On joining the dots…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
An interesting quote from Tom Wright’s recent article on atonement
It is all too possible to take elements from the biblical witness and present them within a controlling narrative gleaned from somewhere else, like a child doing a follow-the-dots puzzle without paying attention to the numbers and producing a dog instead of a rabbit.
This has been buzzing around my head since I read it.
It seems to me that this is an important thing to keep in mind. We might have all our doctrines right, but if we haven’t connected them up in the right order (or, worse, failed to connect them) then we may still miss the point in places.
Story is a key way that the dots are connected. The post-enlightenment world acts as if it is all just dots. So, we feel like it is OK just to have a number of well defined bullet points. But we need to connect things up. (And, of course, there is always a story — it just may be hidden and may not be the one we think we are working with.)
I guess this is the problem with not getting our story straight. If we just have a set of ‘dots’ then there is the possibility of connecting them up in a way that fits with the prevailing culture, but isn’t really true to the biblical story. (I’ve read something else like this recently and frustratingly can’t remember where.) Of course, this allows us to live happily without disturbing the status quo…
Tags: culture, story, worldview
creeds and crampons
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
This quote from Alistair McGrath (in ‘A Passion for Truth’) has set me thinking this week:
Narratives need to be interpreted correctly; Christian doctrine provides the conceptual framework by which the scriptural narrative is interpreted. …
It is not an arbitrary framework, but one which is suggested by that narrative, and intimated (however provisionally) by scripture itself. It is to be discerned within, rather than imposed upon, that narrative. The narrative is primary, and the interpretive framework secondary.
It seems that, in our post-enlightenment view, we tend treat the biblical story as the source material for us to develop our doctrines and theologies from. Instead, we need to realise that the story is the most important thing — God’s working in history; our theologies are really the guidebooks or frameworks for us to find our way around the story.
Perhaps we can think of it in climbing terms: while a climber may be proud of his equipment, he should never make the mistake that the mountain is there as a suitable support for his ropes; in fact, his ropes are there as a way for him to navigate the mountain.
Interestingly, this makes me more sympathetic to systematic theologies. At one extreme they can be an attempt to construct an neat abstract system, but at their best they could provide a comprehensive guidebook to the story.
I wonder if thinking this way should alter how we assess our theological statements?
Tags: hermeneutics, story, theology
Playstation-Claiborne mash-up
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Bored? God forgive us for all those we have lost because we made the gospel boring. I am convinced that is why we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it’s because we don’t dare them, not because we don’t entertain them. It’s because we make the gospel to easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what are they to do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?
Shane Claiborne
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA]
Jesus invited ordinary people to come out and be part of an adventure, a journey that kept surprising them at every turn in the road.
… The church exists as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief.
Stanley Hauerwas and William M. Willimon
Tags: church, culture, imagination, Irresistible Revolution, story
Claiborne-Hauerwas mash-up
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve recently been reading two books that make an excellent pair: Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne and Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon. The two make an interesting ‘theory plus practical implementation’ combination.
Resident Aliens is about (amongst other things) the church resisting both ‘total withdrawal from culture’ and a ‘serving the culture’ approaches. In saying ‘serving the culture’, the implication is that we adjust the gospel (and, in particular, political aspects) to fit what is acceptable — so we make sure that we fit the expectations or at least the rational of the culture. We assume “that the key to our political effectiveness lies in translating our political assertions into terms that can be embraced by any thinking, sensitive, modern (though disbelieving), average” person.
For example, we may focus on lobbying as is the acceptable method of political action in Western democracy. But, perhaps in taking this approach we are forced to adapt the gospel to fit the system or persuade those we are lobbying to support our view.
The alternative presented is to be true to the gospel, with church as a ‘Christian Colony’. So that we do act, but we act in radical ways that follow the gospel even when it may not fit the expectations of the culture and its politics.
That which makes the church ‘radical’ and forever ‘new’ is not that the church tends to lean toward the left on most social issues, but rather that the church knows Jesus whereas the world does not. In the church’s view, the political left is not noticeably more interesting than the political right; both sides tend toward solutions that act as if the world has not ended and begun with Jesus.
…we are forever forgetting how decisive, how eschatological, is the event of Christ.
Irresistible Revolution is about (amongst other things) stepping away from the ‘giving to the poor’ model to actually going and living with the poor. And about living as true communities where middle-class Christianity doesn’t normally hang-out. And about living as true communities full stop. It also goes on into creative demonstrations on issues and, really, prophetic actions. It seems that this is one thing that might result if you read Resident Aliens and take it seriously.
(Afterword: I wanted to call this ‘Disruptive Grace’, borrowing (and re-creating!) the idea of Disruptive Technology. I found the term is already taken. But, hey, there are only so many words to go around, so I’m sure we can share. And accidentally stealing from Flannery O’Connor is no bad thing…)
Tags: church, culture, Irresistible Revolution, Resident Aliens
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...