthodox doctrines in an effort to be creative and think outside of the box. While it is ok to think critically I find it disturbing when we treat historical Christian orthodoxy as chains from which to be freed. This even occurs among the faculty at times. I was in class the other day with a highly published professor and he closely approached the Arian line as he openly pondered if there was a point in eternity before creation at which Christ was unbegotten. He was very careful to say that there was always a Trinity (and thus avoided complete Arianism), but that there may have been a point in eternity when Christ was not begotten of the Father.
I shudder when i think about the generation of Pastors this seminary is training. We are neglecting the substance of the faith in an effort to create pastors that are able to memorize their sermons, use good illustrations, and learn how to be 'relevant'...and for what? So that they can recite sermons without substance from memory? So they can illustrate and perpetuate a form of weak Christianity? So they can lead people away from the Holy Faith and straight into nominal Christianity, in a nominal way?
Lord Have Mercy!!
May God save his people and bless his inheritance!!
Monday, April 02, 2007
Thoughts After a Shane and Shane Concert
On Saturday I ventured up to Cedarville, OH primarily to hang out with my friend Becca and also to see Shane and Shane in concert. Here are a few thoughts from the trip:
1. Sugar-free Red Bull works as well and tastes just as good as regular Red Bull.
Even though Red Bull is an essential part of my routine when I run sound at concerts, it was needed for this one as well. I ended up staying in Cedarville until after 1:00am talking and then decided to drive the 3 hours back to Wilmore so I could make it back for Church in the Morning. I had a hard time deciding on the sugar-free variety but I am now sold on it. It does lack just a little in the "liquid Smartie" taste as Nate Jacoby coined it. But it's hardly noticeable and if you don't think about it the difference is non-existent.
2. Shane and Shane seem like the type of people I would want to run sound for.
I have not always had the greatest experience running sound for artists. Some are great people to work with and some are just jerks. Sadly this includes worship leaders as I've worked with more than my share of difficult worship leaders. While you can't always tell what an artist is like from on stage you can notice a few things. The first thing I noticed was how laid back they were. There were a few minor sound glitches and things didn't sound "fantastic" but they (and their openers) were incredibly laid back and just rolled with it. We found out halfway through the show that Shane Everett was actually the one running sound for the openers and doing the 'check' for he and Shane Barnard. This is amazing. Most bands tour with a front of house tech (at a minimum) and usually a monitor tech, and are completely anal about everything, this was assuredly not the case here. They approached the show as if they were just spending an evening with friends and weren't worried if everything was going to be "performed" correctly. They didn't seem to present themselves as stars and appeared really down to earth. It could be argued that all this is a facade, but from my experience (although limited) it seems that they are the real thing. I came away from the show thinking that these are the type of people that I would enjoy running sound for and would even do it for free if given the chance. That is much more than I can say about most artists and as sad as it may be this includes a good number of Christian artists and worship leaders.
3. Shane and Shane's newer songs seem to lack the lyrical "zip" or depth that the older ones have. I'm not quite sure what it is that I'm referring to here, but there is a noticeably difference in the lyrical content of the older songs and the newer ones. The newer songs are still good, but they seem to be lacking in power and the ability to pierce to the heart when compared to the old ones. Maybe this is because many of the older songs were actually modified Psalms or other pieces of scripture. One could argue that I am just biased because the new songs are obviously new and I haven't had time to emotionally and experientially associate feelings with them. Although this is a valid point I don't think it's necessarily the correct one. I think the new music is good but it seems that they are trying to be more lyrically creative and while not bad it is bringing a slight shift to the scriptural weight and deep yearning that has come to define their music.
4. I can't think of a sentence which describes this point.
At the concert Shane and Shane played the song "Yearn" which includes these lyrics:
I think this song is fantastic and it is one of my favorites. As they were singing I had a few thoughts concerning the phrase "that I might seek and find my God." While the thoughts in the song convey a sense of yearning and longing for God and also convey a Scriptural anticipation they also sounded to me in that moment to convey a sense of not having found God yet. While this is a beautiful perspective on the 'already but not yet' nature of the Kingdom and our lives with God I also thought of this phrase in juxtaposition with a phrase from the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The phrase I'm referring to in the Divine Liturgy reads:
To be fair I don't really see these phrases as juxtaposed but it was entertaining this thought of apparent juxtaposition that started the following thoughts. While the lyrics of the song are meant to convey a longing for God it seems to me that if taken out of context they could be used to convey a sense of postmodern agnosticism. It seems to me that one of things that typifies postmodernism is an unwillingness to definitively claim truth. This tendency may also be creeping into some of the more 'emergent' circles of Christianity in their attempts to be relevant. While postmodernism says that we can't know truth or, maybe more aptly, that all truth is relative, the postmodern church may be tempted to work within that paradigm and thus claim that there is truth and we think it is in Christ. This leads to a sense of 'we know, but we really can't be sure.' Thus, for the postmodern individual, we are still hoping that we can somehow, if it were at all possible, "seek and find our God," as the song says.
As I thought about this postmodern agnosticism I thought that the church does not need to commiserate with the postmodern as many of the emergents do. Rather, the church needs to boldly shout as the Orthodox Church does that "We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith," and this truth is in "worshiping the undivided Trinity," because "the Trinity has saved us." Maybe this sounds elitist or arrogant, but in an age of uncertainty where all truth is perceived as relative we do not need to fall into the trap of claiming we don't know. It seems to me that if we truly wanted to be relevant (I shudder at the use of the word) then then best thing we can do is boldly proclaim what we know to be true and hold to that truth no matter how much the culture claims that we can't be certain. For it truly is a mystery that "Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again." But just because it's a mystery doesn't make it any less true. It seems that now more than ever we should be embracing the historic creeds of the Church, not because they're ascetically pleasing (like the emergents use them) but because they indicate the truth that has been handed down to us through the ages of faith.
1. Sugar-free Red Bull works as well and tastes just as good as regular Red Bull.
Even though Red Bull is an essential part of my routine when I run sound at concerts, it was needed for this one as well. I ended up staying in Cedarville until after 1:00am talking and then decided to drive the 3 hours back to Wilmore so I could make it back for Church in the Morning. I had a hard time deciding on the sugar-free variety but I am now sold on it. It does lack just a little in the "liquid Smartie" taste as Nate Jacoby coined it. But it's hardly noticeable and if you don't think about it the difference is non-existent.
2. Shane and Shane seem like the type of people I would want to run sound for.
I have not always had the greatest experience running sound for artists. Some are great people to work with and some are just jerks. Sadly this includes worship leaders as I've worked with more than my share of difficult worship leaders. While you can't always tell what an artist is like from on stage you can notice a few things. The first thing I noticed was how laid back they were. There were a few minor sound glitches and things didn't sound "fantastic" but they (and their openers) were incredibly laid back and just rolled with it. We found out halfway through the show that Shane Everett was actually the one running sound for the openers and doing the 'check' for he and Shane Barnard. This is amazing. Most bands tour with a front of house tech (at a minimum) and usually a monitor tech, and are completely anal about everything, this was assuredly not the case here. They approached the show as if they were just spending an evening with friends and weren't worried if everything was going to be "performed" correctly. They didn't seem to present themselves as stars and appeared really down to earth. It could be argued that all this is a facade, but from my experience (although limited) it seems that they are the real thing. I came away from the show thinking that these are the type of people that I would enjoy running sound for and would even do it for free if given the chance. That is much more than I can say about most artists and as sad as it may be this includes a good number of Christian artists and worship leaders.
3. Shane and Shane's newer songs seem to lack the lyrical "zip" or depth that the older ones have. I'm not quite sure what it is that I'm referring to here, but there is a noticeably difference in the lyrical content of the older songs and the newer ones. The newer songs are still good, but they seem to be lacking in power and the ability to pierce to the heart when compared to the old ones. Maybe this is because many of the older songs were actually modified Psalms or other pieces of scripture. One could argue that I am just biased because the new songs are obviously new and I haven't had time to emotionally and experientially associate feelings with them. Although this is a valid point I don't think it's necessarily the correct one. I think the new music is good but it seems that they are trying to be more lyrically creative and while not bad it is bringing a slight shift to the scriptural weight and deep yearning that has come to define their music.
4. I can't think of a sentence which describes this point.
At the concert Shane and Shane played the song "Yearn" which includes these lyrics:
Holy design
this place in time
that i might seek and find my God
my God
Lord i want to yearn for You
i want to burn with passion
over You and only You
Lord i want to yearn
I think this song is fantastic and it is one of my favorites. As they were singing I had a few thoughts concerning the phrase "that I might seek and find my God." While the thoughts in the song convey a sense of yearning and longing for God and also convey a Scriptural anticipation they also sounded to me in that moment to convey a sense of not having found God yet. While this is a beautiful perspective on the 'already but not yet' nature of the Kingdom and our lives with God I also thought of this phrase in juxtaposition with a phrase from the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The phrase I'm referring to in the Divine Liturgy reads:
We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity, for the Trinity has saved us
To be fair I don't really see these phrases as juxtaposed but it was entertaining this thought of apparent juxtaposition that started the following thoughts. While the lyrics of the song are meant to convey a longing for God it seems to me that if taken out of context they could be used to convey a sense of postmodern agnosticism. It seems to me that one of things that typifies postmodernism is an unwillingness to definitively claim truth. This tendency may also be creeping into some of the more 'emergent' circles of Christianity in their attempts to be relevant. While postmodernism says that we can't know truth or, maybe more aptly, that all truth is relative, the postmodern church may be tempted to work within that paradigm and thus claim that there is truth and we think it is in Christ. This leads to a sense of 'we know, but we really can't be sure.' Thus, for the postmodern individual, we are still hoping that we can somehow, if it were at all possible, "seek and find our God," as the song says.
As I thought about this postmodern agnosticism I thought that the church does not need to commiserate with the postmodern as many of the emergents do. Rather, the church needs to boldly shout as the Orthodox Church does that "We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith," and this truth is in "worshiping the undivided Trinity," because "the Trinity has saved us." Maybe this sounds elitist or arrogant, but in an age of uncertainty where all truth is perceived as relative we do not need to fall into the trap of claiming we don't know. It seems to me that if we truly wanted to be relevant (I shudder at the use of the word) then then best thing we can do is boldly proclaim what we know to be true and hold to that truth no matter how much the culture claims that we can't be certain. For it truly is a mystery that "Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again." But just because it's a mystery doesn't make it any less true. It seems that now more than ever we should be embracing the historic creeds of the Church, not because they're ascetically pleasing (like the emergents use them) but because they indicate the truth that has been handed down to us through the ages of faith.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Current?
This post has been in my mind for a while, and thus I finally decided to write it. [edit: I penned most of this right after Christmas/January break 1/29 to be exact, and didn't post it because it wanted to edit it. So now I am doing it. Any significant thoughts that I add will be indicated in brackets and italics.] [edit 2: I reposted it but it posted way down on the list so i'm changing the date and reposting it.]
The thoughts started while I was reading Os Guinness' Prophetic Untimeliness, a book that Kyle Nagy recommended to me a year or so ago. I decided to read it over Christmas break and am just finishing it up. [edit: at the end of January]
As I read the introduction I felt as if I was reading my own blog... Well at least the thoughts from my blog put in coherent sentence structure by an Oxford educated man. The thoughts that I am talking about are the ones in the post entitled Postmodernism and other similar posts.
Although I saw some similarities between my post and Os' introduction there was also a difference, namely, that while I was critiquing our emphatuation with Postmodernism, he was critiquing modernism or more specifically our view of time. He did this, ironically without embracing Postmodernism, yay!!
Guiness argues that we are too caught up in being relevant or as he phrases it "timely." Basically what it says is that we place way to much importance on staying current. This caused me to wonder about that nature and the development of theology in recent decades or even centuries.
It seems to me that so many theologians today are busy trying to come up with a new idea or trying to discuss the latest trend that they forget what made the great Christian thinkers of the past great - the trial of Church history. We bounce from idea to idea and consider men like Pinnock, Sanders, Piper, Pagit, and so many others to be great thinkers and the new standard for where theology is going. We hold them up with the great minds of Christian antiquity like St. Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Ignatius, forgetting that it wasn't the fact that Augustine and the rest came up with great ideas that made them great, rather it was that their ideas lasted the test of time. They were forged in Church history! Their ideas slowly progressed throughout the church and were slowly approved of by the masses of Christians throughout the world.
Today we dialogue about ideas in seconds and publish articles after a month or a year of thought. Once these things are published, Pastors, laity, and students who strive to be on the "cutting edge" grab ahold of them like they've found the Holy Grail. There is no sense of historical community, no trial by fire. We don't allow time for these ideas to circulate through the church and and be approved or repudiated by the masses.
One chief example of this is Open Theism. Clark Pinnock published a book and so did a couple of his friends, their ideas spread through the seminaries and Christian colleges like crazy. The ideas were new and trendy and it seems that may decided to embrace the idea because it appeared to "work" and it was the new thing.
There was little dialogue on this concept done in the churches, this concept was strictly and ivory tower debate among scholars. There was no time given for this idea to pass through the godly saints of the church, the masses of saints who are out of touch with scholarly circles. It was simple, they had an idea, the published the idea and now there are many open theists around the globe.
Suppose this process had been the case with Arianism back in the early centuries of the church (300-500ad). We would have surely had a problem on our hands. Suppose for a moment that Arias had and idea, wrote a book and published it. Suppose the communication was as quick as it is now. Arianism would have spread geographically to all parts of the church. The Orthodox faith of the Trinity would have been attacked from all sides [This is not to say that Arianism has not spread, but rather to say that it's spread was contained by the filter of Christian Saints testing and approving (or in this case disapproving) this teaching.]
I wonder, if open theism had been proposed in the early centuries of the church (say 300-500ad) would the Fathers and Mothers of the faith have been so willing to accept it without a moments notice? Wouldn't it have taken years to discuss and dialogue. [I think this is just one example where we run into danger by our emphasis on staying current and relevant. I'm not saying (yet) that Open Theism is a heresy (although it's right on the edge), but because this teaching is so new and so incredibly 'original' we should be very wary. This is just one example.]
[Along these same lines, is something that I briefly touched on above. Namely that I think scholars and those of us who run in scholarly circles often find more joy in coming up with a new thought or idea than we do when we internalize an important truth about God. I find this is especially the case with Protestant scholarship. The Protestant community has long forgotten that any church history happened before Luther nailed his infamous 95 Theses to the Door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. We have allowed ourselves to ignore church history and the teaching of the great cloud of witness that has preserved the scriptures through the ages. We emphasize the latest trends and hot topics and forget that if something is new it should be tested and weighed heavily. In fact some Saints of the church held to the belief that if there was anything new in their writing then it must be discarded at once (cf. Tozer, C.S. Lewis). We feel that in the name of good scholarship that we can treat the text how we want, this however is absurd. We have been handed the scripture through the witness of generations of Christians before us, what makes us think that we, being increasingly more removed from Christ's earthly life, have superior insight into what he really said. Yes we may gain some better insights and understanding through the analysis of texts and recent discoveries, but if anything is truly different than what the church has believed for centuries then what real good is it?]
[I think I rambled a bit there in the last paragraph and didn't really express my thoughts clearly. I'm tempted to put off posting these thoughts until I can better refine them but as the story of this post accounts, that may not be a good idea, as I probably won't get around to it again until July. So I guess I'll leave the thoughts as they are. They're a work in progress and as always I open myself up to your insights and thoughts on the matter. Maybe I'm completely off base or maybe I hit the nail right on the head, who knows. ]
The thoughts started while I was reading Os Guinness' Prophetic Untimeliness, a book that Kyle Nagy recommended to me a year or so ago. I decided to read it over Christmas break and am just finishing it up. [edit: at the end of January]
As I read the introduction I felt as if I was reading my own blog... Well at least the thoughts from my blog put in coherent sentence structure by an Oxford educated man. The thoughts that I am talking about are the ones in the post entitled Postmodernism and other similar posts.
Although I saw some similarities between my post and Os' introduction there was also a difference, namely, that while I was critiquing our emphatuation with Postmodernism, he was critiquing modernism or more specifically our view of time. He did this, ironically without embracing Postmodernism, yay!!
Guiness argues that we are too caught up in being relevant or as he phrases it "timely." Basically what it says is that we place way to much importance on staying current. This caused me to wonder about that nature and the development of theology in recent decades or even centuries.
It seems to me that so many theologians today are busy trying to come up with a new idea or trying to discuss the latest trend that they forget what made the great Christian thinkers of the past great - the trial of Church history. We bounce from idea to idea and consider men like Pinnock, Sanders, Piper, Pagit, and so many others to be great thinkers and the new standard for where theology is going. We hold them up with the great minds of Christian antiquity like St. Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Ignatius, forgetting that it wasn't the fact that Augustine and the rest came up with great ideas that made them great, rather it was that their ideas lasted the test of time. They were forged in Church history! Their ideas slowly progressed throughout the church and were slowly approved of by the masses of Christians throughout the world.
Today we dialogue about ideas in seconds and publish articles after a month or a year of thought. Once these things are published, Pastors, laity, and students who strive to be on the "cutting edge" grab ahold of them like they've found the Holy Grail. There is no sense of historical community, no trial by fire. We don't allow time for these ideas to circulate through the church and and be approved or repudiated by the masses.
One chief example of this is Open Theism. Clark Pinnock published a book and so did a couple of his friends, their ideas spread through the seminaries and Christian colleges like crazy. The ideas were new and trendy and it seems that may decided to embrace the idea because it appeared to "work" and it was the new thing.
There was little dialogue on this concept done in the churches, this concept was strictly and ivory tower debate among scholars. There was no time given for this idea to pass through the godly saints of the church, the masses of saints who are out of touch with scholarly circles. It was simple, they had an idea, the published the idea and now there are many open theists around the globe.
Suppose this process had been the case with Arianism back in the early centuries of the church (300-500ad). We would have surely had a problem on our hands. Suppose for a moment that Arias had and idea, wrote a book and published it. Suppose the communication was as quick as it is now. Arianism would have spread geographically to all parts of the church. The Orthodox faith of the Trinity would have been attacked from all sides [This is not to say that Arianism has not spread, but rather to say that it's spread was contained by the filter of Christian Saints testing and approving (or in this case disapproving) this teaching.]
I wonder, if open theism had been proposed in the early centuries of the church (say 300-500ad) would the Fathers and Mothers of the faith have been so willing to accept it without a moments notice? Wouldn't it have taken years to discuss and dialogue. [I think this is just one example where we run into danger by our emphasis on staying current and relevant. I'm not saying (yet) that Open Theism is a heresy (although it's right on the edge), but because this teaching is so new and so incredibly 'original' we should be very wary. This is just one example.]
[Along these same lines, is something that I briefly touched on above. Namely that I think scholars and those of us who run in scholarly circles often find more joy in coming up with a new thought or idea than we do when we internalize an important truth about God. I find this is especially the case with Protestant scholarship. The Protestant community has long forgotten that any church history happened before Luther nailed his infamous 95 Theses to the Door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. We have allowed ourselves to ignore church history and the teaching of the great cloud of witness that has preserved the scriptures through the ages. We emphasize the latest trends and hot topics and forget that if something is new it should be tested and weighed heavily. In fact some Saints of the church held to the belief that if there was anything new in their writing then it must be discarded at once (cf. Tozer, C.S. Lewis). We feel that in the name of good scholarship that we can treat the text how we want, this however is absurd. We have been handed the scripture through the witness of generations of Christians before us, what makes us think that we, being increasingly more removed from Christ's earthly life, have superior insight into what he really said. Yes we may gain some better insights and understanding through the analysis of texts and recent discoveries, but if anything is truly different than what the church has believed for centuries then what real good is it?]
[I think I rambled a bit there in the last paragraph and didn't really express my thoughts clearly. I'm tempted to put off posting these thoughts until I can better refine them but as the story of this post accounts, that may not be a good idea, as I probably won't get around to it again until July. So I guess I'll leave the thoughts as they are. They're a work in progress and as always I open myself up to your insights and thoughts on the matter. Maybe I'm completely off base or maybe I hit the nail right on the head, who knows. ]
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