A project I contributed to has resulted in a DVD and study guide based on the 1985 book by Robert Ericsksen, Theologians Under Hitler. Ericksen reviews the capitulation of three prominent theologians to the designs of Adolf Hitler. The three infamous scholars are Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and THE Gerhard Kittel of the 10-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament fame.  A group of 14 Christians from various denominations together with two Jewish participants sought to answer the questions, “How Could This Happen?” and “How Can We Ensure It Never Happens Again?”
The result of this collaborative effort has also produced “The Nashville Declaration,” which will be accepted into the official archive of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. this week, which is the occasion for my absence. I will try to see Mark Dever during my visit and force him to answer any question I pose to him.

“Mystery.” I encounter this word periodically in my research of the emerging church movement and the emergent conversation. D.A. Carson is correct that a protest posture shapes many of the leaders and shapers of this broad and diverse phenomenon (I think this protest aspect accounts for much of what is most unattractive in the movement and for the most glaring blindspots afflicting its most passionate advocates). But positive aims also animate the movement. The quest to recover valuable neglected dimensions of human and Christian life surface again and again in the relevant literature and on the numberless blogs; dimensions such as community, authenticity, the arts and also mystery. At the same time, C.S. Lewis seems to be a favorite of many of these leaders and within emerging communities of faith.

Take of this passage from the extraordinary Preface to Paradise Lost. In this excerpt Lewis is defending Milton’s attempt to evoke “stock responses through his poetry:

“By a Stock Response Dr. I.A. Richards means a deliberate organized attitude which is substituted for ‘the direct free play of experience.’ In my opinion such deliberate organization is on of the first necessities of human life, and one of the main functions of art to assist it. All that we describe as constancy in love or friendship, as loyalty in political life, or in general, as perseverance—all solid virtue and stable pleasure―depends on organizing chosen attitudes and maintaining them against the eternal flux (or direct free play) of mere immediate experience. This Dr. Richards would not perhaps deny. But his school puts the emphasis the other way. The talk as if improvement of our responses were always required in the direction of finer discrimination and greater particularity; never as if men needed responses more normal and more traditional that they have now. To me, on the other hand, it seems that most people’s responses are not ‘stock’ enough, and that the play of experience is too free and too direct in most of us for safety or happiness or human dignity.”

I wonder how compatible Lewis’ conception of the purpose of art here expressed coincides with that present within the emerging community. If by the welcoming of mystery we think of the appreciation of the elasticity of truth or a kind of emptying of the mind in the interest of a “free play” of experience and meaning, we certainly part company with Lewis. The longer he was a Christian and the more he learned, the more conservative he became, the more convinced he became of the “concrete” character of the objects of knowledge such as virtue, wisdom and ultimately God himself. The great Christian apologist turns out to be, increasingly I think, a dogmatist to the core.

Take the doctrine of the Trinity for example. For Lewis, the term “mystery” may belong to the confession that human reason cannot exhaust the revelation of the one God in three persons, thus requiring humble submission to what we cannot deny given that concrete revelation. But mystery here implies no invitation to a kind of post-modern meaning-creating “free play” of experience such as one might indulge while listening to Pink Floyd’s Meddle album.

Amidst frequent appeals to experience as a window into God’s will, here are some of my thoughts:

1. Meaning cannot be read-off experience. Experience must be interpreted. Example. Mother of 16 year old twins is tragically killed. Son #1 (Nietzsche) gets and stays alternately mad at and denies God to the grave. Son #2 (Kierkegaard) gets mad too but finally takes the leap of faith and finds God in the wake of the tragic loss.

2. Much of the trouble comes when someone’s interpretation of their or someone else’s experience becomes an article for export. That is, they expect others to accept the meaning they place on the experience―to believe it or maybe even underwrite the cost of their upcoming missionary service, benefits and all. We should not require others to treat meanings we claim from our experiences as binding on them, should we? Example: I have high certainty that God made me leave engineering for the Christine ministry and that He made me leave Kansas City for Bangkok. But I need not chafe at the scrutiny of the ordination committee or the mission sending agency. They have no direct access to my experience and they have a provisional and proximate duty of stewardship in the distribution of denominational monies.

3. Even I should not trust what I think I know form such experiences they way I trust God’s word. Surely God’s word is a more sure anchor than any meaning I may derive by interpretation of personal experience.

4. Let’s say what we really mean when we share experiences we view as God’s leading. I find that upon closer investigation, even many who use language such as “God  told me” or “God led me,” often do not mean what that kind of language suggests. If God speaks as clearly as he did to Moses “Take your shoes off.” Fine. But if he didn’t, let’s find accurate language that conveys the difference.

5. Let’s recognize that daily concrete unambiguous leading by God is not ordinary but “extra-ordinary” and ought not to be normalized in our expectation or treated as a sign that we are especially spiritual. Could we abandon the notion that anytime a “BIG” decision is faced that we are under pressure from God to claim concrete guidance from Him. Could we be taking on a burden of discernment He didn’t put there and giving up a freedom to decide He is happy to allow?

Any thoughts out there?

Is there nothing so intrinsically innocent and good that we sinners cannot spoil it? Apparently not. Not even when it comes to prayer. Jesus used the pompous self-serving prayer of a Pharisee to highlight, among other things, the vulnerability of prayer to pernicious use. “Thank you God that I am not like his Publican!” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus knows he must teach his disciples what to pray. Otherwise they might stupidly lapse into the vain repetitions of the pagans.

Have you escaped the nastiness prayer can inject into an otherwise mutually supportive gathering of believers? Count yourself blessed. Consider this effort at edification by a local church Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) president lo not so many years ago: “Thank you God that brother George has stopped living in sin with that woman and thank you that some of the young families have finally started tithing.” Can anything compare with the sweet encouragement of a sister in Christ?!

Once I became alert to the kind of mischief an open prayer service exposes believers to, I started giving periodic instruction regarding the purpose of prayer and pointing out how easily what should involve the exercise of a precious privilege and responsibility of the people of God has power to harm as well as help. I encourage you to do the same. (Open microphone confessionals of the type that were so popular a few years ago can be a similar Pandora’s Box of unhelpful public hurtfulness).

As a pastor I try to stay alert to the need to draw aside for a little private instruction those who, wittingly or not, tend to lapse into the use of prayer time to gossip, correct others, criticized the staff, or to advance any number of agendas that have little to do with petitioning God for his help.

Have you experienced how haywire a hijacked prayer meeting can get? Any pointers on how to protect prayer meetings from such unhealthy usurpation?

Thomas Oden, United Methodist, longtime Professor of Theology at Drew University and prolific author began what he called his “long journey home” from liberalism to things orthodox and evangelical in 1979. You can read about it in his book from that year, Agenda For Theology. Since then Oden has published like wild fire including a massive 3-volume Systematic Theology which remains an unparalleled tool for plowing back to the sources of historical theology, especially sources dating from prior to the year 600 A.D.

In a recent volume, Turning Around the Mainline: How Renewal Movements are Changing the Church, Oden taps decades of archived material to urge orthodox evangelicals tempted to bolt Mainline denominations to hunker down and stay put. Oden believes they have more company within and without their denominations than they realize and that real prospects for the recovery of historic, orthodox, biblically shaped and Holy Spirit empowered renewal are quite good, perhaps inevitable.

Protestants targeted by Oden include: Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and (even though, technically, they are not of the Mainline) American Baptists. Could Oden be right? The slide toward liberalism was halted within the Southern Baptist Convention, but then, the structure of that denomination made the path to reform clear (not easy, just clear). What will it take to achieve something real and lasting in the Mainline? Oden addresses some of the difficulties in his book. 

An American Baptist congregation I pastored in Indiana recently gave up on their decade long efforts (banded together with other likeminded churches) to see the long leftward slide of their denomination halted and reversed. Today they are Southern Baptist. If Oden is right, should I be happy or sad that they jumped ship?

Do any of you or your friends out there have experience with evangelicals “living in exile” within their Mainline denominations? What are your thoughts? 

Where the relationship between science and religion is concerned, I have found it helpful to envision two overlapping circles, one representing objects of interest that are susceptible to the tools of the Enlightenment or Science, if you will. Those tools or means of knowledge include both the rationalist (esp. Descartes) and empiricist (e.g., Newton) epistemological streams. The other circle represents objects of knowledge appropriate to Christian faith and enjoyment of life in the family of God. Included in this circle are matters as different as the substitutionary atonement and the existence of the city of Ai mentioned in the Old Testament.

The circles overlap because some objects of knowledge belonging to the full enjoyment of a Christian believer are investigatable and so potentially knowable or at least rendered plausible through Enlightenment epistemological tools by believers and unbelievers alike. This image recognizes a certain irreducible historical dimension of Christian confession from which we must never hide. We dig together with unbelieving archaeologists and submit to a common epistemological standard, fully recognizing the historical vulnerability of our confession. The image also reflects recognition of epistemological turf in which the believer and the church submits to the expertise of the scientist, the physician or the physicist. When the eye surgeon offers his diagnoses, I have no interest in whipping out a copy of the Proverbs to dispute the advice given. But the scientist is encouraged to admit ignorance and perhaps keep silent where his own epistemological tools prove insufficient, say regarding the Trinity, the two natures of Christ or the substitutionary atonement.

In his book Breaking Faith: The Pope, the People, and the Fate of Catholicism, John Cornwell identifies core beliefs held by Catholic laity between Vatican I (1869-70) and Vatican II (1962-65): Devotion to Mary as the Mother of God; the indissolubility of marriage, and the inadvisability of mixed marriage; the real presence in the Eucharist; venial and (deserving Hell for all eternity) mortal sin; the necessity of confessing mortal sin; the immortal soul, the resurrection of the body; Purgatory and the scope for praying for the souls therein; infallibility and primacy of the Pope as successor of Saint Peter, the role of bishops as successors of the Apostles; the intercession of the saints; the reality of Satan, and of demons and angels; a hostile antagonism toward atheistic communism; the inadmissibility of contraception, abortion, premarital sex, adultery, homosexuality, and remarriage; the inadmissibility of worshiping with non-Catholics, weekly attendance at Mass; Holy Days of “obligation”; and the imperative to avoid meat on Fridays. Compare to Cornwell’s survey-supported post-Vatican II core convictions:

Belief that it is possible to have a personal and loving relationship with God; belief that God took human form as Jesus to redeem the world and bring us to God; commitment to a relationship with God through public and private prayer, worship, and reading of scripture, principally within the faith community and sacramentals of the Catholic church. Cornwell then observes that “unlike the pre-Vatican II list of priorities, these post-Vatican II Catholic convictions are shared with other Christian denominations.”

Certainly more and more members of whatever tradition are sitting more lightly in their pews than ever before. Movement between traditions has never been higher. But straying Catholics have earned a well-deserved reputation for finding their way back to Rome in the end. Cornwell and others expect the former magnetic effect of Roman Catholicism, largely due to the unique hold of the sacraments and cult of Mary upon the faithful, to wane. Are we poised for massive migration of Roman Catholics into the ranks of evangelical traditions? Or will we see perceptible evangelicalizing within Roman Catholicism or both?

Like so many attempts to understand a currently developing and growing phenomenon, the quest to comprehend the emergent/emerging church proves frustrating and often elusive. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger promises a comparatively more accurate window into the world of emerging churches because it taps a wealth of primary source material. So I tend to lend more weight to the findings of GB.

Chapter 6 is entitled “Welcoming the Stranger,” one of the nine defining patterns of emerging churches according to GB. Check out the following quote from Manchester (UK) emerging church leader Ben Edson of Sanctus1 from that chapter:

“We had a guy from the Manchester Buddhist center come to Sanctus1 a couple weeks ago and talk about Buddhist approaches to prayer. We didn’t talk about the differences between our faiths. We didn’t try to convert him.” Pip Piper of maji community Birmingham (UK): “Evangelism or mission for me is no longer about persuading people to believe what I believe, no matter how edgy or creative I get. It is more about shared experiences and encounters.” I am sorry but this statement from Piper reminds me so much of the mindset and values that infused the drug culture I once inhabited! Never mind. GB from the same chapter: “Christians cannot truly evangelize unless they are prepared to be evangelized in the process.”

One refrain I am encountering repeatedly in the emerging literature is their critique of seeker-sensitive mega churches. But Sanctus1 sounds fairly seeker-sensitive for Buddhists. I expect that emerging church leaders such as Piper and Edson would embrace, as I do, two conditions of real learning and converse passed on by my Ph.D. supervisor: #1. One cannot critique what one has not understood and #2 One cannot usually understand what one has not first engaged sympathetically. Let’s agree that screaming and shaking fingers in unsuspecting faces might not be the best way to share the love of Jesus whether it is done door-to-door or on the street corner or anywhere else.

But has genuine gospel witness occurred where the message is left unarticulated? And does that message not include the exclusive claims of Christ? And is not this claim bound to offend most? And do not the biblical warnings against having other gods (you remember, the first of the ten commandments!) belong to every kind of evangelism worthy of being called Biblical or Christian?

***Several years ago William Willimon spoke in chapel here at Midwestern Seminary. Willimon was then Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and was already the most brilliant popularizer of Narrative Preaching. I find Willimon’s preaching style and particular brand of sarcasm-laced humor seducing, probably because it seems to derive organically from the Piedmont of the Carolinas from which we both hail. Willimon’s preaching disarms me. Stories abound, the humor simultaneously shocks and illuminates. Tears and laughter alternate and mingle among the listeners. But Willimon said something to this effect; “I do not know if the resurrection was a historical event. I do not know if it was a physical occurrence. And I cannot know. I may never know. It really does not matter though, because we have the story itself and its power to heal and create community, transform lives and inspire faith does not depend upon the historicity of the resurrection.”

After Willimon finished and sat down, the president of the seminary addressed the assembly and made if clear that we could not follow Willimon on this matter; “we, he said, agree with the apostle Paul:

“Now if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is not resurrection of the dead, Christ Himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless; indeed, we are shown up as witnesses who have committed perjury before God, because we swore in evidence before God that he had raised Christ to life. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we are the most unfortunate people” (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

So is this the fruit of Narrative Theology? To snatch the resurrection from us and try to make us like it? Do all narrative thinkers and preachers go so wobbly on matters as essential as the resurrection of Jesus?

***When Richard Land (Southern Baptist), Jim Wallis (Sojourners), and Dwight Hopkins (University of Chicago) speak with a single voice, it’s news. All three gave a big thumbs down to the health and wealth positive thinking message of Joel Osteen over the holidays on CNN. Osteen’s messages would leave me buoyant and energized if he would just stay on message. The hitch in the stream of good feeling comes with Osteen’s 18 second attempt to jam Christianity down the throat of an otherwise consistent quasi-evangelicalized Norman Vincent Peale spiel. The ham-handed effort to christianize the love of filthy lucre and all its promises tends to jolt Bible readers from Osteen’s spell, reminding us that the apostles received a rude welcome from the world and that Jesus (once the healing and feeding miracles ground to halt for a few days) was crucified. Osteen’s appeal is good ole’ stuff―it just ain’t Christianity.