apologetics and the absurd
Posted by Paul | Filed under web sights
The latest article on the Everything Conference website is an interesting piece on the Theatre of the Absurd, with a tenative embrace of the art-form. Definitely worth a read.
Some of the discussion reminds me of Francis Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics: to talk with people to help them see the logical conclusions of their own worldview. And the difficulty of genuinely living consistently with what they believe. Taking a similar approach via the arts is an interesting idea. Has the potential to be a truly incarnational and compassionate apologetic…
Tags: apologetics, culture, Everything Conference
Identity, ethics and apologetics
Posted by Paul | Filed under apologetics
Over on Adrian Warnock’s blog, Andrew Wilson has written some ‘guest posts‘ on Tom Wright’s book Justification. This got me thinking about this whole debate again. So, here’s a random thought…
I want to come at it from a different angle. And, as happens for me often right now, that angle is in Tim Keller-like direction.
In his article The Gospel in All it’s Forms, Keller says:
I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. That is, I use the biblical definition of sin as idolatry. That puts the emphasis not as much on “doing bad things” but on “making good things into ultimate things.”
OK, so what he is doing here is moving the focus in gospel presentations from ethics to identity. But it seems to me that this is exactly what Tom Wright has been doing in his ‘new perspective’ of justification. His reading of Paul is that the Law was a ‘good thing’ that had become ‘ultimate thing’; that the Judaism of Paul’s time had come close to treating the Law as an idol. More than this, and famously, he interprets the big issue that Paul is addressing as the separation between Jews and Gentiles. And that separation being based on observation of the Law. That is, that the issue was that the Jews were building their identity on the Law rather than faith in God. Which, of course, is precisely Keller’s working definition of sin.
In the spirit of Andrew Wilson’s post (‘we can have our cake, and eat it’), we should remind ourselves that this doesn’t require us to reject a gospel presentation that is concerned with ethical questions. This is a big gospel, with deep and wide implications.
Going back to Tim Keller:
…there must be one gospel, yet there are clearly different forms in which that one gospel can be expressed.
And perhaps we can go further. Perhaps, for us, to miss the identity aspect is to miss something important. In a culture where identity floats, it possible to get the beliefs right, get the praxis right and still miss something important.
Tags: apologetics, culture, N.T. Wright, Tim Keller
Learning to cry…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I recently stumbled on another interesting Francis Schaeffer-related article at Christianity Today: Learning to Cry for the Culture.
Schaeffer was the first Christian leader who taught me to weep over the world instead of judging it.
…
Instead of shaking our heads at a depressing, dark, abstract work of art, the true Christian reaction should be to weep for the lost person who created it. Schaeffer was a rare Christian leader who advocated understanding and empathizing with non-Christians instead of taking issue with them.
The normal human reaction is to hate what we don’t understand. This is the stuff of prejudice and the cause of hate crimes and escalating social evil. It is much more Christ-like to identify with those we don’t understand—to discover why people do what they do, because we care about them, even if they are our ideological enemies.
Jesus asked us to love our enemies. Part of loving is learning to understand.
Tags: apologetics, church, culture, L\'Abri/Francis Schaeffer, provocations
on making space for people
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
There is an interesting article about L’Abri on the Christianity Today website. (I should note that it is not uncontroversial — see the response by Douglas Groothuis — but that is not directly important here. HT for both of these links to The Christian Mind blog.) It got me thinking that a key aspect of L’Abri has (as far as I understand) always been that it gives people an non-judgemental space in which to ask/wrestle with questions about Christian beliefs and doctrines.
Interestingly, this seems to be one aspect that L’Abri shares with Alpha — people are invited to come and discuss; with a key component being that they will not be preached at. (I guess that another aspect is community — reports from both frequently cite the community aspect as significant, perhaps even key. This raises interesting questions about whether profession should preceed inclusion in community, which I know have been debated elsewhere, but that is another story…)
It seems to me that, via Alpha, we are very good at taking this approach with people exploring Christianity from the outside or perhaps those who are looking at the basics, but we are less able to maintain this within the core church community. Experience suggests that we can quickly become uncomfortable when people ask hard questions and are often quick to give them the ‘right answer’ without properly listening or engaging. If we are not careful, people asking questions can feel excluded — asking the ‘wrong’ questions can make you feel like an outsider (again), as if simply by asking you have become suspect.
I might have been happy to accept this comes from a few select experiences in my life. But, the article on L’Abri suggests that part of the attraction, even for Christians, is that it remains a place where you can go and discuss with a freedom not always found elsewhere.
My concern is that people have different approaches to belief. For some, perhaps, doctrine comes easy; for others it takes more to make it ones own. We must be careful not to shape our communities so that only the first approach is accepted. We need to make space for those who take the longer route to work things out, re-question, re-examine, etc. without condemnation. We need to accept that these people are just as genuine in their following of Jesus. They are not (necessarily) trying to escape doctrines that they don’t like, nor does questioning of something mean that they don’t understand (which can sometimes be the implication). In many cases, they may simply need to go for a Jacob-like wrestling to come to terms with this aspect of belief and to work it in more deeply. It may even be the case that they are going for more depth than others need. And maybe that depth will produce benefit for the church community in the end.
I guess the key is that we must be slow to judge and quick to accept. Sometimes, when I read Paul on law & grace I wonder if we don’t use doctrine like the Law — a measure of who is in & who is out. The question then is: is it by getting your doctrine 100% pure that you were saved or was it by grace? Not that I am saying that doctrine is unimportant, just that we need to have grace for those in our communities who are wrestling. After all, Paul was insistent that true doctrine is taught, but also had the freedom to say ‘if any of you see this differently, the Holy Spirit will make it clear to you’ – not ‘if any of you see this differently pull yourselves together’.
It worth remembering that the purpose of doctrine is to take us on the right path and lead us on in our walk, not to decide if we are ‘sound’ or not. I wonder if a serious wrestling with doctrine has the potential to takes us onwards in a way that simple assent cannot always do. At least for some people.
So, I guess I’m asking that we give people space and conversation in their questioning; that we don’t jump to correction and judgement. But, also that we don’t immediately assume that the questioner is immature or ignorant. It is likely that these responses will not give the aid required.
[As an aside, I remember a friend suggesting that teaching in New Testament times was less the preach-from-the-pulpit that we envisage and more closer to mentoring/discipling. So, perhaps when we think of true doctrine being taught, we need to envisage a far more relational transference, not simply a list of truths laid out, but a working through together. A path that take into account the learners difficulties and struggles.]
Tags: apologetics, church, L\'Abri/Francis Schaeffer, provocations
debating performance
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Apologies for being overly obvious and repetitive, but I wanted to link together two previous posts: not to interpret the text, but to perform it and hermeneutics and, umm, hermeneutics (and probably also interpretation and living and living proof — see what I mean about repetitive?)
The on-going thought is how we display the truth through the way we act when disagreeing. We noted that the modern view point focussed primarily on knowledge. If you take that as the key to everything, then there are limited constraints in the way you treat those who disagree with you. You primary goal is to ensure that they, and your listeners, end up with the correct knowledge in the heads at the end of the debate. So, the approach is not as important as the end result and there is no inherent need to take care and be respectful along the way. (I know, this is exaggerating and there are other constraints, but you get the point.)
On the other hand, if performance of the truth also matters, then the way we argue is as important as getting the information across. I guess we’re saying ‘the medium is the message’ in a conversational way as well as in a purely media sense. We need to be sure that our performance in the face of disagreement is honouring the the truth we follow.
An obliquely related point that has intrigued me for a long time: both Francis Schaeffer and Richard Dawkins(*) abandoned debates as a vehicle for their respective apologetics. For both, it seems that the problem with debates is the possibility of winning the argument, while losing, or having no impact on, the person…
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(*) I realised after writing this that Dawkins has done debating of some sort recently. I was thinking of the story — I think in the introduction to ‘The Blink Watchmaker’ — where he debated someone on creationism, then found out that they didn’t believe in the position that they were defending. This apparently made him disillusioned with the whole debating process. My understanding is that he found he wasn’t really in a position to persuade others of his position, but was simply taking part in a sophisticated game. Possibly now that he is debating genuine opponents in a way that spreads his message, his view has altered.
Tags: apologetics, church, hermeneutics, provocations
safety in numbers
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In a recent post, I referred to the Christian story as being a metanarrative that has safeguards that act to ‘curb injustice and value those who are different, marginalised and oppressed’. This is a big theme of ‘Truth is Stranger than it used to be’ by Middleton and Walsh. Before I get on to their ideas lets try one that they don’t major on as much — the significance of the Trinity for this context.
Francis Schaeffer often talked about the significance of the Trinity to the philosophical question of unity and diversity: If the universe has a unity as origin, where does diversity come from? If it has a diverse origin, how come it all fits together? Maybe in a post-modern context, we can turn this on its head: because diversity is integral in the origin of the universe then diversity should be a highly valued attribute. (And because the origin is an all-powerful personal being, then we might expect diversity to be guarded.)
[I should say that, if I remember correctly, Kevin Vanhoozer and Brian McLaren have touched on this sort of thing in First Theology and A Generous Orthodoxy.]
Of course, the church has not always held diversity in high regard, by any means. But we have to admit that a value of diversity lies at the heart of its belief structure. And should be something that the church exhibits. I wonder if the times when unity (or even uniformity) is held above diversity are the times when the church loses a clear grasp on Trinity?
At this point we can bring in some comments from Jeremy Begbie (taken from the article Music in God’s World)
In polyphony, more than one melody is played or sung simultaneously, each moving to some extent independently of the others. A central cantus firmus gives coherence and enables the other parts to flourish in relation to one another. …Christ lives in the polyphony of the Trinity, and by the Spirit we are granted, through him, a share in this trinitarian “enchantment.”
Christians are thus polyphonic people. At Pentecost, in opening the disciples and crowds to Jesus Christ and his Father, the Spirit opens people out to one another. Those otherwise closed in on themselves—because of language, culture, race, religion—now find themselves resonating with one another, communicating, and living together in radically new ways. … People become responsive to one another, tuned in to one another (the reversal of Babel, where confusion and dissonance reigned). But uniqueness is not erased; the crowds in Jerusalem were not given one language. They heard each other in their “own tongues” … More than this, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, the Spirit not only allows difference but also promotes it…
In the church’s founding moment diversity-in-unity was a key component. And it should continue to be. In acting faithfully to that moment, and coherently with our belief in Trinity, we begin to show the wisdom — and trustworthiness — of God and his story.
Tags: apologetics, postmodernism
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...