Heated Discussions

Hey, Cal, What if There's More Than Three Choices?

A recent Pew Study found that 57% of evangelicals believe there is more than one path to salvation. Cal Thomas has written a piece, "Do They Think Jesus Was a Liar?" in which he lays out a more traditional view of Jesus' exclusivity. However, the title alone is one of those "When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?" propositions that puts any contrary opinion on the same level as blasphemy. The old "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar" argument is not a slam-dunk for me. What if there are more than just three choices? Well, four if you count "Legend", which is used as a derogatory term for anything less than inerrant journalism.

The Gospel of John portrays Jesus as saying, "No one comes to Father except by me." To disagree with that statement makes Jesus either mistaken or a liar, according to Thomas. What if there are other possibilities? What if it is not Jesus, but our interpretation of his words that are mistaken? What evidence is there that he was speaking of Christianity (perhaps a foreign notion to him) compared to other world religions? What if "through him" refers not to a belief system, but obeying his commands? Wouldn't that be much more in line with Johannine emphasis on following Jesus' commandments? Wouldn't that open the way to the Father much wider? Is it possible that Gandhi followed the way of Jesus, even though he did not espouse a Christian atonement theory? Come to think of it, does the Gospel of John espouse an atonement theory?

More importantly, what if John is not a verbatim transcript of Jesus' words, but the product of a community and written decades later? That is not just the opinion of more sensational groups like the Jesus Seminar, but also the content of New Testament 101 in most major seminaries. This does not mean that John is unreliable, just that we must take its context into consideration when interpreting it.

Perhaps your answer is "No" to all of the above, but can we at least discuss these matters without maligning others faithfulness to the gospel? I like and respect Cal Thomas and find him a refreshingly rational voice for Christianity in the media. But a rigged argument like this shuts down conversation and neglects the fact there are faithful and intelligent Christians who may interpret this verse differently.

N. T. Wright on the Colbert Report

I posted on this book a few months back. Here's the Cliff Notes version.

Jesus Loves Me?

Think people don't have problems with certain interpretations of Christianity?

Envision 08 Part 3

My battery went dead Tuesday afternoon and I had left my power cord back in the hotel. So here’ a brief summary of Envision 08 events of the afternoon:

There was an emergent village gathering at lunch out on the lawn. I had the opportunity to meet a group of people from The Barn, a church in PA. We already had head of each other so it was cool to meet in person. Our faith communities have many parallel success and challenges.

The afternoon began with a set of quick presentations on emerging churches. It was done in the rapid-fire image-rich Japanese style of pecha kucha (20 slides - 20 seconds each). It was like drinking from a fire hose, so I will not attempt to summarize it here. It would have been helpful to have some digestion and discussion time after each presenter.

The racial, ethnic and gender diversity as well as the diversity of ministry contexts and theologies demonstrated just how varied the emerging church truly is. We are talking about something much larger than the stereotype of a group of 40-ish white men talking about postmodernism.

This was followed by some brief presentations by Ray Aldred on the need for the US to come to terms with its treatment of Native peoples (as Canada did the following day). Both he and Richard Twiss really opened my eyes to how Americans used Christianity to destroy Native culture. In our lunch gathering of emergent village he said (loosely paraphrasing), “The emergent church complains because you are now getting criticized and taking crap from conservative evangelicals. Well Christianity has shit all over my people for centuries. Welcome to my world.”

Now there’s an insight you wouldn’t get sitting in a typical church pew on Sunday.

Ruth Padilla DeBorst of the Latin American Theological Fraternity also spoke about the West’s need to confess. She began by noting how confession in Roman Catholic churches only takes place in a very private booth setting. It is heard by only one person. This drew a few “Amens” from the crowd. However, the audience was more silent as she went on to say, that lest we think she was Catholic bashing, Protestant can be even worse. We confess silently to God, alone in a our morning prayers where no human hears it. Confessions, she contended, must be herd by the community (particularly the offended community) to have any real impact.

Brian McLaren concluded by telling the story of his grandfather’s, father’s and uncle’s experience of growing up as a missionary family in Angola. While admitting he is often associated with writing and speaking about postmodernism, he explained that it is only one side of the coin. The other is post-colonialism. Just non-white westerners are coming into modernism, he said, western whites are excluding them by moving on to post modernism – i.e. we’re trying to control the conversation again. He concluded by speaking about orthodoxy. Perhaps, he said, it is not something we had in he past that we lost, but something that is to be in the future.

I skipped the Tuesday night worship and Perkins award ceremony as I had made some new friends and we need to get together and discuss some future projects together. Overall, it was great experience and the conveners are planning another one in 2010. The evangelical/emergent controversy is not carved in stone. Envision 08 was proof that we have much in common and just need to hear one another first hand.

Envision 08 Part 2

I’m at the second day of the Envision 08 at Princeton. I spent yesterday with a new friend in NYC so I missed most on Monday’s events. Here’s some summaries of the day’s events that I will update when I can:

Obery Hendricks giving a talk on the "Politics of Jesus". He begins with establishing that part of who Jesus was, was in fact a political figure. He also make the point that Jesus’ teachings and political conservatism are not one and the same At first, his lecture seems obvious to me. Are people in his room may be hearing this for the first time? After at any United Methodist gathering (at least here in the Northeast) Jesus the radical is just an accepted concept.

But rather than get elitist about it and think, “Glad to see you evangelicals catching up,” I sense a deep feeling within myself that I may be the one who is off track. Do I preach the radical Jesus often enough? Or do I just assume every does or should know that already?

Hendricks sees the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus’ radical manifesto and analyzes it for its anti-imperial implications. (For my own thoughts on this listen to my sermon "Be Careful What You Pray For.") His breakdown: Our (not my personal) Father in heaven, be who you were for us in the past (we’re ready for your judgment) Let your kingdom of love and holiness come and replace that of Caesar’s on earth, be concerned that everybody has enough to eat, release our debts (financial debts) as we keep going along with it and benefiting from it. Keep us from being tempted to stick with the old ways, saying one thing and bowing down to something else.

Additionally, he describes Jesus’ spirituality as holistic – vertical and horizontal. Love God and your neighbor. The only evidence of our love for God is our love for our neighbor. If your not working for others to have what they need, you’re not truly spiritual.

Jesus’ politics is putting his holistic spirituality in action.
Justice – restoring fair relations in he society. Everyone has a right to it.
Righteousness – fulfilling their relationship with God and neighbor. Fulfilling obligation to neighbor is ultimate expression of obligation to God
Loving Kindness/Steadfast Love – responsibility for the well-being of others. God desires steadfast love and not ritual or doctrine

Summary of Jesus’ politics – treat the people’s needs as holy
Test for government or politician’s policies : Does it treat everybody’s needs as holy?
Great Commission: making converts or making students? Follow Jesus not worship him. Praise God not him. Teach the nations. Don’t convert them.

Matt 25 – should be the litmus test of faith not what you believe

Hendricks also going on to point out the differences between Paul’s and Jesus’ teachings. Rom 13 call to obey governments cannot be reconciled with the fact that Jesus was crucified on a cross by a government. Like many scholars before him, he explains hat Paul never even met Jesus. This has led to quite a few murmurs in the audience. This guy has balls.

He characterizes the church’s misappropriation of Matt 28 as a scourge upon the world.
Great stuff

Envision 08 Part I

I am attending the Envision08 Conference next week. Those of us who will be blogging from there were invited to start some pre-conference discussion. Specifically we were given some links to documents and events such as:

DOCUMENTS
* An Evangelical Manifesto
* The Holiness Manifesto
* The Emergent Manifesto of Hope
* A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

EVENTS:
• Everything Must Change
• Justice Revivals, Seven Ways to Change the World & Pentecost 2008
• Church Basement Roadshow
• EnVision

What are the points of intersection between all these elements? I will use the terms evangelical and emergent loosely without getting into precise definitions of either. A few brief observations:

There is a renewed interest in the concept of biblical justice. In my experience, talking about social justice used to peg one as a liberal mainliner or was perceived as a watered down version of the gospel. In many discussions with and within the evangelical community “Social Gospel” was considered a diversion from the true business of preaching the gospel and thus considered an abandoned liberal idea.

An example from my teen years; I grew up in a Reformed Church in America congregation. Although not considered Evangelical with a capital “E” I doubt there were very many major differences in doctrine between the two groups. Since we shared a Dutch heritage with the Afrikaners in South Africa, the issue of apartheid came up often in denominational gatherings in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Rarely was this ever talked about in our church, except for one Sunday. I remember our pastor, a brilliant man, decrying the fact that the apartheid issue was dwelled upon at a recent Synod meeting. “What in the world do we have to do with South Africa?” he lamented. “Our job is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

No one even blinked at what many of us would now consider an almost absurd statement. I get the feeling that statement would receive a very mixed, if not angry, response from an evangelical audience today.

The implication was that the gospel was limited to atonement and afterlife issues and had nothing to say about apartheid. Growing up with little exposure to liberal mainline Christianity, I viewed mission as mostly limited to converting others to the Christian religion. Relieving human suffering was part of it, but not primary to the purposes of the gospel. That would have strayed into the area of salvation by works.

In reading the Evangelical Manifesto, the Holiness Manifesto etc., it is obvious to me that the once prevalent view I grew up with has changed dramatically in evangelical circles. Across the board there is renewed interest both in social justice and in seeing it as integral to the gospel message. Obviously, this emphasis on the here-and-now or incarnational/missional aspect of the gospel is a touchstone of emergent communities as well.

As many have observed, it seems the old dichotomies of evangelical/conservative/Republican/atonement and mainline/liberal/Democrat/justice are no longer meaningful categories. This is no longer just being claimed by emergents who are critical of evangelicalism but in manifestos coming out of evangelical groups who are sometimes critical of emergents.

The same could be said about other concepts like community and environmentalism. Is the dichotomy laid out in Tony Campolo’s “How to Rescue the Earth without Worshiping Nature” even an issue for many of these "new" evangelicals today? Judging by the manifestos, probably not that much.

This intersection and convergence has the potential to be truly “good news.”

More to come.