not to interpret the text, but perform it
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
OK, this is by no means news to anyone, I’m sure, but… I was in a discussion of the modern worldview recently and it struck me just how much modernism is all about having and aquiring knowledge. And so, if we are not careful and give in too much to this perspective, the Bible becomes simply a source for correct knowledge and very little else. And becoming a Christian gets reduced to assenting to a set of propositions (I think I got that one from Todd Hunter).
It’s interesting therefore to notice the trend for connecting potentially abstract knowledge to living-it-out that is coming up in different areas — in particular, in the context of theology and worldviews. Perhaps, this is one of the things that the post-modernism atmosphere has given us — it’s kicked us out of our heads and reminded us that we have to think seriously about how this all gets lived out. Not that it hasn’t been lived out, but it’s been easy to have the theory and practice partitioned in our minds.
Some examples: First, in books on worldviews, we have David Naugle relating the worldview idea to the Biblical concept of the ‘heart’ For this see his ‘Worldview: The History of a Concept’; though I got it indirectly from James Sire’s ‘Naming the Elephant’, which is another good example of the trend.
There is also J. Mark Bertrand’s (Re)Thinking Worldview, which relates worldviews to wisdom (again, I’ve not got this directly, but see Steve Bishop’s trip through the book at An Accidental Blog).
All these are trying to remind us that worldviews affect the way we act, not just the way we think about the world. And so, it’s not just about analysis or intellectual arguments, but we also think about our view of the world in order to act appropriately.
Of course, Steven Garber’s Fabric of Faithfulness also makes this connection in a much stronger way, but coming from the other direction. He starts from the question, how do we act well; the first step in the answer: have a worldview that is up to the job. With our comments above in mind, it is interesting that the critiques he uses as a basis are frequently by writers who have modernism in mind (e.g. McIntyre).
In theology there is Tom Wright’s famous ‘How can the Bible be Authoritative?‘ which puts forward the analogy of the Bible as an play which we come to as actors who must take our roles in directions faithful to what has gone before. So, the Bible is not just a source of knowledge but a starting point for action. As with the worldview examples, we aim to think well in order to determine how to act well.
Kevin Vanhoozer pushes this idea on further. His essay ‘The World Well-staged?’ (in First Theology) writes about the church as a community that interprets the Biblical text by performing it. He develops the dramatic analogy in these talks: The Stage, the Story and the Script and Doing Church: the Theater of the Gospel. I guess that the source vor these talks is his book ‘The Drama of Doctrine’.
Finally, The Mission of God by Christopher Wright comes to mind. This approaches the Bible with a Missional Hermeneutic — the Bible as description of God’s Mission and the basis for our missional action.
In all these, thinking (or interpretation, or doctrine, etc.) isn’t an end in itself, but is the motivation for acting appropriately; for letting our story filter through and shape what we do.
Theology … transcends proposition in performance. And only in its performance is theology fully in view. … proper theology transforms proposition into performance so that the performance is the proper proposition.
Scot McKnight in A Community called Atonement
Tags: praxis, The Mission of God (Wright), theology, worldview
Culture and the way we think
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An interesting article for worldview afficienados: Culture Influences Brain Function
This study suggests that culture affects even ‘visual perceptual tasks’:
Subjects were shown a sequence of stimuli consisting of lines within squares and were asked to compare each stimulus with the previous one. In some trials, they judged whether the lines were the same length regardless of the surrounding squares (an absolute judgment of individual objects independent of context). In other trials, they decided whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares, regardless of absolute size (a relative judgment of interdependent objects).
…
Americans, when making relative judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar absolute judgments. East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging the brain’s attention system more for absolute judgments than for relative judgments.
…
The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those individuals who identified more closely with their culture.
John’s allusions to Genesis
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Having mentioned the way John’s Gospel alludes to Genesis 1 (see last post), and been questioned on it, here is a quote from Tom Wright summarising what is going on:
John declares from the start, with the obvious allusion to Genesis 1:1, that his book is about the new creation in Jesus. In chapter 20 he makes the same point by stressing that Easter was ‘the first day of the week’ (20:1,19; when John underlines things like this he clearly wants us to ponder the point). On the sixth day of the creation narrative, humankind was created in the divine image; on the sixth day of the last week of Jesus’ life, John has Pilate declare, ‘Behold the man!’ The seventh day is the day of rest for the creator; in John it is the day when Jesus rests in the tomb. Easter is the start of the new creation.This is reinforced by the themes of light and life. ‘In him was life, and the light was the light of human beings,’ shining unquenchably in the darkness(1:4-5). Now Mary comes to the tomb while it is still dark, and discovers the new light and life which has defeated the darkness. … Reading chapter 20 in light of the prologue, we are thus to understand that Jesus’ death and resurrection have together effected for the discipes the new birth that was spoken of in 1:13 and 3:1-13. We should not be surprised when Jesus then breathes his own Spirit into them, as YHWH breathed his own Spirit into human nostrils in Genesis 2:7. What happens to Jesus’ people is a further indication of who Jesus is:the Word made flesh.
This emphasises another point, which we mentioned a while ago: we should guard against ‘new birth’ becoming a dead metaphor and keep in mind the allusion to an individual’s sharing in the new creation. It also links the gift of the Holy Spirit to new creation.
Other things that seem to be happening in John’s narrative that are worth mentioning:
As I said in the last post, Jesus is mistaken for the Gardener, which seems to be another link back to Gensis 1. This time with Jesus as the true human who is to steward creation as manking were commisioned to do.
Also, we see John hinting at the unravelling of the fall:
* In Genesis 3 we are in the context of the great act of disobedience: a woman is deceived and her ‘eyes are opened’; God comes into the garden looking for the couple, but they are hiding.
* In John 20 we are in the context of the great act of obedience: God comes into the garden and finds Mary; Mary is ‘un-deceived’ and sees clearly (she recognises Jesus).
Tags: theology
Considering Culture (7)
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Right, where are we on the culture seminar write-up?
So far we attempted to do a whirlwind tour of the biblical story to see how culture fits in. Essentially coming down to it being an integral part of creation and God’s Mission being to save and re-create all of creation, including culture.
Where does this get us? How should we then act?
Lets go back and look at two key parts of the story that we missed out the first time around — Resurrection and the Church.
Amongst the many things that the Resurrection of Jesus points to, a significant one is that New Creation starts now. This links in with the now-and-not-yet of Paul’s theology (I guess it is the basis of it, in fact). God’s kingdom has both come and is coming; with Jesus’ resurrection new creation has broken in on the old and the transformation has begun, but we wait for the all-encompassing re-creation at a future time.
I love the way this already-started theme comes into the New Testement, so although it is not strictly necessary lets mention a couple here:
As Tom Wright emphasises, John weaves this theme into his gospel: He emphasises that Jesus’ resurrection occurs on ‘the first day of the week’ (nudge-nudge, remember what happened in that week in Genesis?); and Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener (geddit? the one who is commissioned with stewarding the garden).
There is also the famous quote from Corinthians ‘If any man is in Christ — New Creation!’ Not, as we usually restrict it — he is a new creation (perhaps some dualism creeping in with that translation?) Us being in Christ is indicative of the bigger picture. And not a future picture but something that can be described with a present tense.
But if, in some sense, new creation starts now, what are the implications? What do we do as the church in response?
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Resuscitation vs Resurrection
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OK, let’s try riffing off this quote from Jeremy Begbie (from ‘Created Beauty’, an essay in the book ‘The Beauty of God’ ed. Treier, Husbands and Lundin)
… a theological account of created beauty will return repreatedly to the Holy Spirit as the one who realizes now in our midst what has been achieved in he Son, thus anticipating the future. … A Christian account of created beauty is thus charged with promise. It is not chiefy determined by a sense of a paradise lost but of a glory still to appear, the old beauty remade and transfigured, the beauty of the future that has already been embodied in Christ … Here there is much to be said for the ancient wisdom of Basil the Great … for whom the Holy Spirit “perfects” creation, enabling it to flourish in anticipation of the final future.
The key component I want to play with is that the prime model for Christians is not reversion to a past paradise or resuscitation of what we think has been lost, but new creation and resurrection.
So, in our interaction with our surrounding culture and society, our principal goal should not be to to recover the ‘good old days’, or to stop the rot by taking it back to its roots, but to push forward to new things. The new may have continuity with the old, but we are not aiming to go back in time.
For me this meshes with Hauerwas and Willimon’s point in Resident Aliens — they suggest we should act as an alternative community because playing by the wider rules of society compromises our message. I think what I’m saying is a time-orientation equivalent — we mustn’t become so associated with our culture that we want to go back to its glory days; instead we are to looking to a alternative future — redeemed and transformed.
This doesn’t mean we dump things that are important, but that we think about them in fresh ways. So, perhaps as an example we could say that we don’t promote marriage/family because it has been the stable basis for our great society (which is sometimes the impression given), but because the freedom of commitment is true liberation, etc. and this can be an agent of liberating transformation toward a new future. (This is off the top of my head, so it’s not exactly thought out completely…)
Another application for the general theme is worldviews — typically descriptions of a Christian worldview will focus on creation. But we must be cautious that we don’t just look back. We know that the future is a transformed creation not simply a reversion. God is not acting simply to take things back to ‘how they were meant to be’, but on to ‘how He intends them to be’. (Although the past may give indications for the future.) Revelation gives a picture of new creation as something more than that described in Genesis 1-2. Our worldview must reflect this reality.
[Footnote: I am wary that this matches my personal inclination, so I could be reading what I prefer into things. But then, if you don't like it maybe you are doing the same thing?]
Tags: culture, provocations, Resident Aliens, worldview
Considering Culture (6)
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In the previous post we looked at Jesus as the culmination of God’s Mission. Now we look at the final result — new creation. As has been emphasised a lot recently, the end of the biblical story is not people going heaven, but heaven coming to earth. To quote from Revelation 21:
I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. .. He who was seated on the throne said “I am making everything new”
What happens to our culture in this new heaven and earth? Darrell Johnson points out the following (from Discipleship on the Edge):
God says from the throne, “I am making all things new.” God does not say, as I have wrongly read the words most of my life, “I am making all new things.” For years the future meant for me God scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan. “I am making all new things” is how I read it. Now certainly God can make all new things; and I believe, will, and does; and we are called to join God in it. But the point of Revelation 21-22 is that God is taking hold of all things — creation, humans and cities — and making them new.
So, we are reminded that new creation involves the transformation of all aspects of the current creation, not just a small aspect such as human souls. But, we can take this further and look specifically at culture. Johnson looks at Rev 21:24/26
The nations will walk by the light of [the city], and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it … The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into [the city].
and quotes Richard Mouw (When The Kings Come Marching In)
Ancient kings served as the primary authorities over the broad patterns of the cultural live of their nations. And when they stood over against other nations, they were the ‘bearers,’ the ‘representatives’ of their respective cultures. To assemble kings together was in an important sense to assemble their national cultures together. The king of a given nation could bear, singly, a far-reaching authority that is today divided among many different kinds of leaders: the captain of industry; the molders of public opinion in art, entertainment, and sexuality; educational leaders; representatives of family interest; and so on. This is why Isaiah and John could link the entrance of the kings into the city with the gathering in of the ‘wealth of the nations’.
As Johnson summarises it: ‘The presence of kings signals the presence of cultures!’
So, new creation incorporates purified culture. I guess this includes both old culture purified and new culture that develops as intended. In both cases, new creation is a properly working creation, developing in line with God’s character and bringing glory to the Creator.
A final quote, this time from Miroslav Volf (from The Church’s Great Malfunctions), makes the same point and takes on to the next stage of our discussion:
There is a remarkable image in the closing pages of Scripture that has become a touchstone for the way my colleagues and I think about faith and culture. Amid its descriptions of the New Jerusalem, Revelation includes “the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). The tree holds out hope that whole cultures will be healed and mended, becoming places where people can flourish. And it sets an agenda for faith as a way of life that contributes to that flourishing, in anticipation, here and now.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, eschatology, theology, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...