Culture and questions (3): Synthesis
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
OK, the title says synthesis, but I’m not sure I can do this justice. Anyway, let’s see how we go. I’ve got three or four different things floating around my mind that I want to try to link. The first two are the quotes on the previous posts (from Tony Campolo and Kwame Bediako). The third is the often-referred to book by Curtis Chang: Engaging Unbelief. The fourth-ish is the experience of the early church.
So, where to start? How about Bediako and the talk The Emergence of World Christianity and the Remaking of Theology (pdf, mp3). There are many interesting things in this lecture, but I was particularly interested the idea that theological development takes place, primarily at cultural crossings, when Christianity hits a new culture:
There is, then, a symbiotic relationship between mission as “cultural crossing” and theology as the process whereby the faith appropriated is lived, embodied and communicated. In as much as the several historical shifts of the heartlands of the Christian faith, as noted earlier, have been cultural crossings, they are privileged moments for understanding the meanings inherent in the faith, that is, for the development of theology.
And why is this? Because in the interaction with new cultures, new questions and concerns come to light. And so, the church finds it has to develop theology applicable to these new areas.
But isn’t this the way the early church did theology? They don’t seem to sit down, figure things out and then find how they apply. They experience new things, were forced into new areas and quickly had to catch up theologically. (Of course, the new theology then had new applications — see Paul’s letters where theology feeds ethics. In a similar way to scientific knowledge, experience produced theory produces new application.)
I think this links nicely with Curtis Chang’s ideas in Engaging Unbelief. If you remember (and if you don’t, why haven’t you read it yet?), Chang suggests that Augustine and Aquinas took an apologetic approach that listened carefully to the stories of those around, found what the key tensions were and showed how Jesus provided the answer. It doesn’t take much of a leap to think that what they were doing was more than apologetics — it fed into theology. Certainly, that is the way their writings were used subsequently.
And this finally brings us to the Campolo quote: If we are not careful, we fail to hear the questions of our culture, the tensions in the stories of those around. We are so socialised to limit our questions to the ones our theology has already answered that we forget that others may have different concerns. And, consequently, there are “areas of life where Western theology has no answers because it has no questions”. Bediako uses this quote in the contrast between the West and non-western cultures, but I think it is equally true from different constituents of one culture.
Somehow, we need to learn to listen to the questions of our culture and of the new cultures we meet. Only then can we be servants and agents for cultural renewal (as Tim Keller phrases it).
Tags: church, culture, Engaging Unbelief (Chang)
(don’t) stop making sense
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In case anyone is tempted to mis-interpret my recent posts (1, 2, 3), here is a helpful quote from Dan Kimball (from They Like Jesus, but not the Church):
Some people think that apologetics isn’t useful today; but I think it still is, though only after trust has been built and we have been asked questions … people want to know there’s validity to what I believe, and apologetics has been helpful to me in showing that to them. I believe we need apologetics more than ever today, but we need to know what the current questons are. Sometimes in apologetics we develop detailed answers to questions people in emerging generations aren’t asking.
There seems to be a tendency to interpret post-modernism as a flight from reason. But people still want to know that their beliefs are reasonable; we can’t really live irrationally. But the first barrier is trust, not logical consistency. Going back to the response Curtis Chang received:
“Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up?”
The fear seems to be that of being conned through logic; once the distrust is overcome there is still a need to show that what we believe makes sense.
It seems to me that this is where Peter is coming from when he says, ‘always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within you’ — not trying to argue people to God, but showing that what we believe is well-founded.
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), postmodernism
I never met a narrative I trusted
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Following the previous posts, we have the question, if reduction to logical contradiction isn’t a way to engage post-modernism, what is?
Let’s try for Curtis Chang’s approach of entering the story and seeing where the plot tension lies (see Engaging Unbelief).
We’ve suggested that post-modernism is at heart distrust of meta-narratives. But, perhaps a first tension is that it’s not at all clear that we can live without some big story. But more than that, going back to the place we started, we have, at the very least, to accept that post-modernism itself acts as a meta-narrative.
Perhaps the real longing in post-modernism is to find a meta-narrative we can trust. Perhaps, the underlying theme of the ‘distrust all meta-narratives’ advice is really ‘here, at last, is a trustworthy story’. In effect, it says ‘by allowing all the little stories to co-exist under my wings, everyone will be accepted and not oppressed’. So, the question becomes — is post-modernism a trustworthy story?
Obviously, the proponents will say ‘yes’. But, isn’t that what proponents always do? You have to ask those who don’t fit — and despite the claims, there are those who don’t fit. Because, you are only safe if your story is sufficiently small. If you attempt for an overarching narrative, then you are suspect and the famed tolerance begins to wain. It seems like the postmodern narrative doesn’t live up to its promise. At the very least, it has to beat down all other stories until they submit to its overarching aim. It can’t function in the co-exist mode that it requires.
So, how is the tension resolved? We need to find a meta-narrative that is trustworthy, the does not operate via injustice. This is where Middleton and Walsh are aiming in ‘Truth is Stranger than it used to be’. They put forward the idea that the Christian story includes in it the mechanisms to curb injustice and value those who are different, marginalised and oppressed. That despite being meta it can be trusted. (The ideas are recapped in Walsh and Keesmat’s ‘Colossians Remixed’.)
I’ll try to summarise their ideas in the near future, but in the mean time Scot McKnight discusses that part of the Colossians book in a recent Jesus Creed post.
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), postmodernism, story
apologetics, logic and justice
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I was reminded recently about the classic logical fallacy of post-modernism — the refusal of all meta-narratives functions itself as meta-narrative and before you know it PoMo will eat itself. Now, I have no argument with that — the logic works. But somehow the latent post-modernist in me doesn’t find it a very satisfying line. We can also consider the description by Curtis Chang of a conversation he had (discussed in Engaging Unbelief):
After an hour of lengthy debate, I thought I had maneuvered him into admitting a critical inconsistency in his logic. All my apologetics textbooks assured me that this represented a decisive accomplishment. Surely I had “won” a significant battle![My conversation partner] contemplated his inconsistency for a moment, shrugged and replied, “Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up? Who’s to say that everything isn’t just made up?”
It seems like the logic isn’t the key issue. Perhaps we get a clue as to what is from the classic definition of post-modernism from Lyotard:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.
and the comment by Derrida that
De-construction is justice.
Postmodernism isn’t formed as a logical alternative, but is essentially a distrust of the big stories. At heart it is a justice thing. (Yeah, ‘Whose justice?’, thank you Prof.MacIntyre , but we’ll press on.) As has been pointed out often, it’s a distrust based on seeing the injustice that the meta-narratives bring — oppression of minority views etc.
Look at the current attacks on religion. Some might have a pop at issues of rationality and belief, but most of the issues are the apparent controlling nature and forcing of views, etc.
If you read Dan Kimball’s excellent ‘They like Jesus, but not the church”. The complaints against the church are primarily in this kind of category — it’s judgmental and negative, etc., etc.
So, while the logical problem is important, maybe it is not the correct point of contact. More on that anon…
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), justice, postmodernism
Francis Schaeffer (again!)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Increasing feeling the need to defend Francis Schaeffer. Perhaps because he gets such a harsh side-swipe in Carl Raschke’s ‘The Next Reformation’. (Ok, maybe it was only aimed at one part of his writing, but still I felt for him:)
[Note added: In re-reading Raschke, I've realise that I mis-understood what he's saying & incorrectly took it as negative. I leave the comment because my mis-reading was what inspired the rest of the post...]
I’ve discussed the aspect of L’Abri being a community showing an embodied apologetic, so I won’t do that one again (but, I think it is a big lesson and a big plus).
When reading ‘Engaging Unbelief’ (see last post), it seems to me that Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics wasn’t a million miles from the one discussed by Chang. His aim was to push people to see the consequences of their worldviews (for instance, ‘you think everything is chance, but you cannot live as if that is the case’). This, surely, is entering the conversation partner’s story and showing him the unresolved parts of the plot. For the final step, his books did show the other worldviews in the context of the ‘more compelling’ Christain story. Maybe we can look at his apologetic as in this tradition, rather purely caught up in the modern perspective. OK, you might say that Schaeffer got caught overly by the modern story, but that’s always the danger (as I said last post)…
Final defense: Schaeffer seemed very big on truly listening to your conversation partner. I’m always impressed that Schaeffer gave up debates because he saw you could frequently win the argument, but lose the person. It seems to me that he stepped well away from the confrontational/battle approach to evangelism that is attributed to modernism (see Brian McLaren’s ‘More Ready than You Realise’).
Hope you’re convinced 
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), L\'Abri/Francis Schaeffer
Engaging Unbelief
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Just finished reading Engaging Unbelief by Curtis Chang. Very interesting book. He looks at books by Augustine and Aquinas (City of God and Summa contra Gentiles) with the idea of seeing how they each did apologetics and how this might be useful for us in the face of post-modernism. He sees the context for each book as a useful parallel for today — each writer is facing a major change to the culture and is trying to engage that change. In both cases, Chang sees them taking a three step approach: entering the new story, re-telling it to bring out the unresolved plot-tensions or problems and then showing how it fits within the larger Christian story (‘a more compelling tale’), with the plot-tensions resolved. He then rounds up with thoughts on our current situation. Considering the book was written about 5 years ago, he does well in identifying issues (e.g. the now hot-topic of atonement theories), as well as kicking off interesting thoughts (e.g. ‘entering our challengers’ story will mean entering the movie theatre with them’). Definitely a book that should be more well-known.
Chang’s basic approach seems very incarnational: entering the stories of others and meeting them there. I like it a lot.
Of course, the other lesson from these books is that we have to be careful that our story captures those around us, not the other way around. The over-dependence of later Christians on Plato and Aristotle, suggests that, even if Augustine and Aquinas got it right those using their works later lost perspective. A similar problem to the one we see with modernism now. Better make sure we don’t make the same mistake with post-modernism, I guess…
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I forgot to add when I originally wrote this: I’m guessing this incarnational approach is close to what Paul meant when he said ‘To the Greeks, I become Greek’, etc…
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...