A while back, I came out as a self-proclaimed prophet of musically anointed ones…only to go into a period of silence worthy of the inter-testamental era (part of which was due to school and the other part due to a slightly incapacitating disability in my left hand which keeps me from typing with ease). In any case, I have come back out of the wilderness, having exhausted ways to prepare locust with honey, and am here to declare some praise-worthy tunes for those with ears to hear.
Lightspeed Champion: middling effort, almost a bit too melodramatic/fussy
Sleeping States: downloaded a few songs (on par with lo-fi homemade genius of former recordings), but still don’t own the whole album
The XYZ Affair: unknown what will happen to the album they had in the works
What about the album from Frightened Rabbit? Well, that brings me to the shortlist of albums that WILL LIKELY BE on my best of 2010 list. FR’s album is INCREDIBLY GREAT–on par with their unbelievably brilliant last album & a sign of their lasting power. So, the short list? In no order other than as they come to me:
Frightened Rabbit/The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Titus Andronicus/The Monitor (these guys are like a mix of Joe Strummer/Shane MacGowan, early Dinosaur Jr., the high points of Rancid, and some kind of American conspiratorialism welded together–it’s kind of a marriage of classic rock n’ roll and alternative/indie via a variety of road stops…the only problem is that they have an occasional tendency to repeat some lyrics ad infinitum, which is a pet peeve of mine, and the punk ethos requires that some of the singing is off key, which is hard to listen to when you have perfect pitch)–I have to give a shout out to Rob Kirkendall for hooking me up with these guys
Tame Impala/InnerSpeaker: first off: their name is lame impala. But their sound, the tones and eras and magic and youth and coolness they emit, is so GORGEOUSLY CLASSIC (if you love the Beatles, the vocalist channels John & George’s best qualities; if you love classic rock, they have instrumentation that brings to mind the Who, Jimi Hendrix [but not the guitar], The Edgar Winter Group, etc.; definite psychedelia [though I can’t cite any particular groups), but yet in spite of all this, it doesn’t feel derivative but somehow distinctively of this time–as if all that had never existed and they just invented it…
The National/High Violet: you already have this
The New Pornographers/Together: you SHOULD already have this. Half of it is my favorite album of the year…Neko Case IS the Midas touch, but everyone in this supergroup is talented beyond measure
Owen Pallett/Heartland: now this guy is a true discovery. I’ve heard he did some orchestration for indie bands (Arcade Fire, etc.), but all I really know about him is from this album. He is a musical brother to Andrew Bird, a cousin of Sufjan, from the genus of chamber-pop…lovely, fascinating, highly original. Often, a song intentionally veers toward the brink of dissonance, but it never goes over
Josh Ritter/So Runs the World Away: I need a few more listens to definitively place this album on the list, but it has potential
Some varying levels of disappointment: Band of Horses, Broken Bells, Jonsi (is that ok to admit? I love him still…), Teenage Fanclub (embarrassingly weak), She & Him. Disagree? Feel free to prove me wrong in the comments!
I don’t really have any prophecies at the moment…maybe The Walkmen, Cloud Cult, Interpol in September/October? I could use YOUR recommendations if you have any. Until later…
Today marks what would have been Elliott Smith’s 41st birthday and I’d like to share a brief thought.
Think about some of the most influential popular musicians from the last 50 years. Perhaps Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Creed [followed by an audible laugh] and so on. Perhaps we could come to a consensus and say that these names (with the exception of one) are legendary. Dylan, McCartney, Lennon, Gilmour, Waters, Jackson, Cobain. We could continue the list for ages, but what I want to point out is that I’ve listed surnames and readers who are familiar with popular music in America and Britain probably knew exactly whom I was referring to. When I write ‘Paul and John’ you probably realise that I am referring to the principle songwriters (though George is clearly the best) of one of the most influential bands in history and in the proper context we will often call Michael by his forename without too much confusion. This is probably due to the fact that Michael Jackson and The Beatles are very much household names. Still, taken on their own we’ll more typically employ the surname.
Now, I am not suggesting that somehow Elliott Smith might someday be recognised among these greats. He’s been grossly underrated and ignored in the public, but such is the lot of a shy and reclusive indie songwriter who killed himself at 34. Regardless, I find it quite interesting that when I write about Elliott Smith I cannot write, ‘Smith recorded his debut record while still fronting Heatmiser.’ It feels unnatural and impersonal. Elliott wouldn’t want to be talked about that way (although he probably wouldn’t want to be talked about at all). (This is all apart from the fact that ‘Smith’ is one of the most common surnames in the English language.) Perhaps the same can be said of Sufjan Stevens, but we all know that writing/saying ‘Sufjan’ is a billion times more pleasing than writing/saying ‘Stevens’. When we write or talk about Elliott it is as if we are talking about an old friend. I never knew Elliott. I never met him and I never saw him in concert, but his music reaches out to listeners like me and each listen becomes a very personal encounter. Elliott shares his soul with us and—as I’ve written about before—he shares our souls for us.
I’ve been compiling a list of my ‘Top 50 Elliott Smith Songs’ for several months now. As Greg so conscientiously shared his ‘Top 50 Sufjan Stevens Songs’ in order based upon his preference, I had hoped to do the same for Elliott. But Elliott’s work is quite different from Sufjan’s and I found that after arranging the first few songs on the list in preferential order it became very arbitrary – I am in love with different tracks for different reasons. So, like my ‘Top 50 Albums’, I am going to organise these songs by title. These tracks (as well as many many others) are all gems and if you don’t own any of the official releases I suggest you look into making some purchases immediately. Enjoy.
‘Let’s Get Lost’/From a Basement on the Hill, 2003
‘Miss Misery’/Good Will Hunting (soundtrack), 1997
‘Needle In the Hay’/Elliott Smith, 1995
‘No Name #2’/Roman Candle, 1995
‘O So Slow’/Basement era sessions, circa 2003
‘Oh Well, Okay’/XO, 1998
‘A Passing Feeling’/From a Basement on the Hill, 2003
‘Pictures of Me’/Either/Or, 1997
‘Pitseleh’/XO, 1998
‘Pretty Mary K’/Figure 8, 2000
‘Roman Candle’/Roman Candle, 1995
‘Rose Parade’/Either/Or, 1997
‘Say Yes’/Either/Or, 1997
‘Shooting Star’/From a Basement on the Hill, 2003
‘Son of Sam’/Figure 8, 2000
‘Southern Belle’/Elliott Smith, 1995
‘Splitsville’/Southlander (soundtrack), 2001
‘Strung Out Again’/From a Basement on the Hill, 2003
‘Stupidity Tries’/Figure 8, 2000
‘Sweet Adeline’/XO, 1998
‘True Love’/Basement era sessions, circa 2003
‘Twilight’/From a Basement on the Hill, 2003
‘Waltz #2 (Xo)’/XO, 1998
‘The White Lady Loves You More’/Elliott Smith, 1995
‘You Make it Seem Like Nothing’/Either/Or era live recording, circa 1996
(For the sake of space I’ve omitted anything Elliott did with other musical acts, otherwise I’d certainly include ‘Plainclothes Man’ and ‘Half Right’ from Heatmiser’s 1996 album Mic City Sons and the rare recording from a French radio broadcast of ‘The Machine’ from Elliott’s high school band Stranger Than Fiction.)
Let me begin by stressing that this post is by no means an exhaustive or thorough look at this particular issue, but rather a starting point for a conversation and potential implications we can draw out for understanding the our existence in the kingdom of God, thus impacting the way we approach life in the kingdom, as is the case with all Imaging the Kingdom.
The concept of the ‘Self’ is one of great importance in the conversation of modern philosophy and Western society at large. This can take the form of investigations regarding the composition of the Self, for instance, a Scientologist might argue that the Self is composed of one’s ‘thetan’ (similar to the concept of one’s ‘spirit’). But what composes the Self in this particular sense (essence) is not the concern of this post. We will rest upon our holistic assumptions from previous ‘Imaging the Kingdom’ posts: God is the Ruler of the universe that he has created, visible and invisible. An individual will not be broken down into separate parts, as God is concerned for and invested in both in the Christian tradition.
Many modern philosophers have concerned themselves with the concept of the Self as if we can attain it through our own clever thought processes. Just as one cannot repair a hammer with said hammer, so one cannot, as a Self, step outside of said Self. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume writes,
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of hear or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
(David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Sec. VI)
According to Hume, the concept of the Self can amount to, as Russell put it, ‘nothing but a bundle of perceptions’. This non-religious observation can actually assist us in our kingdom-oriented task as it can be deduced that the confidence with which, say, I perceive my Self as an individual should be softened. But the case is not closed there by any means. Hume’s conclusion does not entirely negate the value of this ‘bundle of perceptions’, but rather redefines it. As long as we are redefining the Self in light of our inability to look inward in any objective sense, I believe that the principles of the kingdom of God have profound implications for our definition.
In exploring the answer to the question ‘What is man?’ in his essay ‘The Christian Proclamation Here and Now’, Barth states,
Man exist in a free confrontation with his fellow man, in the living relationship between a man and his neighbour, between I and Thou, between man and woman. An isolated man is as such no man. ‘I’ without ‘Thou’, man without woman, and woman without man is not human existence. Human being is being with other humans. Apart from this relationship we become inhuman. We are human by being together, by seeing, hearing, speaking with, and by standing by, one another as men, insofar, that is, as we do this gladly and thus do it freely.
(Karl Barth, God Here and Now [London: Routledge, 2003], 7.)
Although Barth is answering the question ‘What is man?’ and not ‘What is the Self?’, we see community as a God-given (and necessary) setting for human existence.
Writing more specifically regarding the Self in the opening pages of The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard describes the ‘Self’ as,
The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self.
In a relation between two things the relation is the third term in the form of a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to that relation; this is what it is from the point of view of soul for soul and body to be in relation. If, on the other hand, the relation relates to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.
(Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death [London: Penguin Books, 2008], 9-10.)
In this way the self is fully understood in the relationship. This is a relationship with the Self and relationship with the creator of the Self. Relationship is the basis for any human understanding of anything and no less for a proper understanding of the Self.
In light of Barth and Kierkegaard’s insights, a human is only truly human in community with God and man. This conclusion very closely resembles the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:36-40). In the kingdom of God an understanding of the Self ought to be similarly characterised by God’s intentions for the Self.
Perhaps the greatest theological tenet in the Christian tradition to attest to the necessary communal aspect of existence can be found in the Trinity. Two contemporary theologians who have some very helpful insights for this discussion are John Zizioulas and Leonardo Boff. Zizioulas represents an important bridge between the Eastern and Western traditions (drawing from the work of Vladimir Lossky). Heavily influenced by the Cappadocian Fathers, Zizioulas derives that communion is an ontological category and that God exists in communion. Therefore, Vali-Matti Kärkkäinen summarises, “there is no true being without communion; nothing exists as an ‘individual’ in itself…Human existence, including the existence of the church communion, thus reflects the communal, relational being of God.” (Vali-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Trinity: Global Perspectives, [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007], 90.) In this way, without the doctrine of the Trinity there would be no God.
In Trinity and Society, Boff states, “The Trinity is not something thought out to explain human problems. It is the revelation of God as God is, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society [Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998], 3.) Boff argues that humanity is given a guide through this specific revelation by which to structure society.
Gathering the tools before us we can develop a picture of what the Self might properly look like in the kingdom of God:
From Hume we can argue that an individual cannot objective conceive of the Self, but rather ‘a bundle of perceptions’ that fall short of the Self.
From Barth we can argue that it is God’s intention for the individual to find fullest existence in community.
From Kierkegaard we can argue that the Self is only properly understood in Hegelian relational terms – the individual, the creator and the witness of that relationship.
From Zizioulas we can argue that the communal aspect of God is absolutely essential to his being, that the Trinity is not an appendix to Christian theism, but its heart.
From Boff we can argue that human society ought to be structured based upon the community of the Trinity.
So where does this leave us?
Perhaps the reason for the philosophical dilemma of the Self is the fact that we’ve been taking our cues from the wrong place. If it is God’s nature to necessarily exist in the communion of the Trinity, perhaps it is no surprise that our being is also of a communal nature. In the kingdom of God the individual is not called to be alone but in community. In such a way a fuller understanding of the Self is possible, for instance:
As I relate to myself I experience all that is unique to that experience. As I relate to, say, Greg, he is able to see and experience something unique to his perspective of me.
As we relate, these things are synthesised and a fuller picture of the Self is possible. Through the differences that Greg and I encounter in one another God has designed us to act as signposts for one another to himself and his ‘otherness’.
As we look toward God we discover that Christ has come to redeem the entire world and to give humanity a new paradigm to live out of, including a new method of ‘discovering the Self’. A member of the kingdom of God has a new identity, one independent of who we once thought we were and who we may still think we are. As we relate to God we are transformed into his design for the Self. To consider us as individuals the supreme experts regarding our ‘Self’s outside of God’s intentions as demonstrated in the establishing of his kingdom through the Gospel is to ignore the reign and active investment of God in our lives. To embrace the concept of the Self that finds its fullest meaning in relating to God and to others in love we will experience the greatest blessing – the blessing that flows from active participation in and submission to the kingdom of God. In this way we ought to take seriously the call to relate to others, for it is antithetical to ‘the Self in the kingdom of God’ when we do not.
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us [humans] and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess on baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Creed taken from John H. Leith (ed.), Creeds of the Churches [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982], 33.)
The issue of ‘homosexuality’ is probably one of the more heated social issues facing the contemporary Church. Among different denominations (and even within single denominations) the issue divides on a scale from peaceful disagreement to violent hatred. Perhaps the most visible and widely despised of these positions is illustrated by the antics of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church and their signature slogan: ‘God Hates Fags’.
Needless to say, this is a MASSIVE conversation in the Church and society at-large. Unfortunately the debate within the Church—the topic of this post—frequently results in an ever-divergent hatred for the opposition. One view (we’ll call it ‘Perspective I’ to avoid confusing, overused and unhelpful ‘conservative’ vs. ‘liberal’ labels) essentially believes that the Church and the Scripture attest to the opposition of LGBT+ people in the kingdom of God. In this view God has designed sexual relationships to take place in a particular way – in other words, heterosexually. This is often supported with social and psychological analyses of homosexuality in Western culture. The ‘slippery slope’ is often appealed to here, concerning the possibility in a culture that grows more accepting of ‘public homosexuality’. An example of how this view sees homosexuality adversely affecting the Church follows: same-sex marriage is made fully legal, churches will lose tax-exempt benefits for teaching portions of Scripture that seem to attest to the prohibition of homosexuality in the kingdom of God and ultimately conservative priests will be prosecuted and imprisoned for merely teaching what the Church has generally held to for nearly two-thousand years.
Another view (which we’ll call ‘Perspective II’) essentially believes that the Church is mistaken and that the Scripture is not explicitly clear regarding sexuality, often appealing to socio-historical evidence for the manner in which homosexuality was practised in the Scripture’s first-century-Roman context. In this view homosexuality is not generally considered a choice, but a specific sexual orientation that defines a significant part of what makes an individual an individual.
There are numerous positions around and about these two views (including two views based upon the assumption that homosexuality is natural – one view holding that LGBT+ people are called to celibacy in the kingdom of God while the other holds that homosexuality is natural and should be openly embraced in the kingdom of God) and it is would be impossible to explore them all, but I believe we’ve got a moderate sample of the two major ‘sides’ of this argument within the Church in Perspectives I and II.
One interesting thing I feel the need to point out is the general historical oppression of non-heteronormative people in Western society. Even today, with the elimination of laws prohibiting homosexual practise in Western countries (though these are still quite present in many nations today), massive stigmas and stereotypes are used to oppress LGBT+ people. In my experience I have heard many-a-Christian rants on how homosexuality has ‘infiltrated our culture’ and is being used to ‘pervert our youth’. That’s a very loaded assessment. I am generally sceptical of such sweeping statements regarding a group of people who by and large don’t even have the legal right to marry in the vast majority of American states. Homophobia is rampant and this (like other forms of xenophobia) oftentimes leads to very aggressive mistreatment of LGBT+ people. Even the recent claim by Cardinal Bertone that homosexuality was to blame for the Catholic abuse scandals ignored the fact that many of the abused were in fact females (and also that the large number of males abused might be a result of the general pairing of girls with nuns and boys with priests in schools) in exchange for trying to oppressively pin the failure of the Church on a whole people group.
My honest opinion is quite open in general, although my tendency is to lean toward Perspective II. Whilst I hold Church tradition in high esteem, the Church has certainly been wrong in the past with numerous issues and our trusty Nicene Creed makes no mention whatsoever concerning the nature of sexual relationships in the kingdom of God. For now I merely want to pose two brief lines of questioning to the two main camps on either side of the issue of homosexuality. These questions are not meant to pull the rug out from either side, but to promote a more compassionate and gracious way of thinking about the debate. I do not necessarily agree with each one of these questions on either side, but they seem to be valuable things to address.
Perspective I
Is it possible that in the Church, homosexuality, if considered a sin, is often treated very differently than other issues that are considered sins (even other sexual sins) in an unfair manner?
In Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that the nature of particular sins can make them more or less cancerous within the Church. For instance, pride involves sinfully elevating oneself above another. Is it possible that an egotistical zealot might be more divisive and harmful to the community of a local church than a homosexual couple in a committed relationship?
Can the few passages in Scripture that are often associated with anti-homosexual views be interpreted in any other manner? What are we to make of the lack of teaching regarding homosexual relationships in the teaching of Christ found in the Gospels? Let me stress that I do not believe that these issues alone make or break Perspective I (the general tradition of the Church might be able to provide some added strength to this view), but I do believe that these possibilities might serve to soften the tone of Perspective I.
Perspective II
Is it possible that many of the people who espouse ‘Perspective I’ are not hatemongers, but Christians who genuinely care about the well being of LGBT+ people, even if misguided?
I have many thoughts on these issues, but I’ll cease my questions and open up the discussion. What I hope and pray for in this conversation is mutual respect and beyond everything else, love and compassion. Profound love is what ought to characterise the words, thoughts and actions of a member of the kingdom of God who has been profoundly confronted by the immense grace and love of God as demonstrated in the life, death and Resurrection of Christ and the advent of his holy and inviting Church.
There are many good thoughts and perspectives on either side of this debate. Please share your input, but take care to use gracious language and to neither demonise nor dehumanise the opposing perspective or your comment may be deleted. I am not demanding that everyone shares my views or that no one holds firmly to his/her own view—I encourage you to share your convictions with a loving and gracious passion.
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us [humans] and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess on baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Creed taken from John H. Leith (ed.), Creeds of the Churches [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982], 33.)
Dear reader, as much as I am loathe to pay attention to anything having to do with politics, economics, etc. (i.e. anything that has practical/real implications for life), the media won’t let me ignore this whole “Tea Party” movement, which to this point I have associated with [shudder] Sarah Palin-ites, grumpy old white people, and ignorant loudmouths.
Social suicide is not an American value
But now it’s come to my attention that a Republican primary candidate for California’s 30th State Senate District (which includes La Mirada, where I live) named Warren Willis has attached himself to the Tea Party movement. This would not make a lot of difference to me if I didn’t know that Willis was running an organization (the California School Project–CSP) which promotes and empowers on-campus Christian evangelism by students. I know a number of very thoughtful and intelligent people who work for CSP and who think highly of Willis, so I am left to wonder about his association with this group.
I have run across a few articles of late which have reinforced my predisposition to see the flaws of this movement. I’d be happy to encounter other perspectives if you can send them my way…
Some quotes from the articles I mentioned:
The movement is not yet united on a single platform or agenda…The lack of specifics allows anyone who is just existentially fed up (and who isn’t, on some days?) to feel right at home. No one will demand to know what he or she is fed up with…
The Tea Party movement has been compared (by David Brooks of The New York Times, among others) to the student protest movement of the 1960s. Even though one came from the left and the other from the right, both are/were, or at least styled themselves as, a mass challenge to an oppressive establishment. That’s a similarity, to be sure. But the differences seem more illuminating.
First, the 1960s (shorthand for all of the political and social developments we associate with that period) were by, for, and about young people. The Tea Party movement is by, for, and about middle-aged and old people (undoubtedly including more than a few who were part of the earlier movement too). If young people discover a cause and become a bit overwrought or monomaniacal, that’s easily forgiven as part of the charm of youth. When adults of middle age and older throw tantrums and hold their breath until they turn blue, it’s less charming…
Some people think that what unites the Tea Party Patriots is simple racism. I doubt that. But the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories, and not because of racism, but because of the movement’s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault.
“I like what they’re saying. It’s common sense,” a random man-in-the-crowd told a Los Angeles Times reporter at a big Tea Party rally. Then he added, “They’ve got to focus on issues like keeping jobs here and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.” These, of course, are projects that can be conducted only by Big Government. If the Tea Party Patriots ever developed a coherent platform or agenda, they would lose half their supporters.
Principled libertarianism is an interesting and even tempting idea. If we wanted to, we could radically reduce the scope of government—defend the country, give poor people enough money to live decently, and leave it at that. But this isn’t the TPP vision. The TPP vision is that you can keep your Medicare benefits and balance the budget by ending congressional earmarks, and perhaps the National Endowment for the Arts. (quotes above from an essay in The Atlantic magazine)
Jim Wallis points out 5 contentions between Christianity and the Tea Party/Libertarian movement in a recent Sojourners online post:
The Libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue.
An anti-government ideology just isn’t biblical.
The Libertarians’ supreme confidence in the market is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin.
The Libertarian preference for the strong over the weak is decidedly un-Christian.
There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white.
I believe that Greg and I were exercising a subconscious experiment to see if we could go the entire month of May without a post, but I am pleased to continue the Imaging the Kingdom series.
The terms ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ are tossed around a lot in contemporary Christian circles. Among Protestants, two groups seem to gravitate toward one or the other: Emergents (Post-modern Christians) toward orthopraxy (emphasising the practise of religion) and Evangelicals toward orthodoxy (emphasising the belief of religion). It might seem obvious to you, my beloved readers, that any branch of Christianity that is given over to one of these two positions exclusively is incredibly weak. Perhaps you’re not so convinced that both are absolutely essential to members of the kingdom of God (which they are) or you want to explore how the two relate to one another in the kingdom of God (like me). This is a long conversation that goes back through the centuries. It seems that within the Church people are often reacting to one side, then to the other. This is especially evident since the Protestant Reformation, which I will expound [crudely for the sake of brevity].
In his Ninety-Five Theses (written in 1517 – the document that sparked the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, essentially) Luther argues against clerical abuses and states explicitly that both outward and inward repentance is important. Luther believed—and I would say believed rightly—that the Church was abusing authority primarily with regard to specific gifts to the Church (indulgences) that were being used to fund the building of the papal palace. In return for these gifts, people were given pardons from certain amounts of time in Purgatory (as is the purpose of indulgences in the Catholic tradition). In his Theses Luther also argues against the demotion of the Scripture in Church worship for the sake of things like said pardons. At the time, it was not Luther’s intention to break away from the Roman Church, but to reform it. Still, Luther’s refusal to back down from his increasingly hostile criticisms against the Catholic Church brought about his excommunication in 1521.
Perhaps the most enduring aspect of Luther’s teachings in the Protestant world involves his principles of sola fide (‘by faith alone’), sola gratia (‘by grace alone’) and sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’). Luther was convinced that the Church had drifted from the Pauline teaching of salvation by faith in Christ alone, instead opting for additional works in order to ‘acquire salvation’. The Council of Trent (1545) made clear the belief in the Catholic Church that it was exclusively by God’s grace that salvation came to the believer, but by this time the teaching of Luther and the reformers that followed after him had done its damage. One of the central tenets of the ‘Lutheran view’ is that the epistles of St Paul dealt with the issue of the Jewish understanding of ‘salvation by works’ (a controversial notion that I believe is an inaccurate read of both Second Temple Judaism [6th century BCE to the 1st century CE] and the writings of Paul). When Luther looked at Paul’s writings he saw his situation (a Christian dealing with the false teachings of an established religion based upon salvation by works) coupled with Paul’s dealings with the ‘Judaisers’. As a result of this interpretation, the Lutheran and Reformed traditions have always possessed what some might consider to be a disproportionate aversion toward the concept of ‘works’. Luther’s view has been criticised by those that hold a more traditional view and the recent work by Protestants like Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn and Tom Wright (the ‘New Perspective on Paul’), which in itself is a 20th century reaction to the Protestant Reformation.
As the Protestant Reformation made its way across Europe, it opened the door for the replacement of the feudal social system with a more mercantile (eventually capitalistic) social system. The Enlightenment came to pass, which generally pressed that the right beliefs (essentially by way of right logic) precede right actions. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries The Romantic and Counter-Enlightenment movements reacted against the Enlightenment, stressing the inadequacy of bare logic and doctrine. Friedrich Schleiermacher played an important role in the intellectual history of Europe at this time. He held that experience was to inform doctrine. Theological liberalism followed Schleiermacher and dominated Western Christianity for the next century.
In the early 20th century we see the birth of Modernism and WWI. Karl Barth, reacting against the endorsement of the Weimar Republic’s expansionistic ambitions by his liberal theological mentors, rejected the conclusions of Schleiermacher. Barth, inspired by Hegel and Kierkegaard, instead proposes a dialectic approach in which the unknowable God has revealed Godself in Jesus Christ and it is through Christ alone, the Word of God, that a Christian might experience God. Modernism pressed forward after the First World War, critiquing orthodoxy, which prompted the Fundamentalist Evangelical reaction. This movement made way for the surge in popularity of the Restorationist Movement (emphasising ‘proper’ action) and the anti-intellectual Jesus Movement (emphasising ‘correct’—though not necessarily orthodox—beliefs).
Post-modernism has found expression in the Emergent Movement, which emphasises ‘belonging before belief’, prompting yet another Evangelical reaction emphasising ‘belief before belonging’. In reaction to this whole mess we also have those who try to hold onto something universal and unchanging – ‘Ecumenists’, like me.
In looking very briefly at some Western intellectual history over the last 500 years I hope to have not offended too many readers. If you feel my incredibly brief summary has not treated your views equally I apologise profusely and ask that you would please comment if you’d like to add something relevant – I might have more detailed reasons for much of what I did write and we can engage in an enlightening (excuse my language) dialogue.
So where are we now? We’ve determined that [Protestant] Christians have shifted frequently between emphases on orthodoxy and orthopraxy. We’ve also determined that two prominent Protestant movements are currently in conflict over this very issue. What does the Gospel of the kingdom of God have to say about these two things?
We can look to Scripture for some insight, but I quickly want to express a few things with regard to Scripture. I believe that it is essential to acknowledge that Scripture was written by different people at particular points in time, in particular geographical locations, for particular reasons. This is not to say that the Scripture has become entirely inaccessible to anyone in our present age. I believe that God has given the Church authority and therefore as a product of the Church, the Bible has authority. God is also a living and active God and the Holy Spirit of God can provide guidance and insight in our explorations, potentially. Still, the Scripture is not a treatise on everything – that is not its purpose. I believe a sure way to orient ourselves in order to see the world (and this issue of orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy) in light of the kingdom of God we must look toward our example of proper living in the kingdom of God: Jesus of Nazareth.
With regard to the life of Christ, the primary focus of Christian tradition and the Scripture is the three-year period leading up to his death and Resurrection. This is considered Christ’s public ministry. When we look at Christ’s ministry, what is it characterised by? Do we see an exclusive emphasis on orthodoxy? What about orthopraxy? It is quite clear that Christ valued both things and didn’t paint one especially important over the other. Instead it is more of a process.
Some might say that works are necessary for a member of the kingdom of God. I would say that works are inevitable for a member of the kingdom of God. We do not enter the kingdom by our works, neither do our good works merely demonstrate that we are part of the kingdom.
I actually propose that our good works are a reaction in themselves, a reaction to the grace of God through the Gospel. Some might say, sceptically, “Oh great, the obscure ‘Gospel’ card again,” as if it is some inexplicable and abstract notion. Others might argue that this emphasis on the Gospel seems to imply a preeminence of belief over works. It is true that the Gospel is composed of data in part – historical facts regarding the actions of God, culminating in the death and Resurrection of Christ and the advent of the Church. But instead of viewing the Gospel as brute facts, I would rather see it as something we perceive with our whole being. We do not merely hear its words and think, ‘I believe that.’ The Gospel is the effective power of God through the Holy Spirit and the invitation to participate in the redemptive mission of the creator of the universe as members of God’s family, the Church. Therefore I would see this reaction to the Gospel not as a reaction to bare facts or experience, but the entirety of what it is to begin to comprehend the grace of God for the creation.
The God of history has entered into history and has redeemed all things, visible and invisible, and in this we cannot see a serious Christian faith without a balance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. In other words, Christianity is not merely about doing the right thing or believing the right thing. Perhaps Christianity is more about doing the right thing based upon the right motives. It is an active faith, that does not exclusively demand our beliefs, nor does it exclusively demand our actions – it demands all that we are, visible and invisible.
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us [humans] and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess on baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Creed taken from John H. Leith (ed.), Creeds of the Churches [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982], 33.)
Since I converted to Christianity in my teens I have been continually exploring what it means to be a Christian. In my experience I have become increasingly convinced that Christianity hinges upon one major theme: the kingdom of God. It is used throughout the Christian tradition and is referred to throughout the Scriptures many times (oftentimes referred to as ‘the kingdom of heaven’). The phrase can be picked apart from many sides, but I believe that its general implications are as follows:
God is the king of the kingdom
The kingdom of God is both visible and invisible
To be a Christian is to be a citizen or member of the kingdom of God
In the Christian tradition, these implications, while very basic, are indispensible. This series, Imaging the Kingdom, is intended to explore the nature of the kingdom of God and its implications in the universe, and therefore in our world and in the lives of all Christians. It must be noted that this exploration is inevitably non-exhaustive – we will explore why later. First we will briefly analyse these three implications.
1. God is the king of the kingdom
The kingdom of God is the most important theme in the Christian tradition (and arguably the other two Abrahamic religions: Judaism and Islam). The natural head of any ‘kingdom’ is the ‘king’. To say that God is the king of the kingdom of God is to say that God is the ruler of the kingdom, a rightful monarch without equal. All authority and power in the kingdom of God belongs to God.
2. The kingdom of God is both visible and invisible
In my experience I have noticed that oftentimes conversations about the kingdom of God (if the kingdom of God is spoken of at all) revolve around the ‘already but not yet’ nature of the kingdom of God. There are real issues affecting how we experience the presence of the kingdom of God in this age, the Church age. The orthodox Christian understanding is that throughout history God has been extending his reign over a fallen universe that has rejected his reign. This extension has taken its most dramatic leap forward in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Since (and through) that event, God has established his Church on earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit to live out what it means to be in the kingdom of God, which we will talk more about later. There is an element (or are elements) of the kingdom of God that is not yet present, something made especially evident in the Christian experience. The expectation of Christians throughout history is that God will bring about the fullness of the kingdom of God at some future point in the second coming of Jesus Christ. This is what is meant in the ‘but not yet’, and while the discussion of what is ‘not yet’ is necessary, the primary focus of this study will be that which is ‘already’. I use the language ‘visible and invisible’ as it is written in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 CE, which I consider the most fundamental and comprehensive ecumenical (general) Church creed:
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…
Even in this first section of the Creed we see our first two implications (1. God is the king of the kingdom; 2. The kingdom of God is both visible and invisible). The language of the Creed is helpful because it seeks to paint a very clear and concise picture of the orthodox Christian faith. The words ‘visible and invisible’ help us to see the overarching nature of the universe and God’s reign of that universe. Orthodox Christian theology does not paint the universe in a dichotomy of ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’. Throughout the ages, this dualism has caused countless conflicts that have been deemed heretical. Indeed, to see humans or the universe as split into ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ conflicts with the way that God has both created the world and redeemed it – holistically. God is not interested in creating a physical world just to destroy it. The Incarnation and the life, death and Resurrection of Christ point to a God who created unified, holistic beings, whose nature is fully understood in unified, holistic terms. As St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ’s bodily Resurrection is “the first fruits” of “those who belong to Christ.” The kingdom of God is not a disembodied spiritual kingdom, but it is the reign of God over all things that he has created and deemed good, both ‘visible and invisible’.
3. To be a Christian is to be a citizen or member of the kingdom of God
Because of the first two implications of the kingdom of God, that God is the king and that the kingdom is universal, to be a Christian is to be a part of that kingdom. We cannot understand any part of what it means to be a part of that kingdom without understanding first that God is the king of said kingdom and that this kingdom is universal; all other implications of the kingdom of God hinge upon these principles.
The inevitable imprecision of our talk about God and his kingdom: ‘Imaging’
Since Christians are members of the kingdom of God, subjects as to a monarch even, it serves us well to learn, rehearse and enact what that means for the way we live and think. Unfortunately we face one significant roadblock: God himself. I’ve been writing, “God is this” and “God is that”, but as the seminal twentieth-century Reformed theologian Karl Barth reminds us time and time again, God is entirely ‘other’. What is meant by this is that God as a being is distinct from his creation and while he has invested into his creation through Christ, the Holy Spirit and the presence of the kingdom of God, in trying to talk about God we will inevitably be imprecise. This might seem discouraging, but I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I haven’t figured everything out in my early twenties! The comfort rests in the fact that God is gracious.
God has been gracious to us through giving us his Son, Jesus Christ, who not only demonstrates to us what it is to be fully human (an implication of the kingdom of God we will save for another post) and what it is to live in the kingdom of God, but it is Christ himself who is the revelation of God to us. It is through an active conversation with God as his Church that we learn more and more what it is to be that very thing: God’s Church. Because of this inevitable imprecision, I find that looking at the Christian life from the perspective of the orthodox understanding of the Gospel is our most reliable source, as it is concrete enough to transform our lives, while remaining very open to conversation and interpretation. In such a way we are ‘imaging’ the kingdom of God, developing ways to talk about God and his kingdom that effectively inform the way that we live. Having this ‘imaging’ perspective also encourages a fruitful conversation between all Christian traditions, helping us to be unified and effective in living out the kingdom of God in this world as one Body, the Church.
As we explore the kingdom of God in this series, addressing issues like culture, politics, theology (yes, our theology should be informed by other theology), etc., I hope that it is intellectually stimulating, but most of all I hope that God uses this conversation to transform our lives via the Holy Spirit in order to love God, other people and the world we live in more and more. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed:
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us [humans] and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess on baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Creed taken from John H. Leith (ed.), Creeds of the Churches [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982], 33.)
The present Western culture is largely ‘post-Christian’, fed up with the tired dogmas of the past. One common mistake made by the Christian community is to try to revamp the relevance of Christianity through massive immersion. The thought is (in an admittedly crudely-reduced form) that if we flood the world with Bibles and ‘the Gospel message’, the Christian community will finally end up back on top, like the idyllic golden age during which God was the ruler of the world. Unfortunately the Christian ideal has never been a part of reality. People may look back at post-war America in the 1950s and conclude, “That was a good time. People were decent. It was the 1960s that brought about our current distress. Abortion, homosexuality and the utter moral corruption of Western society.”
It is not my attempt to provide a thorough analysis of Western society since World War II, but I will point out that the heart of Christianity has never been about this set of morals, morals defined and packaged for Evangelical Christians by the Religious Right in the 1980s. The principal response of the Christian community seems to be pointing the finger. In his book, The Post-Christian Mind, Harry Blamires tends to point out that the problems facing the Christian community during this time are not the fault of the Christian community itself. He writes,
If we are to examine from the inside the machinery of contemporary error, we must step outside of our theological skins. Everything that gives shape and meaning to our conception of the span of human life derives from a system of beliefs that the post-Christian mind rejects. The Christian finds the ultimate meaning of things outside time, outside the boundaries of our earthly human career.
(Harry Blamires, The Post-Christian Mind [London: SPCK, 2001], 3.)
I’m afraid that Mr Blamires is mistaken on several counts. As the rest of his book points out, he generally defines “Everything that gives shape and meaning to our conception of the span of human life” as a set of morals based upon family values. For instance, he harps on the attack against the sanctity of marriage. While I agree that the value of marriage has been greatly reduced in Western society, I believe that the Christian community is largely at fault. By this, I mean that the Christian community has not demonstrated a great apologetic for marriage, giving no standard by which to critique the ‘secular’ tendency to divorce. My second main issue with Mr Blamires’ words has to do with a general presupposition concerning the utter ‘otherness’ of the Christian life, one in which we find “the ultimate meaning of things outside time, outside the boundaries of our earthly human career.” While God is most certainly greater than our realm, God is also very present and committed to time and space, which is most fully demonstrated in the Incarnation, the giving of the Holy Spirit, the advent of the Church and the rapid expansion of the universal kingdom of God.
Still, this tendency toward perceiving ourselves so fully identified with this ‘otherness’ helps the Christian community to embrace a false sense of exile. In such a way, the Christian can justify societal rejection based upon the life of Christ. Michael Frost in his book Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture, writes,
I suspect that the increasing marginalization of the Christian movement in the West is the very thing that will wake us up to the marvellously exciting, dangerous, and confronting message of Jesus.
(Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006], 9.)
This is very close to what I think we need to hear, but the language of ‘exile’ is too heavy-handed. Frost is very glad to leave what he considers the “Christendom era”. To set ourselves apart from the Christian tradition and to adopt what we consider to be ‘the message of Christ’ is dangerous. This is a mistake primarily because ‘the message of Christ’ is convoluted, and if we limit this message solely to the Scripture (as is by-and-large the practice of Protestantism) we undermine the very nature of Scripture. Scripture was not given to the Christian community as a tool by which we can live without the Church. That old Lutheran ideal, Sola Scriptura simply does not account for the robustness of the Christian presence throughout history. We are dealing with a living God and a living Church.
While Christianity is something very contrarian, we cannot accept that we are so holy and counter-cultural that exile is a result of our ‘doing things right’. The Christian community could do well by listening to the culture in a self-critical way. Unfortunately, I believe that this can be done wrong. In fact, I believe that the Christian community is experiencing its present dilemma because it has been taking the things of God, the way we rehearse the Gospel, the way we understand our role in this world, and severely altering it based upon our preconceived notions of how things should be. For instance, during the time of the Reformation, Calvinists began to wear black, not initially to express modesty, but to align the clergy with academia, showing that the Reformed priests were educated, unlike the Catholic priests who wore colourful vestments based upon the seasons within the Church year.
Changing our faith based upon preconceived notions has had far more adverse effects than the clerical wear of the Reformers, the most tragic of which I believe is the castration of the Gospel. What I mean by this is that the far-reaching effects of the Gospel have been greatly minimised in order to attend to the desires of Western culture. The culmination of Christ’s life, death and Resurrection has moved from an incredible cosmic event in which the transformation of the universe was initiated and the Church created and redeemed into a hyper-individualistic ticket to a spiritual heaven paradise. Was not the God of the Nicene Creed the God who created all things, visible and invisible?
Christianity is not a set of morals, it is not a set of mental suppositions and it is not a social programme – it is God’s transformative initiative in the universe, the Gospel. The Gospel is therefore the heart of Christianity and the heart of the Gospel is love. Perhaps the primary reason why Christianity has experienced such a drop in public sentiment is because love, and consequently the Gospel, has been corrupted and is void of much of its usefulness. Now, I will neither deny the sincerity of the entire Christian community nor the power of God as demonstrated through even the most meagre of Gospel proclamations. We are fortunate that God is far more powerful and mysterious than our systems of belief, no matter how informed or refined.
What I am going to propose will not change the fact that God is far more than we comprehend on a daily basis, but I do hope that, as should be the case in any theological endeavour, this exercise will serve to draw us as the Christian community closer to the heart of God and his mission to the world. His mission is not one of ‘add-ons’. Being a Christian is not an ‘app’ one can purchase for their iPhone. Being a Christian is neither a new t-shirt nor a whole new wardrobe. Being a Christian is a radical transformation and orientation toward the will of God.
Love is the central tenet of the Gospel – God loves the universe they created. The existence of anything is contingent upon the grace and love of God and for us God demonstrated this love most tangibly through the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Throughout the whole of Scripture God demonstrates his love, and Christ, when asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” responds, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40, NRSV)
In theory, the Christian community accepts most of these things with open arms, but the magnitude of what ‘love’ means is where the real weakness of the present Gospel takes shape. Perhaps a more revealing passage is found in the Sermon on the Mount,
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matthew 5:43-48)
A pious Christian might call out an “Amen!” without thinking twice about this passage, but I believe a more honest response might be, “Oh shit, we’re doing it wrong.”
Indeed, the love of Christ is not some half-hearted commitment not to hate. The Christian community has a propensity to take the positive commands of God and turn them into negative commands. Instead of this radical calling ‘to love everyone’, we turn it into a meagre calling ‘not to hate anyone’. Even then we must weaken our definition of hate and say, “Well I don’t hate anyone, I simply dislike some people.” Whether we define our lack of love as ‘hate’ or ‘dislike’, we are still missing the point – we are called to love.
But we must also understand that the love of Christ is a very complex thing. God does not suspect that we will master his greatest commandment with relative ease. To love in the way that the Christian community is called to love involves a daily dependence on God’s strength and guidance by way of the Holy Spirit. We can hardly even begin to imagine what it is to love in the way that God demonstrated through Christ. Even on the Cross in the midst of his persecutors tradition maintains that Jesus requests of his ‘heavenly Father’, “forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 24:34) Jesus’ love is a radical love, and it was a love that brought about massive transformation: reconciliation between God and people (‘love your God’), reconciliation between people and other people (‘love your neighbour’; ‘love your enemy’), reconciliation within individuals toward themselves and reconciliation between people and the creation. The greatest commandments can summarise this grand reconciliation. If we love God in the freedom granted by the work of Christ we will love the entirety of the creation because God has created, loved and redeemed it. This holistic reconciliation in the Gospel can be used to counter the neo-Gnostic trajectory of contemporary Christianity.
When considering the implications of these reconciliatory principles, the unfathomable depth of the love God has for us and the love that God has called the Christian community to, I believe that a it is a good exercise to seek to see it all from the perspective of the Cross.
When your significant other does not see your point of view
Remember Christ’s love on the Cross.
When your child disobeys you
Remember Christ’s love on the Cross.
When you give into the temptation yet another time
Remember Christ’s love on the Cross.
In all things
Remember Christ’s love on the Cross.
Be transformed by Christ’s love on the Cross.
+++++
Exploring and employing the implications of God’s love is an eternal task, but I end this post with these thoughts: To be a Christian is to be a subject in God’s kingdom and to be a subject in God’s kingdom requires one thing: robust obedient love. This world can only ever benefit from more love. Nothing in this world ever went bad nor will anything ever go bad because there was ‘just too much love’.
So what exactly does “postconservative evangelical (PCE) theology” look like? Some inclinations were hinted at in the “10 features of conservative evangelical theologians” in Part I of this series and Olson begins in his next chapter to sketch six features that will give a sense of the “mood” of PCE theology (you can see already the desire to elude rigid categorization, can’t you?).
Before he lists these characteristics, he delves into the issue of whether some in the Conservative Evangelical Establishment (CEE–my term, not Olson’s) would question whether PCE theologians are indeed “evangelical.” Olson answers this by proposing two “controversial theses”:
Evangelical theology is theology done by an evangelical theologian (do you wonder if he was being ironic with the word ‘controversial’?)
An evangelical theologian is someone who claims to be evangelical, is generally regarded as working within the evangelical network, and adheres to five cardinal features of evangelical faith–biblicism, conversionism, cross-centered piety, activism in evangelism and social transformation & respect for the Great Tradition of Christian belief
The second thesis might cause controversy among some in the CEE because they are uncomfortable with the confusion that exists as to who are truly evangelicals, as well as dismayed at the “rampant diversity of interpretation among evangelicals.” Olson points out a distinction that CE thinkers (such as D.A. Carson in The Gagging of God) would like to draw between “sociological evangelicalism” (those people who participate in evangelical churches, organizations, etc.) and “authentic doctrinal evangelicalism” (detailed theological orthodoxy).
While Olson acknowledges the legitimacy of concerns with doctrinal pluralism and the contemporary “desertion of the cognitive substance of faith” and he also admits that CE theologians are correct that “authentic evangelical faith includes a strong commitment to orthodox doctrine,” he holds that they are wrong “insofar as they elevate doctrinal orthodoxy to incorrigible status where it is functionally infallible and therefore equal with divine revelation itself” (which Olson sees in CE “traditionalism that enshrines [the intellectual content of] Protestant orthodoxy as it was developed in the post-Reformation period by Protestant scholastics and especially by the Old Princeton School theologians in the nineteenth century”).
Olson sees the only way to keep from raising doctrinal formulations to peer status with Scripture is “to leave a door open to doctrinal reconsideration and revision in light of Scripture [by defining] the evangelical attitude toward orthodox doctrine as one of respect and deference but not slavish adherence.” He proposes that “what makes a theologian evangelical is not strict faithfulness without mental reservation or reconsideration to doctrinal orthodoxy [but rather] that he or she works enthusiastically from within and embodies the ethos or the evangelical movement” (as defined in his 5 cardinal features above).
Olson delves briefly into a section on the two predominant approaches to American evangelical faith, or the “dual inheritance” of the “two strands of Protestantism that flowed together in the Great Awakening,” which reveals a great deal about the tension and turmoil in the contemporary Western evangelical community. The two approaches are:
Puritanism that was publicly focused, scholastic, and whose outlook on salvation was Reformed or Calvinistic, exemplified in Jonathan Edwards & influencing contemporary Reformed movements such as the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
Pietism that was more inwardly focused in its experientialism, with a view of salvation that was influenced by synergism and more Arminian (though predating Arminius to Melanchthon and the Anabaptists), exemplified in John Wesley & influential in the Jesus People movement of the 1970’s, the Pentecostal-Charismatic movements, as well as the emerging churches network and the house church movement
Olson points out that the “vast bulk of evangelicalism lies somewhere between these expressions, combining aspects of each” and reflecting the two often conflicting impulses of “evoking experience of God” (Pietism) and “inculcating correct beliefs” (Puritanism) He also suggests that PCE theology is “by and large a derivation of the Pietist side of the evangelical movement” and CE theology (and the fundamentalist movement preceding it) has arisen out of the Puritan ingredient.
Some of these limbs wish they had a saw...
Now we finally move to the six features of the postconservative style of doing theology (I’m not using quotes, but am condensing/editing Olson’s words in these paragraphs):
PCE theologians consider the main purpose of revelation to be transformation more than information (Note: while CE theologians would agree with the transformational goal, they would see revelation as primarily as the communication of information/facts for the purpose of creating knowledge, while PCEs wonder if knowledge is the only or best means of transforming persons). PCEs do not reject a propositional, factual, and informational aspect to divine revelation, but stress that revelation is given primarily for the purpose of redemption through personal encounter and relationship, and that nonpropositional aspects of revelation can be useful for theological endeavor. They see the Bible as not as a “book full of timeless truths” but as a vehicle that contains many types of revelation, all of which support that which is primary in Scripture: narrative. PCEs are generally enamored with narrative theology, which emphasizes the power of story to transform people in a way propositions do not, and they worry that CE theology is too caught up in the idea of cognitive Christianity to the neglect of transformation and relationship with God.
They see theology as a pilgrimage and a journey rather than a discovery and conquest and hold that the constructive task of theology is ever unfinished–there are no closed, once and for all systems of theology. A few quotes from the late PCE theologian Clark Pinnock will illustrate this point: “Why do conservatives assume that the received doctrinal paradigms created by human beings like ourselves are incapable of improvement?” and “How awfully easy it is for people who think themselves in possession of God’s infallible Word to transfer some of that infallibility to themselves. And how easy for them to respond to anyone who questions any aspect of their fortresslike position with righteous anger and adamant rejection.” PCE thinkers believe that taking risks in theological endeavor with thought experiments is not a sin and also appreciate the role of imagination in theological work.
They evidence a discomfort and dissatisfaction with the reliance of CE theology on Enlightenment and modern modes of thought. Alister McGrath points to the covert modern influence on CE theology: “Certain central Enlightenment ideas appear to have been uncritically taken on board by some evangelicals, with the result that part of the movement runs the risk of becoming a secret prisoner of a secular outlook which is now dying before our eyes.” PCEs are concerned that conservative foundationalism and propositionalism elevate something alien to revelation above revelation as the criterion of truth, reducing Christianity to a philosophy. They believe that some forms of postmodern thought can help liberate evangelical theology from the Enlightenment.
They view evangelicalism as a centered set category rather than as a set having boundaries. This means that the question is not who is “in” or “out” of evangelicalism, but who is nearer to the center and who is moving away from it (the center being Jesus Christ and the gospel & reflecting the 5 core elements above). There is no evangelical magisterium to decide who is in or out of the movement. The issue of how you can have an identity with a fuzzy boundary is responded to with the following clarification: an organization has boundaries (such as a nation, i.e. Who is an American? Any US citizen.), but a movement does not (i.e. Who is a “Westerner”? Not all Europeans or Americans are truly Westerners culturally and many people living in Asia are Westernized!). So it is with an evangelical–there is no test for determining who is an evangelical and yet we all know that not everyone who claims the label deserves it. In this, PCEs are more comfortable with possible ambiguity as to who is truly an evangelical.
They have a tendency to view the enduring essence of Christianity, and the core identity of evangelical faith, as spiritual experience rather than as doctrinal belief. Stanley Grenz argued that evangelicalism is a vision of the Christian faith expressed primarily in a distinctive spirituality, a shared experience of “convertive piety” that manifests itself in a personal, transforming relationship with Jesus Christ and is expressed communally in shared stories/testimonies, hymns, witness, and worship.
They have a tendency to hold relatively lightly to tradition while respecting the Great Tradition of Christian belief, even as they subordinate it to revelation and consider it at most a guide. Kevin Vanhoozer agrees, noting “Sola Scriptura means at least this: that the church’s proclamation is always subject to potential correction from the canon.” Two terms that could be used to describe this tendency would be “generous orthodoxy” and “critical orthodoxy.” While not eschewing doctrine, propositions, or tradition, they believe that all of these ideas are subject to the greater authority of divine revelation in Jesus Christ and in Scripture, which may at any time break forth in new light that corrects what has always been believed and taught by Christians. The PCE style demands humility, generosity, and openness of spirit in conducting the work of theology and handling the cognitive content of the faith.
These are merely sketches that Olson goes on to fill out in subsequent chapters…any thoughts on these features from our intrepid readers (i.e. those who read through to the end of this post)?
The other day my friend Erin Hennessy saw you on the F train in NYC, but she couldn’t get up the nerve to say anything to you. That got me thinking of what I would say to you if I ran into you (even though I never would, as I live on the other side of the country). The first thing that came to mind was to talk to you about your 50 states project, which you began so beautifully with Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State and Illinois/The Avalanche.
Now back in the day (the early two thousands or so), I took your proclamation to make an album (or EP, maybe?) for each one of the 50 states seriously, even though some of my more cynical friends would mock me saying it was impossible for you to do in your lifetime (they would start with some calculations, ask your age, etc. PS We share the same birthday!). The reason I believed you was because I saw this limitless sort of creative genius in you, and even beyond that, it was as if you were the Emersonian “Poet” for this generation of Americans–seeing and showing us the beauty and agony and the divine in the everyday, transforming the mundane into the sublime, telling us stories full of wonder and longing and brilliant details from towns like Ypsilanti and Holland and Romulus.
You made me suddenly attentive to the people and places of America: you imbued them with a magical luster simply by naming them in the midst of your deeply moving, melancholic, and rich melodies and arrangements, or by inserting them amongst such evocative mystical lines of verse:
When the revenant came down
We couldn’t imagine what it was
In the spirit of three stars
The alien thing that took its form
Then to Lebanon, oh God!
The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow
(Oh, history involved itself)
Mysterious shade that took its form
(Or what it was!), incarnation, three stars
Delivering signs and dusting from their eyes
-“Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”
All that to say that I really, really wish the 50 states project would continue–I think it could become one of the national treasures of our country for centuries to come, a Leaves of Grass for the 21st century that American kids would listen to to understand where they’ve come from and what kind of people we are. I heard at one point that you said the 50 states project was “such a joke,” but I would challenge you in earnest, if only for the sake of those future little kids, to reconsider abandoning this momentous endeavor.
Realizing that it might very well be impossible for you to write and record all of the albums yourself, what if you instead became the director of the project–you have set the standard quite high with your first two albums–and with the profound respect you have from your artistic peers, I honestly believe you could rally together the best artists from each state to collaborate with to make this happen, creating a kind of ark of American culture.
Here are some suggestions to begin with (I admit some may be wishful thinking) & I call on any reader to add to/better the selection of songwriters for any state (I have put brackets around bands with whom I have only a cursory familiarity & some states I have absolutely no idea about):
Alabama = The Snake the Cross the Crown
Alaska = Portugal The Man
Arizona = Calexico
Arkansas = ???
California = Elijah Wade Smith, Beck, Stephen Malkmus
Colorado = DeVotchKa, The Apples in Stereo
Connecticut = Rivers Cuomo?
Delaware = The Spinto Band
Florida = Iron & Wine, Aaron Marsh
Georgia = Deerhunter, Of Montreal, Bill Mallonee
Hawaii = Mason Jennings
Idaho = Built to Spill, Finn Riggins
Illinois = Sufjan Stevens
Indiana = Mock Orange
Iowa = Caleb Engstrom
Kansas = Drakkar Sauna, Mates of State, The New Amsterdams, The Appleseed Cast
Kentucky = Bonnie “Prince” Billy, My Morning Jacket
Louisiana = Jeff Mangum, Mutemath
Maine = [Phantom Buffalo]
Maryland = John Vanderslice, Wye Oak
Massachusetts = Lou Barlow, Winterpills
Michigan = Sufjan Stevens
Minnesota = Low, Cloud Cult, Lucky Wilbur
Mississippi = ???
Missouri = [Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin]
Montana = Colin Meloy
Nebraska = Cursive, Bright Eyes
Nevada = The Killers?
New Hampshire = [Wild Light]
New Jersey = Sufjan Stevens (?), Danielson, Yo La Tango
New Mexico = The Shins, Beirut
New York = The Magnetic Fields, Sonic Youth, Interpol, The Walkmen
North Carolina = The Mountain Goats
North Dakota = [The White Foliage]
Ohio = Robert Pollard, Over the Rhine, The National, Mark Kozelek
Oklahoma = The Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon
Oregon = Laura Veirs, M. Ward, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, The Decemberists
Pennsylvania = The Innocence Mission, Denison Witmer, Matt Pond PA
Rhode Island = The Low Anthem, Death Vessel
South Carolina = Band of Horses
South Dakota = Haley Bonar
Tennessee = Derek Webb
Texas = Josh T. Pearson, Ramesh Srivastava (formerly of Voxtrot), The Polyphonic Spree, Okkervil River, Devendra Banhart
Utah = [Joshua James]
Vermont = Anais Mitchell
Virginia = Thao Nguyen, Hush Arbors
Washington = David Bazan, Damien Jurado, Jeremy Enigk, Fleet Foxes
Lost in the Cloud 