NeoTheo(b)log

The "World Game" of Ecumenical Dialogue

2006-07-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Eureka Street, a public affairs/arts/theology publication written "from an inclusively catholic perspective" (small "c" theirs) and sponsored by the Austrailian Jesuit community, has an article on the recent meeting of the Standing Commission of Faith and Order (the theological arm of the World Council of Churches) that addressed future directions for discussion. Perhaps because the meetings coincided with the FIFA World Cup, author Richard Treloar saw some fascinating parallels between ecumenical dialogue and game playing. Some quotes of note:

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: ‘I know of no other method of dealing with great tasks but play.’ The FIFA World Cup is an intrusion of the carnivalesque into ‘realpolitik’ – a moment every four years when the nations devote themselves quite deliberately to the serious business of being playful. The rules of the game become the grammar of discourse; whilst boundaries are not erased, they are experienced differently, tested, and sometimes redrawn; and there is a certain suspension of disbelief that things could ever actually be this way for more than ninety minutes at a time.

Ecumenical dialogue – an ecclesial carnival rather than a contest – might usefully see itself as making just such a contribution to the great task of proclaiming the theologically essential, if historically incomplete, oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ that the world may believe. Not so much, I would venture, that the world may believe in Jesus Christ, as would believe that the churches can model more creative ways of living with difference than they, or ‘it’ have managed to date.

Read the whole article here.

Blog Update

2006-07-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

The NeoTheolog is busy putting the finishing touches on a summer internship/individual study project. As a result, I'll be out of the blog-loop for a couple of weeks while I wrap things up. I'm looking forward to the fall and the possibility of launching not one but two new blogs–one dealing with integrating emerging values into a traditional church (hopefully with regular video), the other with Christian ecumenics.

I'm thankful for all my readers, but especially for those who have offered comments and engaged me on the topics I've raised. You are a blessing to me!

Revelations Book II

2006-07-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what to think of this "postmodern gospel." But it's definitely making me think.

Revelations Book II

I'd recommend you read the whole thing before you judge it.

Warning: Embedded music. May get you into trouble at work.

Warning, Book II: This is very likely to offend you.

The Sign of Unity

2006-07-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

The Church's unity is the sign to shattered, splintered humanity of wholeness and new life in Christ. Our unity is a given. We cannot make the Church one. It already is one. What we do is reveal this unity, or obscure it.

Bishop Paul Hewett of the Episcopal Missionary Church's Diocese of the Holy Cross, quoted in "An American Dilemma: The Episcopal Church - 1976-2006" at VirtueOnline.com.

Isn't it ironic, doncha think?

2006-07-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

Technorati Search: Southern Baptist blogs

NeoTheo(b)log comes up #3.

You Meet the Most Interesting People at Funerals

2006-07-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

While standing in line to mourn the loss of RocketBoom* today (75 comments and counting at Amanda's blog), I bumped into fellow mourner Ironic1, whose post Things I Learned From Amanda turned out to be the perfect tribute to our favorite vlogospheric pioneer. Poking around the rest of his blog was a treat (the post Medium Dark Roast, Occasionally a Muffin is only an invitation hymn and a benediction away from the best sermon I've heard in weeks, including my own). He has an engaging style and writes about things that matter. Do drop by.

*Please, please, please don't tell me you've never heard of RocketBoom? Okay, here's a quick summary, written by a fellow mourner: "a snarky sarcastic blonde doing something that resemebled cable access on crack." Yeah, it was all that, but with smart (and occasionally very, very smart) commentary, humor, and vision. That, and it probably changed media for ever. If you missed it, you missed something big.

Update: Those in deep mourning (and with deep pockets) can contribute to the official UnBoomed Launch Party at Fundable.org.

A New Page for the SBC? 1.1

2006-07-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Time.com has a very interesting little piece on the role Southern Baptist bloggers played in the election of new Convention president Frank Page. Read it at TIME.com: The Bloggers' Favorite Southern Baptist. I especially liked this part:

Even the most liberal of the young blogging Turks, of course, are probably a good deal more conservative than the thousands of moderate Baptists who were pushed out of the SBC over the last few decades. But it is a landmark of sorts. After all, nobody came out of last year's papal conclave saying that bloggers had helped the Holy Spirit choose a new Pope.

(Note to writer David Van Biema: I applaud you, sir! It's about time someone reporting on religion in the mainstream media started showing a little sense of humor, even if it's the kind only the religion geeks in the audience really get. Please, by all means, keep it up. As someone has said, religion without irreverence can quickly become insufferable.)

On the meta- level, I discovered this article because someone found my blog via a tool called Sphere. Time.com uses it to allow readers to explore what bloggers are saying about their stories.

Clicking on the Sphere It! button takes you to a page of links to relevant blogs, organized by relevance. I'm not sure exactly how well their ranking system works, though, given that the post that Sphere linked to on my blog had nothing to do with the influence of blogging on Page's election. I like the fact that Time.com is using Sphere; what I can't quite figure out is why they're using it. What do they get out of the deal?

Related: A New Page for the SBC? June 28, 2006

"Conjoined Twins" = "One Body?"

2006-07-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Frank Lockwood, staff writer for the Lexington, Kentucky Herald-Leader, has a great summary of the current state of affairs in the Episcopal Church online, with the ominous title A church divided cannot stand – can it? If you're just getting onboard, or if you need to catch up, I recommend it. The words Lockwood ascribes to Katharine Jefferts Schori, the church's newly elected chief bishop, caught me aback:

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the newly elected leader of the Episcopal Church, compared the conservative and liberal wings of her denomination to conjoined twins and expressed doubts that they can survive and flourish without each other.

NeoTheolog's opinion: Bishop Jefferts Schori's ecclesiology is fundamentally flawed. In what sense are conjoined twins "one body?" Aren't they more like two bodies mashed together by a cruel freak of nature? In what possible way is that a metaphor for the church of Jesus Christ?

Benedict XVI on the Role of the Pope

2006-06-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

CWN: Angelus message: focus on ecumenism in Petrine ministry

At his Angelus audience on June 29, Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) cited the words of St. Irenaeus in describing the role of the papacy as "a specific ministry in the service of the doctrinal and pastoral unity of the People of God throughout the world."

And later...

Pope Benedict also made a point of welcoming the delegation of Orthodox prelates who had come to Rome for the feast day, representing Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, in a sign of "the ties of brotherhood between our churches." Each year the Orthodox Patriarch sends a delegation to the Vatican for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, while the Vatican sends prelates to Constantinople for the patronal feast of St. Andrew in November. This year Pope Benedict himself will make the trip to join Patriarch Bartholomew in celebrating that feast.

The more I learn about how the Roman Catholic Church is living out its ecumenism, the more encouraged and hopeful I become. Is it not thrilling to live in an age when Jesus' unity prayer is being answered all around us?

Acts 29 Network Gets AJAX

2006-06-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

You owe it to yourself to check out this website. I don't know much about the organization (it looks intriguing) but their site is incredible.

The Acts 29 Network

If this is what their "storefront" site looks like, I wonder what Web 2.0 yumminess they have on their members' site?

A New Page for the SBC?

2006-06-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Heh heh...little pun there in the post title. Ahem.

(For those who haven't kept up with what's taking place in the Southern Baptist Convention, check out CT's Weblog from June 14 for lots of links .)

New SBC president Frank Page is getting his message out to the (Christian) world. Christianity Today has a brief piece that is worth your attention: A Kinder, Gentler Conservatism. I'm cautiously optimistic about the situation–optimistic because it appears to represent a populist shift in the SBC that I think is healthy, cautious because of comments like this:

In 2000, new SBC president Page wrote Trouble with the Tulip: A Closer Examination of the Five Points of Calvinism. Some have interpreted Page's election as a backlash against the growing influence of Calvinism. However, Page rebuts that idea.
"It is not a blow to [Calvinists]," Page told CT. "I do not believe [Calvinism] is grounds for breaking fellowship nor [barring] participation in leadership."

Gender, however, is grounds for barring participation in pastoral leadership, and egalitarianism is grounds for breaking fellowship. (Page hasn't said as much, but given his vocal support of the convention's current theological trajectory, I think this is a safe assumption.)

The Southern Baptist Convention's new president is promising broader participation from the ranks of its 42,000 churches. "I'm not talking about broadening the tent theologically, simply numerically," said Page. "There's a huge number of people who have been kind of kept out because they're not in a big enough church or whatever."

Hmm. Sorry, CT, but I'm not sure what exactly is "kinder" or "gentler" about this new direction the SBC is taking. Maybe "quieter" would have been a better adjective?

Religion: Do You Digg It?

2006-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

digg - Don't Ask. Don't Tell. Just Pray.

I'm sure the story referenced in this article at Digg* is very interesting, and there is no question that it's relevant. But what's really fascinating me is the way the Digg community is responding to it. There is a PhD dissertation waiting to be written in this one thread.

*For the uninitiated, Digg is "a user driven social content website" where users submit content and other users evaluate it. "If your story rocks and receives enough diggs," the "about us" says, "it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see." Digg began with technology news, but just this week branched out into the rest of the world.

Vatican Gets It RE: China

2006-06-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

Vatican, China officials meet - MSNBC.com

Two senior Vatican officials were in Beijing on Tuesday for talks on re-establishing diplomatic relations with China that were severed more than five decades ago, a Hong Kong newspaper said...

At the end of the "Intro. to Church History" class I took my first semester at seminary, the professor asked each student to put together a list of the ten most influential people in the history of the church since the Renaissance. (Check out Lucas' ruminations here and here and final list here. Note that his class didn't have the "since the Renaissance" limitation.) I put Hudson Taylor in the number one spot on my list. Here's what I wrote in justification:

History may very well show this one person to be the single most influential Christian since the Renaissance. Taylor’s work opening the vast but vastly underdeveloped nation of China to the Gospel forever established him in the history of missions, but as the twenty-first century dawns, it may be proving crucial for the future of the entire world. The China that is rapidly becoming an economic and military superpower would be a very different nation were it not for the upwards of 60 million Christians living there—a number that has increased 850% in the five decades since the Communist takeover. The influence of the church on the future of China remains to be seen, but it is not unthinkable to predict that it will make the difference between a benevolent China and a bellicose one in the decades to come.

When I read it in class, my professor laughed. He didn't get it.

Benedict XVI gets it.

Marty on Pelikan

2006-06-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

Don't miss Martin Marty's short retrospective on Jaroslav Pelikan, the historical theologian par excellence whose passing I blogged recently, at The Christian Century. It is both moving and instructive, a fitting tribute to the man who made the history of doctrine so moving and so instructive for so many of us.

Quote of note:

"I am told that near the end of his life he said something like: 'If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. If Christ is not risen, nothing else matters.'"

Amen, Dr. Pelikan. May we all develop such a keen sense of what really matters.

bk_keywords:jaroslav pelikan, martin e marty, christian century.

technorati tags:jaroslav_pelikan, martin_e_marty, christian_century

Welcome Bell Baptist Association Pastors!

2006-06-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I had the privilege of addressing the pastors of our local association of churches, the Bell Baptist Association, at our monthly fellowship luncheon. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Baptist polity, an association is a cooperative fellowship of churches in a geographical region.) My dear friend Roy Parker, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church here in Temple, who coordinates the meeting, had heard me speak on church unity last year and asked me to share the same message with my fellow pastors. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity!

At the end of my talk, I invited my colleagues to take a look at this blog, particularly if they share my burden for a broader and deeper unity among the followers of Christ. If that's how you found your way here, welcome! In case I didn't get to tell you personally today, I'm thankful for you and consider myself blessed to serve alongside you here in our community!

As promised, below are a few links to things I've written here on the topic of unity. I hope they will bless you in some small way. Feel free to look around...brouse through the archives (in the right sidebar near the bottom) or share your thoughts on what I've written by clicking on the "comment" link at the end of each post. Clicking on one of the words under the heading "del.icio.us Tags" in the sidebar will take you to a list of the web pages I've bookmarked that deal with that particular topic. And once again–thanks for listening today and for dropping by!

One: An Extended Look at Church Unity and Disunity

From July to September of 2004 I wrote a series of meditations on the questions and challenges of unity. My inspriation was a song by a popular rock band, U2, called "One." Each article in the series begins with a line from the song, considers the global, "big-picture" unity issue it raises, and ends with personal, micro-level reflections on improving the situation. The series is still unfinished; I hope to pick it back up someday soon.

Is Doctrine Dangerous? Part I and Part II

In June 2004, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance, bringing a decades-long cooperative relationship to a somewhat bitter end. These are my thoughts on the vote and the fallout. Bottom line–a sad day for Baptists of all stripes.

The Windsor Report, Part I, Part II, and Part III

The naming of avowed homosexual Gene Robinson to the bishopric by the Episcopal Church in America, closely followed by a Canadian diocese's authorization of same-sex union ceremonies, sparked a furor in the global Anglican Communion and began what may prove to be the biggest church unity story of this decade. In October 2004, the Communion's Lambeth Commission issued a formal report on the matter. These are my thoughts on that report and the implications for unity.

My So-Called Summer Break

2006-06-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

By the time I finished my fourth semester at seminary last month, I was beginning to feel just a little bit burnt out, so I was really looking forward to summer break. As is so often the case, it hasn't exactly worked out that way. This is what has been on my plate for the last three weeks:

Cataloging grammatical minutiae of the first seven chapters of Revelation for one of my professors who is teaching a class on it (see above);
Reading and reviewing two books on patristic theology and a primary source reader for my summer mentoring project;
Writing a detailed CV and "statement of call" for the same project;
Assisting in the planning and execution of our church's Vacation Bible School;
Launching a Strategic Mobilization Committee to help our church navigate the shift toward missionality.

Bottom line: I've slept less and spent less time "recreating" with my family in the last month than I did in the month leading up to final exams last semester. I can't wait until the fall semester starts so I can get some rest!

Shooting Yourself in the Theological Foot

2006-06-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Bishop chosen 1st female Episcopal leader - Yahoo! News

From a strictly theological standpoint, I find this to be spectacular news.

From a church unity standpoint, I'm not sure what they were thinking.

bk_keywords:episcopal church, women in ministry, church unity.

technorati tags:episcopal, churchunity, women, ministry

Sacred Play and the "Adventure of Reality"

2006-06-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

While preparing the liturgy for an upcoming baptism, a friend suggested the following prayer from Jonny Baker's book Alternative Worship.

Eternal God
born into one place and time for the sake of every place and time,
wherever we live you are already there
waiting to be discovered in the adventure of reality,
give us discernment to follow your tracks
through the cutting edge of culture and the voices of our times.
Make us bold to step outside our old religious comforts
to live and build your kingdom with the stuff that's all around us.

Do the patterns of thought resonate with any of you alternate reality gamers out there?

bk_keywords:alternative worship, alternate reality gaming, jonny baker.

technorati tags:sacred_play, alternative_worship, alternate_reality_gaming, jonny_baker

The Story We Create Ourselves In 1.2: Apophenia

2006-06-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the little exercise we did using the "truth" interactive I found at interact10ways? It led me to a little epistemological speculation:

Did you find your mind searching for connections between the pictures that made up each scene? Did you find yourself synthesizing those (imagined/created) connections into a story that linked all the pictures together?

I bet you did. I think this is the way human minds work.

Sense data prompts the search for connections.

Connections inspire the creation of a story.

The story gives sense data meaning.

As it turns out, there is a name for this: apophenia.

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness."

And, as it turns out, it was once considered a component of psychosis—but if you ask me, it's a gift.

bk_keywords: epistemology, klaus conrad, apophenia.

technorati tags:epistemology, apophenia, klaus_conrad, sacred_play

The Theology-Ritual Dichotomy and Sacred Play

2006-06-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

I've been engaged in a terrific discussion of the touchpoints that connect massively-multiplayer alternate reality gaming and the project of Christian theology at the LiveJournal of Phaedra, who commented here yesterday. She restricts access to her journal, so I won't publish her thoughts here without her permission, but I would like you to take a look at something I wrote and critique it. Phaedra mentioned that she found it interesting to reflect on the connections between ARG's and theology, since what had originally struck her were the connections with ritual. Here's my response:

I wonder if the dichotomy you're setting up between theology and ritual is a false one.

In premodern Christianity, the primary point of entry to reflection on the nature of God was the Mass, a liturgical ritual (in the original sense of liturgical, viz. "the work of the people"). The Mass was (and still is, in the Roman Catholic and a few other traditions) an immersive experience, and clues to deeper levels of theological meaning were embedded in both the ritual itself (the ancient words of institution serving as "hyperlinks" to the biblical text), other connected rituals (the other sacraments), and in the very environment in which it took place (the church or cathedral). Almost universally, the pursuit of theology began with this experience.

In keeping with the Enlightenment project that influenced it so profoundly, modern Christianity has tended to see theology more as an academic exercise, something akin to a science. For Protestants, this has translated into seeing as the primary point of entry not a ritual but a text, the Bible. Concurrently, Protestantism has developed a paradigm of its own history that severs its connection to its own past and devalues narrative as a tool for group self-identification. Taken together, these mental shifts downplay the pervasive, immersive, and collaborative aspects of the theological task and instead encourage detachment and compartmentalization. They have also helped to enforce the "professionalization" of theology--the restricting of serious contemplation of the nature of God to a professional class.

The postmodern shift has begun to alter these perceptions among many Christians (the Emergent Church movement/conversation and the awakening of Gen X/Y to Eastern Orthodoxy are two early results).

I know this needs a lot of fleshing out, but what do you think about the trajectory I'm on here? I'm tagging the concept "sacred play" until I come up with something better. More on that to come.

bk_keywords:sacred play, theology, ritual, alternate reality gaming

technorati tags:sacred_play, theology, ritual, alternate_reality_gaming, mass

Flashback: Playing Games in Church

2006-06-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

While procrastinating with the Wayback Machine archives of my blog (which is, by the way, an excellent procrastination tool that I highly recommend for all your procrastination needs), I rediscovered the following post from May 7, 2004 entitled "Playing Games in Church."

There are three basic human entertainment experiences that go back to the cave: storytelling, game-playing, and music. People are looking for a hybrid of those things.
Yair Landau, vice chairman of Sony Pictures,
from Wired 12.05: The Shape of Things to Come

Okay...we (the Church) have done pretty well with the music and storytelling parts, but what about game playing? Not that we are in the entertainment business, but if game playing is a fundamental part of the human experience, why are we not providing it?

In light of my recent fascination with Alternate Reality Games and their similarities with the project of (narrative) theology, finding this in my archives was like picking up an adventure-puzzle game (like Myst) that I hadn't played in years and finding a clue I'd missed the first time through.

The question I'm asking myself today: How can a pastor or teacher add elements of game play to his church's communal life, and how can a theologian equip him for it?

bk_keywords:alternate reality games, narrative theology, myst

technorati tags:alternate_reality_gaming, narrative_theology, emerging_worship, myst, game_playing

D.H. Williams on the Fundamentals

2006-06-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Tradition indicates the core teaching and preaching of the early church which has bequesthed to us the fundamentals of what it is to think and believe Christianly.... The tradition of the Christian faith is that fundamental Christian identity for every believer no matter which of the traditions—Protestant, Roman Catholic or Orthodox—he or she may profess.

D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 6-7.

I particularly appreciate the way Williams uses the word fundamental in this passage. Whether intentional or not, it critiques the modern Christian fundamentalist movement for having contributed to what he earlier calls "a huge gap in the historical consciousness of the Free church" (5).

bk_keywords:christian tradition, evangelicalism.

technorati tags:christian_tradition, evangelicalism, dh_williams, fundamentalism

The Story We Create Ourselves In 1.1

2006-06-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Ever heard of alternate reality gaming? No? Good. We'll talk more about that in a second. First, go check out a website I recently stumbled across for an indie band on the rise named Poor Richard. No, really. I mean it. Take a few minutes to explore their site, and then come back. Go.

Okay...what did you think? When I first saw it last week, I found the site intriguing, by which I mean I found the band intriguing. In fact, I was in the middle of googling for links to songs or videos when I noticed that on the official Poor Richard site all the tour dates were marked "Canceled." "That's wierd," I thought. I clicked on the "About the Band" tab to learn more. There, I read something that gave me goosebumps:

The music provided the spark for a career that launched the band to national prominence. The powder-keg was a right-wing religious group determined to keep the band silenced. Two more albums followed (INDEPENDENCE and PURSUIT), each receiving better reviews and sales than the last. Unfortunately, with a home grown fatwa on their heads, riot police followed as well. The incidents of violence were well-covered in the press. But it was the suicide of one band member and the murder of another that finally tore the band apart.

Now I was really intrigued. Why hadn't I heard anything about this? I went back to Google and did a little more research. That's when I stumbled on a wiki with this on the title page:

Welcome to the EDOC Laundry wiki, an Alternate Reality Game encyclopedia

"Game?" I thought, "This is a game?" Suddenly, it all came into focus. None of it was real. There was no Poor Richard, no right-wing religious group, no murder, no suicide. But because I came across the site without any connection to the game context, I believed it all. A well-crafted fabrication became, for an hour or so, a part of my reality. The experience was like suddenly realizing that your life (or some part of it) is actually fiction, part of a comedy or a murder mystery or something. It was like a little ontological earthquake.

I'm not sure where my first touchpoint with alternate reality gaming (ARG) was. I vaguely recall reading a Wired article on the Edoc Laundry game last December, although it obviously didn't register to me then. Since my Poor Richard experience, I've done a little research on ARG, and I'm finding the whole concept fascinating. (If you'd like to learn more, the Wikipedia entry on ARG is a great ground-level entry to the topic, and Jane McGonigal's website Avant Game is full of great resources. If you want to baptize yourself in it, download Jane's paper, "'This Is Not a Game': Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.")

Here's what I can't stop thinking about: Narrative theology seeks to descibe theological reality through "the story," a story that forms us, but at the same time a story that we form. As communities of faith, we not only receive and transmit the story of God, but also create the story, adding our own chapter to the work we inherited. As an individual, I insert my pre-formed identity into the narrative, becoming a character in the story, and then allow the story to "write" me, even as I make my own contribution to the storyline. Isn't this a lot like alternate reality gaming? The parallels are fascinating to me.

What if we starting seeing the Christian life as collective play? What if we did theology as if it were a massively-multiplayer game?

bk_keywords:alternate reality games, narrative theology.

technorati tags:alternate_reality_gaming, narrative_theology, massively_multiplayer

The Story We Create Ourselves In

2006-06-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

interact10ways - truth

Click the link.

Explore the scenes. (Warning: It's addictive.)

Now reflect on your experience.

Did you find your mind searching for connections between the pictures that made up each scene? Did you find yourself synthesizing those (imagined/created) connections into a story that linked all the pictures together?

I bet you did. I think this is the way human minds work.

Sense data prompts the search for connections.

Connections inspire the creation of a story.

The story gives sense data meaning.

What implications does this have for theology, and for the way we "do" theology?

technorati tags:10ways, truth, meaning, story, narrative, image, epistemology

Blogged with Flock

All I Ever Wanted

2006-05-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

Did you get the reference?

Mrs. NeoTheo and I, along with all the little Theologs, are on vacation visiting my family in Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks. Stick around...please? I've only recently made my (much anticipated) return to the blogosphere, and I'd hate to imagine that a little vacation would cost me my readership!

While I'm gone, check out my brother's band, The Can't Help Its. We're going to see them on Saturday.

Spiritual Issues in the Immigration Debate

2006-05-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Marc Gellman, who writes a weekly web-exclusive commentary for Newsweek.com, asks spectacular questions. He's also apparently defeated the temptation we theologians continually face, the temptation to short circuit challenging questions with easy answers. This week, he examines the spiritual side of the immigration debate, and trust me, he's not taking it in the direction you think he is. (He rarely does.)

The hot issue of immigration, both legal and illegal, once again wraps
an essentially spiritual issue in a thin and distracting political
wrapper. The essential question is this: what is the spiritual
significance of the state?

I'm beginning to think that this question might just be the most important theological question of our time. Rabbi Gellman's engagement with it is both broad and deep. (Oh, how I wish I could manage that in an 860-word article!) I won't give away the conclusion he reaches, but I will say this--the path he takes to get there is familiar ground to me.

Looking for Something Exciting to Watch This Summer?

2006-05-20T04:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the deal. You can spend your time watching Lost reruns, or you can tune in to my friend Karen's adventures with a team of budding missionaries and missiologists in India. Karen, a recent graduate of Truett Seminary's global missions program, is about to leave on a one month practicum to the sub-continent, and she's blogging her travels. Add India Practicum to your favorites or your RSS reader, and offer up a prayer for Karen and the team.

Her brief post on missionality is right in the center of my thinking these days:

Missions is not a goal. It is a means. Missions is not an event (e.g., a banquet, a trip, or an offering). It is part of the DNA of a person/church.

Grenz-ian-ality in the Christian Blogosphere

2006-05-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

Take a moment to download and read Ed Cyzewski's short essay, "Christian Blogs: Fulfilling Grenz’s Communal Vision for Theology." I think he's right on the mark:

In seeing everyone as a theologian, Grenz set out to broaden the scope of the participants in theological discussion and make this practice more prominent in the local church. It is this aspect of his teaching that has been embraced and embodied by Christian bloggers.

Ed wrote the essay as a response to a call for papers, I assume to memorialize Dr. Grenz and comemmorate his work. (Perhaps it was for the recent issue of Princeton Theological Review devoted to him?) It's a shame that it wasn't accepted. Any memorial to Dr. Grenz that doesn't speak to the influence of his communitarian theology on Generation Blog runs the risk of missing the point of his work entirely.

Someone needs to write a book on the topic Ed raises.

(I was glad to see two acquaintences' names on the Table of Contents of this issue. Dr. Roger Olson, a faculty member at Truett Seminary where I'm studying, wrote a reflection entitled "Grenz's Contribution to Evangelical Theology." Myles Werntz, a PhD candidate across campus in the Baylor Religion Department, wrote another, "Stan Grenz Among the Baptists." It is somewhat ironic that Myles is a blogger himself. Update: I just noticed that both Myles and Dr. Olson are contributors at the Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank blog.)

Related: NeoTheo(b)log, "Stan Grenz Hospitalized," March 12, 2005.

Snap, a New (Better?) Way to Search

2006-05-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

If you use the internets, and I have to believe you do, then you need to try this:

Snap.com

(Have I mentioned I'm a little Web 2.0-obsessed lately?)

Gender Equality on the Mission Field

2006-05-18T04:15:00.000-07:00

The Tall Skinny One blogs on the end of the gender imbalance in missions:

Good news on the horizon. Gender equality is nearly here. After a long spell of gender imbalance due to sheer numerical strength, my world is opening up to the other sex. I think it is fair to say that gender equality is in sight, although still far off. Finally . . . . we are starting to see some MEN involved in missions.

(We Baptists knew where he was going from the get-go.)

New Law

2006-05-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Watch the video:

New Law - Derek Webb

(Thanks, Joe.)

Jaroslav Pelikan, 1923-2006

2006-05-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale and perhaps the finest historian of Christian theology of the twentieth century, died over the weekend of lung cancer. You can read his obituary at the New York Times here (feel free to use member name "neotheolog" and password "neotheolog" to avoid registration). He was the author of some 40 books covering the gamut of Christian history, including two works that I have found indispensible in my study of historical theology--the five-volume series entitled The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine and Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of the Christian Tradition. In 2004, he was awarded the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, considered by many to be the Nobel Prize for the humanities. The son of a Lutheran pastor and grandson of a Lutheran bishop, Dr. Pelikan converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1998. I'm saddened by his passing; I would love to have met him.

If you're not familiar with Dr. Pelikan or his writings, then I commend to you the profile written by Mark Noll in 1990 republished this week at Christianity Today, as well as Dr. Pelikan's own very fine essay, "The Predicament of the Christian Historian."

Come to Our Church, We'll Give You an iPod

2006-05-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

Interfaith Unity Church (warning, MIDI file on web site) of Mesa, Arizona, is giving away an iPod Shuffle to someone in the congregation every Sunday between now and June 11. "What we really want to do is we want people to know that we want them to come, we want them to possibly shuffle in and soar out," IUC's Rev. Julianne Lewis told the Arizona Republic. I wonder if you can get some sacramental wine with that cheese?

(Thanks to TUAW for the heads-up.)

McLaren: DaVinci Code No More Harmful than Left Behind

2006-05-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Pastor Brian is at it again. Read his thoughts on Dan Brown's blockbuster-to-be at Sojourners. Quotes of note:

I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion.

For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true.

And my personal favorite:

The book is fiction and it's filled with a lot of fiction about a lot of things that a lot of people have already debunked. But frankly, I don't think it has more harmful ideas in it than the Left Behind novels.

You'll pardon my uncontrollable giggling...

Flash-Mob Eucharists in a Post-Ecclesial World

2006-05-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this article: Towards a flash-mob Eucharist. It's written by Theo Hobson (he has a homepage here, but you can get a better idea of who he is here), a self-styled "post-ecclesial Christian theologian" who thinks that "so far, so-called postmodern theology has been neo-orthodox, a highly erudite dead-end." I like his style.

Two questions I'd love to ask him:

How does this kind of a post-ecclesial, structure-less church fulfill its mandate to do things other than corporate worship?
In what sense is your ecclesiology "post-modern?"
(Did I say two? I meant three.) In what way can such a church be said to be, "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic," or does continuity with this aspect of the theological tradition matter anymore?

Theo, if you're doing any ego-surfing and see this post, why not drop in?

National Day of Prayer Sermon

2006-05-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is the transcript of a sermon I preached yesterday at the city of Temple's National Day of Prayer observance. I had lots of very positive feedback...but I doubt I'll get asked to do anything like this for a while, at least in Temple! Let me know what you think...

In an editorial published about a month ago in the New York Times, Garry Wills, professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of the book What Jesus Meant, made the following provocative statement: “There is no such thing as a ‘Christian politics.’ If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian.” He went on to quote Jesus’s words to Pilate that I read a moment ago, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and to conclude with the assertion, “Jesus brought no political message or program.”

Wills’s intent, of course, is to incite readers by challenging our notions of who Jesus is, why he came, and how his followers ought to engage the social and cultural issues of our day. (He does this very effectively, by the way; his argument is made up mostly of quotations from the gospels, and by the end of the editorial you’re convinced he knows Jesus better than the oldest, sweetest grandmother that graces a pew in your church.) And I think Wills rattles our chains at just the right moment. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jesus (or at least, some caricature of Jesus) has become a very popular person in America. He’s on TV; he’s in the movies; he’s on the cover of news magazines (which is a big step up from the conspiracy-theory-tabloids, if you ask me); he’s getting airplay on the talk show circuit. When the spin machine really gets wound up, we might be led to think that he’s helping plan Democratic campaign strategy for 2008 or advising the White House on domestic policy issues. The name of Jesus carries more weight in this country today than it has in a long, long time…maybe forever.

Which is why I think it’s just the right time for Jesus’ followers to ask themselves the question, “What does the Lord mean when he says, ‘My kingdom is not of this world?’” With all the buzz and hype and spin out there, we need to get this thing absolutely clear, and we need to do it now. Only after we’ve answered this question can we begin working for his kingdom in the context of our own nation, society, and culture.

Jesus means that it is beneath him to align himself with any political party or political system. After the mob made their angry accusations against Jesus on the steps of Pilate’s house, the Roman governor brings Jesus inside for a private chat. “Are you the king of the Jews,” he asks, “Because we can settle this thing right now, you and I. They can’t do anything to you unless I agree to it, and right now, I’m giving you your chance to come out on top. You can walk out of this room as a friend of the governor, a friend of Rome. You’ll be completely free to preach and teach in the city; you’ll enjoy the protection of my friendship wherever you go in Judea.” Pilate’s no fool; he knows Caiaphas, the high priest, is trying to manipulate him, and here he sees an opportunity to turn the tables on him. But Jesus is no fool either. He knows that aligning himself with Pilate will saddle him with obligations that run counter to his mission. Jesus proclaimed long before that he was under obligation to do the will of the one who sent him, and as we all know, no one can serve two masters.

He means that no political party or system can ever truly align itself with him, either. When Pilate tries to pin Jesus down to an answer to his question, “Are you the king of the Jews,” Jesus tosses him this bone: “Yep, I’m a king. I’m a king in the sense that I came into the world to testify to the truth, and everyone who is on truth’s side listens to what I say. So I guess that makes me the king of truth.” You’ll forgive me for being a little cynical (I’m Generation X; it’s in my DNA), but Pilate’s response shines a spotlight on the reason why no political party or system can ever truly align itself with Jesus. “What is truth?” Pilate isn’t interested in philosophical discourse here; he’s getting impatient. He’s a busy man, he’s got an angry mob at the front door, and besides that he’s got to do that thing where he releases one prisoner because it’s a holiday. Jesus’s time is up; Pilate’s got work to do. Generally speaking, political systems don’t operate on the principle of truth; they operate on the principle of results, and generally speaking, we like it that way. But even if we’re okay with the fact that expediency occasionally trumps truth, that doesn’t mean Jesus is.

He means that as his followers, we would be wise not to co-opt the methods of the world into the purposes of his kingdom. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews,” he tells Pilate. But that’s not happening. Now, it’s tempting for us to pass judgment on Jesus’s disciples at this point; they’re all cowering in closets and basements, with the exception of Peter, who’s following along at a safe distance and trying to hide his Galilean accent. But when you think about it, they are doing exactly what Jesus said they would do, what he told them to do: “For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,’” and Satan is having his way with Peter, sifting him like wheat. And because they are suffering like this, because they are out of the way, Jesus is rapidly approaching his destiny unhindered by their misconceptions or their ill-conceived attempts to bring about the kingdom. Because they are suffering at the hands of the political institutions of the day, the salvation of the world is about to be won. Sounds a little radical, doesn’t it?

So what does all this have to do with the National Day of Prayer? Everything. I ask you, Christian, when you pray for America today, what do you pray? Do you pray that Christians might wield greater influence over our government institutions? I’m a student of church history, and if church history teaches us anything about what to pray for our nation, it teaches that we should not pray to be given worldly power or influence. We Christians have traditionally not done well with power. In fact, we have on virtually every occasion come to abuse that power, to wield it against human freedom and in favor of oppression and tyranny. The Christianized Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the bloody quelling of the peasants’ revolt in the Protestant states of Luther’s Germany, the defense of slavery in the American south in the 19th century. Why in the world would we pray for power or control of anything? “My kingdom is not of this world, it is from another place.”

Instead, let’s pray for something radical. Let’s pray to be humbled, “for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Let’s pray to be made weak, for “my strength is made perfect in your weakness,” and when we are weak, we are strong. And let’s pray to be made poor, for “has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom?” Let’s pray to be made meek, for in the end, “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

“Those who honor me, I will honor,” God says in the verse that serves as the theme for today’s observance. May we always remember, may we never forget, that we honor God not by the results we produce, but by the methods we utilize; not by our achievements, but by our obedience.

Dress Like a TheoGeek

2006-05-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the great t-shirt designs over at ThinkGeek, Lucas, Joe, and I have started a little collaborative peddling apparel for theology geeks (like us). You can find our first three offerings at Lucas's Zazzle shop. I'm proud to say that two of these designs came from the NeoTheoBrain. What does it say about me that Bono is my pastor and Kate Turabian is my homegirl?

Panel Discussion (Mere Conference 1.4)

2006-04-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Each of the plenary speakers from the three previous sessions were joined by Dr. Joel Heck of Concordia University and David Taylor, Arts Pastor for Hope Chapel, Austin and Artistic Advisor to the Institute for a panel discussion to end the formal portion of the conference. They answered questions that had been submitted in advance by conference participants.

I submitted the following question: "Though C.S. Lewis did not favor unity for its own sake, he did call Christians to recognize their common 'Mere Christianity.' Many of our speakers today, however, have given a great deal of attention to what makes their traditions distinct from the others. How do you think Lewis would respond to this, and how would you respond to him?" I'm betting that it doesn't get chosen for the panel...

I won't blog every response here, but I hope these will give you a feel for the discussion. I'm generally recording answers to questions asked of the panel as a whole (as opposed to a plenarist in particular).

Question: In your own life, what are your earliest memories of beauty and truth?

Responses:

PK: Visiting New York City at about eight years old, visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral. "I thought I had died and gone to heaven." It was not just a difference in degree from what I had experienced in my Dutch Calvinist upbringing, but of content. "Why are their churches so much more beautiful than ours?"
FMG: A serving tray my parents received as a wedding gift, with a glass cover with butterflies on it. Its beauty fascinated me then and even now. "It set a standard of beauty for me...iridescence has always captivated me." "My first encounter with startling truth was an encounter with God." On the playground behind my house, I heard a voice call my name. It called to her twice, "an inbreaking of a category of truth I hadn't experienced...alerted me to the reality of overheard but unseen realities...gave me a hunger that has driven me ever since."
WLC: "I don't really have any early memories of beauty or truth to share [laughter]." He went on to recall coming in contact with death and his own mortality as a child. "The terrible reality of that overwhelmed me. It was only much later that I discovered so profoundly was what Paul Tillich called the threat of nonbeing." This insight is of profound importance in questions about the meaning and purpose of existence.

Question: Do you have experience of anyone's journey to God being heavily influenced by beauty?

Responses:

FMG: The person who encounters beauty in nature is the perfect example, but "you need something to focus your mind." Jesus embodies God for us and helps us restore the broken image of God in us. The experience of beauty in nature is good, but not sufficient. In worship, everything is directed toward God and has a didactic quality to it
DT: I work with 150 artists in my church community, and we constantly have a conversation about our sense that when we interact with non-Christians who we've invited to our Christ-oriented artworks, their response can be best described as an "ache," the soul and body understanding in a deep way is bent and our yearning for God is the truest thing in our nature. Art that is beautiful awakens a longing within them." Beauty is ecstatic and causes you to come outside yourself. "You must come outside and give yourself to another...ultimately only God can satisfy that ache." We need to make art so excellent that it stirs people to feel this ache.

Question: How can the doctrine of hell be reconciled with God's love?

Responses:

PK: God loves us so much that he gives us a free will to determine our own eternal destiny. When our parents expose us to a dangerous world that will certainly end up hurting us, they do it because they love us. Underneath the doctrine of hell is the doctrine of free will, and beneath that is the doctrine of love.
FMG: Has an article on Beliefnet on this. One of the Greek Fathers: "When those in hell are scourged, they feel the scourge of love." Those who love God feel his love as love; those who do not feel it as pain. (I was a little disappointed that she didn't mention Lewis here, who touches on this same idea in a number of his works.) "The love of God is light, but burning to those who reject it."

Question: How are truth, goodness, and beauty uniquely fused in the Christian faith?

Responses:

PK: "Jesus." "All three are incarnate in the same place."
WLC: "It isn't unique in the Christian faith, since its the same God who reveals himself to the Jews as to Christians." God's thought life is the paradigm for truth and falsehood. He is also the standard for what is beautiful, perhaps as the creator of objective standards of beauty (symmetry, harmony, etc.).

Question: What is the accepted basis for truth in the (secular) academy?

Response:

DLC: The western academy is divided on this issue; there is no consensus across the fields.
PK: Agrees. "The university is meant to be a mirror of the universe; thank God, it isn't!" There is an increasing love of Nietzsche. "The only other place outside the university where I find so many people who don't believe the truth is the insane asylum."
DT: Then how do you go about having a productive conversation with these people?
PK: "The university hasn't produced 'little Socrateses' as Plato thought it would"; it is a "noble failure." We can still have conversations with anyone, and conversations do no harm. Once you get to those who don't believe in objective truth at all, conversation changes and becomes therapy. "When you're dealing with the insane, you are forced to revert to psychoanalysis."
DLC: The best hope is to impact students, to train up a new generation of Christian philosophers who can speak boldly and rightly to the philosophical academy. "Scientific revolutions occur one funeral at a time" (Kuhn); as the old guard dies off, there is an opportunity for change. Our goal should be to remake the university in such a way that Christianity is a respected position.
JH: We can love them until they ask why. When they seek out our story, we may have the opportunity to tell them God's story as well.

Question: As American society changes through immigration, it becomes increasingly necessary that Christians be equipped to engage Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists that could lead to a productive discussion about Christ. What questions might we ask to begin a discussion like this?

Response:

PK: The Muslim already knows the God of Abraham, so in that sense this might be easier. "Who is Jesus to you?"
JH: I'd do everything I could to get a Bible in the hands of a Muslim. They have great respect for the written word; they read it, they have a dream in which someone tells them to read the book because it comes form God, and the Holy Spirit does his work.
FMG: I've heard that 2/3 of the time a Muslim comes to Christ, a dream or vision has something to do with it. Friends of hers who have worked in the field have said that it's at least 3/4. If you have the opportunity to speak with a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist about Christ, pray first that God would do his miraculous work in that person's life.
DT: Communicate the stories of Jesus to them in a context that is meaningful to them.
DLC: "Who is Jesus to you?" This puts the focus on Christ, where it belongs. He is the centerpiece of our faith and the stumbling block. Second, "How do you deal with sin in your life?"

Question: Frederica and Peter, in what way does your personal heritage in Protestant evangelical churches inform your experience now in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches?

Response:

PK: Evangelicalism is like a basement where you meet each other; the church is like the great cathedral above it. The foundation is important. "I'm very grateful I started with simple evangelicalism, because I have the foundation right."
FMG: Specifically I'm grateful to the Episcopal seminary I attended for teaching me Greek and the history of the church, even though there was much there that was, frankly, heretical. In our 15 years in the Episcopal church, there was beauty, joy, life, and energy there that form a lasting heritage.

Heh heh heh...I didn't think we'd get to my question. I'd love to posit a conspiracy theory as to why, but that would probably be unwarranted. I will say this: my disappointment with the panel discussion is the same disappointment I have felt with the entire conference. Lewis himself was mentioned no more than three times in the entire session. What makes this more frustrating is that I feel that the content of the conference was a bit askew of Lewis's own ideals and emphases. More on that later.

Beauty: What Do Pomegranates Have to Do with It? (Mere Conference 1.3)

2006-04-29T08:16:00.000-07:00

Our third plenary today was offered by Frederica Mathewes-Green, prolific and award-winning author, and was interestingly entitled "A Golden Bell and a Pomegranate."

What is the purpose of beauty in presenting the gospel?

Vladamir, prince of Kiev in the 10th century, had to fight for the throne; he became king only after killing his brother. He had 7 wives, 800 concubines, and offered human sacrifices on a pagan altar. But he realized the wisdom of uniting his kingdom under one faith, so he had representatives from the three monotheistic religion. Of the Muslims, "There is only sadness." Of the Jews, "There is no beauty in their rituals." Of the Christian worship at Hagia Sophia, "We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. God dwells there among men...their worship is fairer than that of other nations." Vladamir converted and converted his kingdom, and the Faith sustained all of Russia for almost 1,000 years.

Why, then, do Western Christians view art with suspicion? (She spent a lot of words describing the aesthetic of Orthodox worship, "a very rich experience touching every one of the senses...piercingly beautiful.") This doesn't distract people from worshiping God. On the contrary, it empowers worship. If your husband or wife takes you to a fine restaurant for dinner, do the violin music, linen tablecloths, and well-dressed wait staff distract you from feeling romantic?

The fear is of nominalism, that worship will become meaningless. It's possible for a person to read Scripture in a detached way and therefore not get the message, but that's not the Bible's fault. The kind of environment you worship in sends different kinds of messages. Worship spaces speak without words--think of an 18th century colonial church, a "seeker-sensitive" theater auditorium, or the club-like environment of an emergent worship space. This seems like we're trying to "sell" God and worship to people, packaging them so they'll appeal to us. Is this the perspective of Scripture? No, in fact, it is diametrically opposed to it.

What did God tell Moses to do? What were God's expectations of how people would worship him?

Build a box for the tablets and overlay it with God both outside and inside, even though no one would ever see the inside. Even though the first commandment forbade making images for worship, God commanded them to make images of cherubim for the beauty of the Ark. This idea carries throughout the making of the Tabernacle and the items in it. The worship in the Tabernacle was lavish.
God gave attention to even the smallest details of the priestly garments: "A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, all around the hem of the robe."
There was a fragrance-component as well. There are 161 references to incense in Scripture, spanning both Old and New Testaments. It is an integral part of the worship of the people of God from beginning to end.

"I don't know that God needs to smell incense. We're the ones who need to smell it, and to see gold, and to experience beauty in every sense in order to comprehend the one who is Beauty itself." But we can be like Judas, who quibbled with Jesus over the offering of incense that was made over him. The unstated assumption is that the purpose of the church is to do good works, but Jesus pointed out in reply to Judas that nothing is stopping you from giving you to the poor. "We're not going to run out of poor people." He accepted the offering as not only appropriate, but beautiful. In the Scripture, we are shown unequivocally that we are meant to worship God with beauty, just as we are expected to surround a bride with beautiful things. But what does this have to do with apologetics?

Apologetics tends to concern itself with words, but we don't just witness with words. What kind of people are we? Do we show grace and truth by our living? Worship must be about God, "all signs in worship must be pointed in the direction of the Lord." We cannot expect a visitor to understand all this; it has been a mistake to try to adjust worship so that it is straightforward and easy to understand and less than mystical. It is a good thing for people to realize that there is more to God than they understand. It ought to make them suspect that there is more going on in the world than they realize. As they watch the worshipers around them respond to God, they are forced to ask themselves what they are responding to. Beauty can accomplish this. It complements the other purposes of apologetics, teaching and asking and answering questions. When a visitor enters our worship, he may not see what we see, but he will see that we are all "held rapt by something awesome."

Why use beauty in worship? First, because it is what God demanded, not because God needed beautiful things, but because we needed them. "Beauty sets the heart aright and orients it to God.

I very much appreciated Frederica's talk because I think it helps balance to what has often seemed to me to be a very Spartan attitude we free church Protestants have toward our worship spaces. I think she only answered half of her opening question, though. During the Q&A period, I asked for her comments on how the beauty of the Faith could be used in a more missional way--taking beauty to the world, rather than expecting the world to come to the beauty of our worship. Her answer revolved around Christian art. Is this all there is?

Goodness: Does It Work? (Mere Conference 1.2)

2006-04-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

The second plenary session at the C.S. Lewis Conference is led by Dr. Peter Kreeft, Christian apologist and professor of philosophy at Boston College, and is entitled, "The Only Apologetic Guaranteed to Win the World."

You have to be true to talk about truth; you don't have to be beautiful to talk about beauty. Is goodness like one or the other? Dr. Kreeft holds that it is like the latter: "You don't have to be good to talk about goodness. You just have to aspire to it." Augustine is an example. He was in love with two mistresses, God's goodness and his own pleasure. "He lived mainly in the city of the world, but he had given his heart to the city of God." What he gave his heart to was not just truth but wisdom; not just knowledge of the truth, but knowledge of the true good. "His wishes were converted 11 years before his will." This qualified him to speak about good, even if only by contrast. His confessions of his own sinfulness were confessions of God's goodness.

Three questions, the three simplest we can possibly ask about goodness:

What is goodness? This is the question of a definition, not of a name but of a reality, of the thing itself. Just as the true is the object of the mind, the good is the object of the will. To see means to see colors and shapes, to know means to know what is true; in the same way, to will means to will the good. You can't want what seems to you to be un-good; all desires are desires for the good. Things appear good or bad in different ways. We can choose what appears to be morally evil if it appears to be good in another way. This gives a natural hierarchy of goods: sub-moral, moral, and supra-moral. Being morally good is both a means and an end; it pays off both in making you happy and in making you good. The moral good is good not just because it satisfies my desire for happiness, but because it is good in itself. The only way a human self can truly be happy is to seek and find something bigger than itself. Kant separated these two justifications for morality; he made the intrinsically moral justification the only one. "Ignore the desires of the ego entirely; do the right thing simply because it's right." What does Jesus think about Aristotle and Kant? "He agrees with both," then adds a third dimension, the supra-moral. You can't get to it without going through the moral good; grace pre-supposes law. But grace is more than law; the life of Christian goodness is more than morality. Because its roots are grace its flowers are gratitude. It cannot pay god back for grace, so it pays it forward, giving grace to others. We all know these things; we know so well that there are almost no problems of the will at all. Our so-called moral dilemmas come from the mind, looking for ways to avoid making hard choices. "We all know we are absolutely obligated to do good, we know what things are good, and we know that we haven't done good things but instead have done evil things. But we are all good at hiding one of these three truths that we know." Knowing God makes it hard for us to hide them. Because we know that God is the great I AM, we are constantly making an exception for ourselves (violating Kant's first categorical imperative). We are experts at eros and amateurs at agape. And, worst of all, we all know that we are wrong to be this way...and we know it by experience, rather than by faith! When we find this amazing critique of the ego present in other religions, and even the practice of it among their adherents, we are right to be amazed by it. The Christ-ian truth that the only way to truly live is to die for the sake of others seems to find expression in many or most of the world's religions. Lewis takes all this in: "Mere morality is not the end of life; you were made for something quite different from that...we are to be remade...a real man, an ageless god, a son of god, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy." The life and energy of God move us up the ladder. The ego can't transcend itself, it can only let God do it. And God does it! He gives grace freely and generously. Physical gravity is an image and metaphor of divine grace; it draws us inexorably upward to God. This is an upside down gravity; it seems upside down to us because of our own falleness. Sin is the "anti-gravity," a parasite which borrows all of its power from the grace of good. "Satan has to bait his hook with God's worm." (An extended quotation here from Chesterton on the "two altars," comparing the Eucharistic altar to a woman's body, two places where God makes life-filled bodies out of "words of love." Fascinating!)
Why be good rather than evil? (What Dr. Kreeft called "calling up the ghost of Nietczshe so that you can exorcise it.") Note that this assumes the first question, that we know what goodness is! Three answers here: For yourself, for others, and for God. We must be good for ourselves because it is the only way to be and to become who we truly are. The reason we are not good, in the end, is that we do not want to be. The reason we are not saints is because we will not allow God to make us saints. Saints are the unanswerable apologetic. You cannot argue with the life of a saint. Professors and apologists use inductive logic; saints use se-ductive logic; they seduce people into the following of God. Will a critical mass of saints lead the world toward Christ, or will a critical mass of sinners lead the world away? The choice is ours, and the future is in our hands. Being a saint is not just for your sake, it is the primary means of saving the world! (Recall God's promise to spare Sodom if 10 righteous people could be found there.) We must all apply ourselves to the work of God: poverty, chastity, and obedience. This means making peace in the world by fighting Christ's war against the world! (Lucas, what did you think of this line of thought?) "If nobody wants to crucify you, you're not being enough like Christ...you can't win the world for Christ without being Christ." "The better you are, the more friends you will have and the more enemies you will have...you need more friends, and your enemies need you. All who met Christ either became his friends or his enemies. He split the world in half." We think goodness will not repel as well as attract; we forget that people love cheap grace. (Preachers are not calling people to sainthood if they do not deal with sin, suffering, sacrifice, and sex...even though it will make a dividing line in the sanctuary, make him both friends and enemies.) The title "sinner" is a weight of glory--what a height from which we have fallen, what a paradise we have lost! We are broken masterpieces, fallen heroes, prodigal sons of God. The world can offer no greater compliment than this! We who claim the title "sinner" admit that we are cripples and that religion is indeed our crutch and that we go to church and so on because we need to, and we love it, for we know that Christ said that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. "The only thing God wants from us is the only thing he cannot give himself: our free choice to love him. He is infinitely more tolerant than any modern relativist. Creating ex nihilo was nothing for God, because nothing cannot resist. Making saints out of sinners is infinitely more difficult because we resist the creation. God is an absolute respecter of our freedom who "will not rape the one he loves." When we choose to become saints, we become light that goes out and seeks to touch the darkness. The rest is up to God. Being is infinitely more powerful than saying, and that is what we are called to--authentic being.
How do we practice goodness? Note that this assumes the second question, that we want to be good rather than evil. Christianity is like a wheelchair, provided by God for people without feet. Faith is simply getting in. "Jesus is like a wheelchair." But how to we do it? There is no recipe, method, means, technique, or cause that can produce that effect becase the effect transcends the cause. Saints transcend the cause as the spirit transcends the flesh. Christ, however, is the saintmaker, the untranscendable cause. "We just go there, where he happens. We just send our spirits out into the Christ-rain. That's all. But 'that's all' is the hardest thing; the simplicity is the biggest challenge." Jesus Christ is all that matters. We are sin-addicts, and we must hit bottom and realize that we are so far gone that only the Divine can save us. The question is not, "How can we trust him," but rather "How can we not?" It's evil that requires methods and techniques and machines; good needs none of this. We have only to see Christ, but to do this we have to will to see him. The only way to become what we are, to save the world, to give God what he demands and deserves, is to keep saying over and over again, "This is yours...and this is yours...and this is yours...

My thoughts: This was at least equal parts polemic and profoundity. I would have been more moved without the polemic. That being said, much of what he said was very deeply redemptive.

Truth: Is There Any? (Mere Conference 1.1)

2006-04-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

The theme of this year's C.S. Lewis Conference is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty: Apologetics and the Winsome Christ. The first plenary is being offered by William Lane Craig of Talbot School of Theology at Biola, and is entitled, "Are There Objective Truths About God?" Dr. Craig is a philosopher of religion and is very well published.

(Note that I'm going to hit the high points here so that I won't be so distracted that I can't listen...feel free to ask a question in the comments if you'd like me to tray to add more.)

"What is truth?" Pontius Pilate, Jn 18:38

When the Bible uses the word truth, it tends to use it in non-philosophical sense. Only occasionally does the word refer to veracity; normally it refers to something like fidelity. Nonetheless, the Christian faith claims to be true in the man-on-the-street sense. There is no particularly Christian theory of truth, but Christian philosophers have adhered to most of the philosophical theories. Dr. Craig leans toward an Aristotelean correspondence understanding. "Such a theory is wholly compatible with the Bible's ideas about truth," though it doesn't teach it outright.

Christian theology tells us that there are objective truths about God; this is its contribution to the philosophical discussion about truth. Theists and atheists alike agree that there are truths about God, and those truths are not valueless. They disagree only upon the content of those truths. Postmodern philosophy denies that these truths exist at all.

This presents us with three challenges:

The Challenge of Verificationism. Logical positivism held that there are literally no propositions about God. Sentences with the word "God" in them are completely without meaning. The verification principle of meaning states that in order for a sentence to be meaninful, it must be capable (in principle) of being empiracally verified. It was soon realized, however, that this principle tosses out much more human dialogue than just God-talk, and that is actually self-refuting (the principle itself cannot be empiracally verified). Though most philosophers have therefore rejected it, it still holds sway in the world of science and in popular thought.
The Challenge of Mystical Anti-Realism. "There are propositions about God, but they are truth-valueless; they are neither true nor false." Because God transcends human thought and language, it is impossible to make meaningful statements about him. In technical terms, we would say that the Principle of Bivalence (that for any proposition p, p is either true or false) fails to be valid for propositions about God. The problem: The statement, "God both exists and does not exist," which as a logical contradiction must be false, is held to be neither true nor false. And once again, the sentence, "God can be described by bivalent propositions," which this theory would hold to be neither true nor false, is itself the argument of the theory. Assuming the mystical anti-realists' own position, we discover that their proposition is self-refuting. If it's true, it's false; if it's false, it's also false! God is not the source of this incoherence; the argument itself is incoherent. (This view seems to have at least some of its roots in eastern mystical philosophy, but is grafted into much New Age thought.)
The Challenge of Radical Pluralism. Radical Pluralism holds that each individual constitutes reality for himself, so that there is no trans-subjective truth about the way the world is. "That may be true for you, but not for me," is literally correct under this view. (It is also rooted in eastern mysticism but also in Kant's critical philosophy.) There is no objective reality, no overarching way that the world is. The world has fallen apart and has become "the world for me." This is antithetical to Christian thought, which ascribes to God a privileged position as the Knower of all truth. Radical pluralists therefore often see their task as overtly anti-theological in character; see the work of Roland Barthes. It is attended by relativism: "Truth is whatever my colleagues will let me get away with." Thus, convincing some group of people to allow you to "get away with" something makes that something true! (Alvin Plantinga has a very sarcastic critique of this idea.) Radical pluralism seems to open the door to Orwellian manipulation of truth for the purposes of power. It is also self-refuting; just assume this position and then ask yourself, "Is radical pluralism objectively true?" The argument claims that the statements it makes about truth are objectively true.

Why are people attracted to views such as these, which are both self-refuting and patently preposterous? Craig holds that it's due to a misunderstanding of the concept of tolerance. People seem to think that the claim that objective truth exists is incompatible with other views, but the very concept of tolerance implies that you disagree with the tolerate view. If you didn't think it was false, you wouldn't tolerate it, you would believe it! Far from being incompatible with tolerance, the very concept of toleration presupposes the existence of absolute truth. The correct basis for tolerance isn't relativism; it is love: "Love your enemies."

My thoughts: Wow! That was almost a psychodelic experience! It reminds me of why I'm a theologian and not a philosopher; I'm not smart enough to be a philosopher.

Mere Conference

2006-04-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Third Austin C.S. Lewis Conference sponsored by the Hill Country Institute for Contemporary Christianity! I'm attending today with Lucas Land of My Four Walls and Joe Bumbulis, frequent M4W commenter. Lucas is live-blogging the sessons (link to come) and I thought I'd try to do the same, as my re-entry into the blogosphere. We've just been enjoying some great worship music from Wear That Shoe, and there are some great plenary speakers lined up: William Lane Craig, Peter Kreeft, and Frederica Mathews-Green. I think I'll try to blog notes from the plenaries (as long as I can keep my batteries charged) as well as thoughts that occur to me in between.

If you've had NeoTheolog in your RSS reader but had forgotten me in my year-long blogging hiatus...well, it's nice to see you again. I hope you'll find something here that will bless you. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the (re-) beginning of something.

Commuteblog: My Misplaced Certitudes

2005-05-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

Luther (2003, Joseph Fiennes)
Lucas Land's musicblog, The Poor Musician

Commuteblog: Ecumenism at Truett (with altar call)

2005-04-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

Bossey Ecumenical Institute
Suitable Altar Call Music (warning: MIDI)

Death of a Unity-Minded Patriarch

2005-04-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

From the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com:

With the eyes of the world fixed on Rome--upon the death of Pope John Paul II and the gathering of cardinals to pick his successor--many Americans might have missed the quiet passing of another prominent bishop. Earlier this week, His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos died peacefully at the age of 93. Today he will be interred in Brookline, Mass. [. . .]
His two greatest public moments came toward the beginning and end of his leadership. . . . Both moments capture Archbishop Iakovos's lifelong pursuit of a spiritual unity that transcends historic divisions--divisions that are, at best, merely a penultimate stage in the grand scheme of creation.

Archbishop Iakovos literally became the face of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in America when he appeared on the cover of the March 26, 1965, issue of Life magazine--a bearded patriarch bedecked in cassock and the black headdress and veil of Orthodox bishops. He was shown standing alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., labor leader Walter Reuther and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

The occasion for the photograph was a historic march for civil rights in Selma, Ala. Archbishop Iakovos was there, alone among his fellow Orthodox bishops--in fact, way out in front of the rest of the Orthodox community on one of the most vital moral issues of the day.

[. . .]

The other key episode in the archbishop's life led to his forced retirement, or so it is widely believed. For three days in late 1994, 29 bishops from the various Orthodox "jurisdictions"--a convenient Latin term that describes the scandalous ethnic fragmentation of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Orthodox church in this country--met in Ligonier, Pa., at the invitation of the archbishop. Their purpose was to contemplate the formation of a united Orthodox community in America.

In a final statement, the bishops spoke glowingly of their commitment to "a common vision of mission," of their conviction that all the Orthodox of North America are "called to plan together and work together" in reaching beyond the ethnic boundaries of the churches. The bishops--with Greek, Russian, Syrian, Lebanese, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian and American roots--pledged to avoid "the creation of parallel and competitive Orthodox parishes."

While many of the Orthodox faithful have long prayed for such an outcome, the meeting apparently triggered alarms in Istanbul, historic seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, "first among equals" in the 300-million-strong Orthodox world. Within 20 months, Archbishop Iakovos retired at the behest of Patriarch Bartholomeos, who reportedly saw in the archbishop's efforts an attempt to detach the Greek Orthodox flock in North America from their mother church.

Patriarch Iakovos appears to have shared the same vision I have for the unity of the church of Jesus Christ. He put his career and reputation on the line for the cause of radical unity within his own "native" expression of Christianity, and he put his life on the line to stand in cooperation with other Christians outside that expression against the sins of the society in which they all found themselves.

I wonder, though, if this piece is the whole story. Any of my occasional Eastern Orthodox readers have more perspective to offer on the life and ministry of Patriarch Iakovos?

Godbloggers: 1 Wolves Among the Sheep: 0

2005-04-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

Posted today at The Philadelphia Inquirer (feel free to use "neotheolog@godsfamily.com" and password "neotheolog1" to avoid soul-sucking registration):

Episcopal priest leaves for Druids

The former Downingtown rector said it was "a joyous occasion."

By Kristin E. Holmes

Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

An Episcopal priest who resigned from a Downingtown church last fall after his ties to a Druid society were made public has renounced his Episcopal ordination and become a Druid priest.

W. William Melnyk, former rector of St. James' Episcopal Church, has formed the Llynhydd Grove of the Druid Order of the Yew, which he is leading under his Druid name, OakWyse.

[. . .]

The involvement of Melnyk and his wife, the Rev. Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk - also an Episcopal priest - in New Age activities came to light in October, when two Druidic liturgies attributed to them were posted on the Episcopal Church's national Web site as a model of feminist liturgies.

Conservative groups and Internet bloggers accused the church of supporting paganism. The church denied the accusations but removed the liturgies from the Web site.

NeoTheolog: Gimme that "Old Time (Pagan) Religion," October 29, 2004

Chalk one up for the good guys!

Commuteblog: NPR on the next Pope

2005-04-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

Frontrunners and Factors in Selecting the Pope at NPR.org
Africa: Christianity's Sunbelt for Growth at NPR.org

"He raised his hands in prayer, and his hands changed the world."

2005-04-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

Words from Scott Simon's moving reflection on the life of Pope John Paul II from today's broadcast of Weekend Edition Saturday on National Public Radio, entitled A Pontiff with the Hands of a Workingman. I urge you to listen to the short but powerful piece; you'll need Windows Media Player or Real Player to listen.

George Weigel has another excellent retrospective at Beliefnet: The Heroic Papacy. Again, NeoTheolog highly recommends this piece. Please take a moment to read it.

I praise God for the life of Karol Wojtyla. May all Christ followers everywhere heed the call that characterized both his call to discipleship and his own pilgrimage of faith: "Be not afraid!"

A.J. Levine: "Christians say the darndest things (about Jews)"

2005-03-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

One of the coolest things about attending a seminary like Truett that is affiliated with a university is the variety of guest lecturers who regularly drop by to share their perspectives on life, the universe, and everything with us. One of the most recent was Dr. Amy Jill Levine, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University and Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality (also at Vandy). Dr. Levine holds the distinction of being a practicing, non-messianic Jew who is also a very well-respected New Testament scholar (yes, you read that correctly). The title of her lecture was, "Christians say the darndest things (about Jews)," and as you might imagine, she brought a unique perspective to the topic.

Her thesis was that most Protestant exegetes recognize that the New Testament has been interpreted "anti-Jewishly," yet many of us slip into this kind of error nonetheless. She went on to discuss five of the most common ways this happens and to offer suggestions to help us avoid them:

Portraying Jews as untolerant of the early Christians. Yes, John's gospel refers three times to Christians being expelled from the synagogue. Yes, John also quotes Jesus as calling his Jewish listeners, "children of the devil." But Paul preached in synagogues and was never expelled; rather, he was subjected to community discipline. The real question, from Dr. Levine's perspective, is why did synagogues respond the way they did to Christians. She made the point that most of our churches would respond similarly if someone made the kinds of assertions in our worship services or Sunday schools that early Christians were making in the synagogues. She pointed out, "Splits in the church occur today for far less urgent reasons."
Portraying the Law as an unbearable burden to Jews. Of the claim in Acts 15 that the Law is "a yoke we cannot bear," Dr. Levine said, "This makes sense only if it was written by a Gentile," and pointed out that the average Jew didn't feel this way about the Law. The real question, from Dr. Levine's perspective, is how do you follow the Law. She pointed out that in the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tightened the Law rather than loosening it. "The speed limit isn't a burden," she quipped, "Unless you want to speed."
Portraying the Jewish messianic expectation as belicose. Sure, some Jews were looking for a warrior messiah who would use violence to free Israel from Roman oppression. But that view was only one of many. Painting a picture of "Jewish violence" versus "Christian peace" is grossly simplistic. She pointed out that there is more than enough violent imagery in the book of Revelation alone to put this false dichotomy to rest.
Portraying the Jews as male chauvenists. Generalization is rampant here. We're most guilty of this when we preach about the women in the gospels, such as the woman at the well or the woman who touched Jesus' robe. Dr. Levine suggested that our subconscious motive in preaching like this is, "The worse you can make the Jews look toward women, the better Jesus looks." But the broader contextual evidence shows that the Jews took a much different view of women than is typically presented in sermons and Bible studies.
Portraying the Jewish picture of God as cold and distant, in contrast to which Jesus calls the Father "Abba." Two misconceptions here: That Jesus was an innovator in calling God "Abba," and that "Abba" is an affectionate form of "Father," perhaps best translated for today's audiences as "Daddy." Dr. Levine showed from the rabbinic literature that neither is true.

To help all of us young preachers and teachers overcome these errors, Dr. Levine offered herself--in a metaphysical sort of way. "Imagine me sitting in your class or sanctuary," she said. She encouraged us not to sit still for teaching that encourages attitudes toward Jews (or others, for that matter) that are out of sync with Jesus' own teaching on how to relate to your neighbor. All in all, it was an incredibly informative lecture, and more than a little entertaining, as Dr. Levine has both a quick wit and a disarming sense of humor. The Baylor community was very blessed to have her.

Stan Grenz hospitalized

2005-03-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

Via jordoncooper.com:

Pray for Stan Grenz

This comes from Mars Hill Graduate School:

Mars Hill Community, It is with a broken heart that I write to tell you that last evening Stan Grenz suffered a significant surge in his blood pressure, which resulted in a major brain event, similar to a stroke or an aneurism. He is in an ICU unit at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver, unconscious and on a ventilator, and it is expected that he will go home to be with His Lord.

It goes without saying that the world will suffer a great loss. Stan is a major thought leader in the theological world, a provocateur of many changed hearts, a beloved man of God and a dear friend. It appears likely the Lord will call him home, and we will miss him and mourn his passing forever. He will leave an indelible mark on each of us whether we knew him closely or from a distance. To the Mars Hill Community, he has been a great force for change and growth, and his fingerprints on our institution will be felt for generations. His legacy will certainly endure in our reinvented MDiv degree, one of his finest contributions to the theological community. We are honored to have him as part of our community, and privileged to have had his thought leadership grace us. Through our pain, we will find great resolve and courage to ensure his impact will live on in the generations of leaders yet to be.

As we know more, I will keep you posted. Jason Best will be sending out a linkage to a special blog site for us to interact with each other during this painful and difficult time. I would ask that you NOT be in direct contact with Stan’s family or the hospital at this time to give them needed space to prepare, plan, grieve and take care of themselves. When we know more, we can plan for how we as a community will respond.

In the meantime, on Monday afternoon from 1-2:30 when Stan would have been teaching his class at MHGS, those who are available and would like to will gather in classroom one to pray, process and celebrate Stan’s life and impact on us.

May His love and kindness sustain us all now and in the days ahead.

We join our hearts with this community in prayer. Dr. Grenz has made such a tremendous impact on my theology and spirituality; I know the Triune God better through him. Though I've never met him, I will miss him.

I bet you're wondering, "Now why don't he write?"

2005-03-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

It's because I've been investing all my blog-time and pouring all my blog-energy into a terrific discussion on the nature of the Church and the role of tradition in shaping it over at Doug's blog Xanthikos. If you're interested in such things, or if the idea of three Eastern Orthodox taking on one evangelical Protestant in the Theological Arena of Death (okay, maybe the "Theological Arena of Irenic Discourse" is more appropriate) sounds appealing to you, then check it out here.

Interview with the NeoTheolog

2005-02-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

Manders is holding interviews over in her living room, and since my favorite thing to write about is myself, I volunteered for one! So, here is the transcript of our interview. (If it helps you get into the mood, picture this like something you'd see on Entertainment Tonight or something, with me as the famous film director and Manders as the cool and composed interviewer.)

Manders: Daniel is a recently transplanted Wacoan who's studying at Truett Seminary (and apparently used to be in the military). First things first: How did you meet your wife, and how many kids do you guys have?

Daniel: My wife and I met on our first day at West Point. We were both wearing athletic shorts, white t-shirts, knee-high black dress socks, and black dress shoes. I had just had my head shaved, and she had a hair-do that we later gave the affectionate nickname "mushroom head." As you can imagine, it was love at first sight. Well, not exactly...it took us a year or so to move from "squadmates" to "lovebirds." We have four children, ranging in age from six years to six months. Usually when we walk into a restaurant and the hostess asks us, "How many?" I respond, "Two adults and forty-two children," because that's how it frequently feels.

M: What made you decide to sign up for the army?

D: Going to West Point was a lifelong dream, the product of growing up as the son of a soldier. It was also a logical "first stop" on the route to what was in those days the driving goal of my existence: to become an astronaut. God, apparently, had other plans. =)

M: What led you to Truett, and have you found the open theists yet?

D: Coming to Truett was, at least initially, a very pragmatic decision. We couldn't really afford to go anywhere else. I have been incredibly blessed to discover in the meantime that Truett is a perfect fit for me in every way. In fact, I was just sharing with someone tonight that I can't really imagine a seminary where I would be happier or more at home. As for the open theists, my scrupulous investigating has uncovered one first-year student who admits to being an open theist. Beyond that, I'll have to keep looking. ;-)

M: Who is your favorite theologian?

D: Ooo, that's the kind of question that could keep me up all night long! At first blush, though, I think my favorite "classic" (i.e. dead) theologian is Tertullian. The contemporary theologians I admire most are Alister McGrath (whom I had the blessing of studying under this summer at Oxford), Stanley Grenz (who actually taught at Baylor for a short time), and N.T. Wright (who far and away has the best web page of the three).

M: What's your favorite coffee drink?

D: Tough one. I was just telling my wife tonight how much I love coffee in all of its incarnations. I think my favorite, though, is a toss-up between (a) a cafe breve upside down with an extra shot and (b) a simple espresso with plenty of sugar.

Anglican leaders recommend temporary split

2005-02-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

The BBC is reporting on the most important result of this week's meeting of the world's Anglican Primates: Anglicans demand temporary split. Seems this is the "next step" the Windsor Report* anticipated. Quote of note from the meeting's statement:

We request that the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council for the period leading up to the next Lambeth Conference [the ten-yearly meeting of all Anglican bishops, due next in 2008]

The BBC article goes on to state, "The ACC is a liaison body, with members drawn from each province or member church. To step down would mean a church was no longer a full member of the Anglican family. One observer said: 'The primates have handed the North Americans a pearl-handled revolver.'"

This saddens me. The Anglican communion's ability to unify diversity has always been such an encouragement to me...

Lord, please strengthen them to sustain unity in spite of their differences. Unify them around your cross. At the same time, preserve in them the truth of the biblical witness as it concerns homosexuality. If it is not possible to do both, please do the one that is best for all of us, the one that gives you greatest glory. I'm so glad we can entrust that decision to your perfect discernment. In the name of Him who prayed, "May they be one," Amen.

*For more of my thoughts on the Windsor Report and other things Anglican, start here.

Five questions: Orthodoxy or orthodoxy?

2005-02-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

or The Xanthikos Shorter Chatechism

Commenting on my recent dialogue with Nathan, Karl pointed me to this post: Xanthikos: Follow the Threads. In it, the blogger testifies to his experience with Eastern Orthodoxy and then challenges his readers to consider five "vestiges of Holy Tradition," contained in most expressions of Christianity, as to whether they demonstrate or lead to the primacy of Eastern Orthodoxy over above other Christian traditions. He offers these vestiges in the form of five questions; my old friend Karl expressed an interest in how I would answer these questions. So here goes. (Please keep in mind I've had two tests this morning and I'm a bit strung out on Actifed.)

You know that the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God. How is it that we have received the sacred texts? How were they defined and passed down to us?

I don't suppose you're interested in having me to trace the formation of the Old and New Testament canon, right? Plenty of intelligent, Godly, fruitful people have done that and not reached the conclusion that the process requires that Eastern Orthodoxy be the only valid form of Christian witness. The canon was, for all intents and purposes, closed long before the Schism. In fact, most scholars would agree that Jerome, a Latin father, was the one who closed it for all practical purposes. The question of the inclusion of the Apocrypha is an important one, but overall the thread you're tracing here leads back through the Western church to pre-Schism, catholic (small "c") Christianity.

You know that the Nicene Creed witnesses to the truths at the root of Christian faith and identity. How is it that these things teachings were won and preserved for us?

God used a lot of ordinary people, and a few extraordinary ones, to bring it together. They came from both sides of the East-West divide. There were more than a few shady dealings and political power plays that were unworthy of Christ. In the end, the truth about God prevailed, as it always does. I join with you in affirming belief in and acceptance of the Constantinopolitano-Nicene Creed--in its original form, by the way. All the theological justifications aside, I see the filoque controversy as being a primarily political one. I'm more than willing to toss it.

You know that Christ was both fully Man and fully God. How is it that the Church meditated upon this mystery? The complexities here are enormous: how is it that we arrived at any ‘orthodox’ consensus whatsoever?

Tertullian's formula, "One peron, two natures," gradually won acceptance across the breadth of the church as people came to see the logical outcomes of Arianism. Incidentally, you know Tertullian--another Latin-- was a Montanist when he came up with that, right?

You believe that Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit, but yet that these three are all One God. How is it that we are given to believe in such an apparent contradiction? This is not explicit in Scripture, after all: when and how was this defined?

Tertullian, that old heretic, is responsible for this one as well. And you know that his statement "one essence, three persons" is almost impossible to translate effectively from Latin into Greek? And that language difficulties such as these were as much a cause of the Christological controversies as any other factor?

You believe that God’s power is present in the Eucharist and in Baptism. Why do you believe this if it is nothing but a ‘mere’ symbol? From its very beginnings how did the Church understand the mystery and power of God’s hand in the sacraments?

You're basing this question upon a distinction that is increasingly disappearing among evangelicals; there is a well-documented movement towards a more sacramental understanding of the Lord's Supper and baptism, and of life in general, at work among evangelicals right now. In other words, I don't believe they are "nothing but a 'mere' symbol." Sacramental theology is not unique to Eastern Orthodoxy.

I submit that if you follow these threads in prayer and study you will find that in the end they will lead you to Orthodoxy. I found, as one among countless thousands, an incredible joy in the discovery.

And I submit to you that following these threads leads not to Orthodoxy but rather to orthodoxy. It proves the point that God uses people of many theological traditions and ideological bents to preserve truth and shape his church. Or, as I suspect someone is about to tell me, have I completely missed the point of these five questions?

The Macintosh Biblioblog

2005-02-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

This is the type of thing I'd normally just toss in the "Blog-within-the-blog" over there to the right, but I liked the content of The Macintosh Biblioblog so much I decided to devote a main post to it. If you're one of those people who dwells at the cosmic confluence between "theology geek" and "Apple geek," you'll find bliss here. Check it out.

Life on Mars: Theological implications

2005-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

MSNBC.com is carrying a front page story (courtesy their relationship with Space.com) that a pair of NASA scientists will soon publish strong evidence that life currently exists on Mars, specifically in caves or other subsurface formations. Quote of note:

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, which took place Sunday, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

Reading this pushed to the front of my mind a question that has been rolling around up there like a loose cannon for some time: What are the theological implications of the discovery of extra-terrestrial life? Would it, as one author recently speculated, mean the end of human religion? Or can Christianity adapt? Does it even need to?

I'd love to do some real thinking on this. What are your thoughts?

Road trip to see Walter Brueggemann

2005-02-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

Attention Central Texas theology geeks! Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary and author of Old Testament commentaries in several series and many other books, including The Prophetic Imagination, is delivering a set of lectures at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston next weekend, February 18-19. The theme is "The Good Psalms, the Hard Psalms, the Surprising Psalms." If any of our readers are interested in a little road trip, shoot me an email. Cost is $10 for students or $36 for everyone else and includes lunch on Saturday.

(By the way, Baylor readers, let's do coffee sometime! Email me and I'll even buy the first cup.)

Who's afraid of the big bad heretics?

2005-01-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

There's an excellent discussion going on over at Amanda's blog, The Living Room, on false gospels and whether or not they're a danger to the church. Check it out and add your perspective here: "Why this is a really bad idea." Feel free to snoop around the rest of Amanda's Living Room while you're there; she's got some great thoughts to contribute to the Christian conversation.

(My thoughts on this topic may soon develop into a post here at NeoTheo(b)log, draft title, "Heretics and why I love them." Watch for it.)

Christian blogosphere convention self-organizes

2005-01-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

For a look at how blogging is changing the way people come together, check out what's happening over at SmartChristian Blog: The First Christian Blogosphere Convention.

If you're interested in participating in GodBlogCon1, click on the link above and sign up in the comments. (Note: this isn't a commitment to attend, but rather an attempt to determine if there is a "critical mass" to make something like this happen.) The details are still being worked out--dates are undecided as of yet, location looks like it will be Mesa, Arizona--but the inertia is high and it looks like it will come together. If nothing else, head on over to the GodBlogCon page and watch order arise from chaos courtesy the blogging community.

Technorati watchlist: keyword "GodBlogCon"

Holy See encourages ecumenical dialogue 1.1

2005-01-25T16:40:00.000-08:00

Catherine "the Moody" has some thoughts on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at her blog Conversio. Her (accurate) understanding of modern Catholic thought on ecuminism might be helpful to our readers who hold the (typically Protestant) assumption that by "unity" Catholics mean "everybody becomes Catholic." Quote of note:

The 'unity' in question is not a literal unity in that We are all not going to become one church(meaning the Church), but we are to acknowledge that we are already one church. The Church is part of that larger church. Basically, big C Catholicism is part of the little c catholic church, the world-wide Body of Christ.

Are any of our readers familiar enough with Vatican II to be able to comment on its ecumenical content, or am I going to have to find the time to read it myself?

Baylor's Sloan to step down 1.1

2005-01-24T07:14:00.000-08:00

The Waco Tribune has an in-depth piece up now on Baylor President Sloan's resignation, including an interview with Dr. Sloan: Baylor president says strife stemmed from boldness of 2012 vision. In it, Sloan speaks frankly about his tenure, his educational philosophy, and his hopes for the future. Quotes of note:

I think the difference ... in my time as president has been a desire to be very intentional about it [Baylor's commitment to Christianity]. Baylor didn't have to be intentional about it for most of our history. It was just taken for granted. Faith and learning were always integrated.

... If Baylor should ever turn back from a research agenda, we're not a real university.

... No question, all of us need to be willing to forgive. The Scriptures say if you can't forgive, you won't be forgiven. That's a pretty blunt and maybe even frightening statement. All of us must forgive. And that's easier said than done.

... Some of the divisiveness will evaporate. There's still going to be some there. But you know, in the same way that the human body wants to heal itself, there is a healing mechanism. I think again there's a pull towards wholeness that's part of the spiritual reality that God has made. I think my stepping aside gives an opportunity for there to be some healing.

I think you can say one thing for Dr. Sloan: He is sincerly concerned for the University and the University community. In today's academy, where so many administrators and professors are more concerned with their own careers (or worse, their paychecks) than with the community they "serve," leaders like Dr. Sloan will always be needed--and, unfortunately, will always face opposition.

Sources and norms of orthodoxy

2005-01-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

In our discussion about Christian ecuminism at last week's post, "God and the Denominations," Nathan of the very thoughtful blog Fighting the Little Fights asked me, "How do you determine orthodoxy? What is your standard and why?"

And wouldn't you know, this very question was the focus of my "Introduction to Theology" class* this week!

Theologians answer your question with the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, obviously attributed to John Wesley, though it seems to have existed in proto-form in ancient Christianity. A quadrilateral is a shape with four sides, like a rectangle or square. In this case, the four sides of the quadrilateral correspond to four sources or norms of Christian belief. Those four sources are Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

So, there ya go. Any questions?

Yeah, right. So it's not quite that simple. While there seems to have been at least an implied agreement on these four sources almost from the beginning, the spread on how these sources should be appropriated is pretty wide. Some notes, though, to bring us back to your question...because, after all, it's all about me.

By Scripture I mean the Christian canon as adopted by the Reformers, i.e. without the Apocrypha. That being said, I've actually not studied the Reformers' reasoning very well. I'll get back to you at the end of the semester.
By Tradition I mean "the consensus beliefs held in common by the early church fathers and the Reformers of the sixteenth century as expressed in common by the ecumenical creeds and Reformation confessions of faith."**
By Reason I mean logic, particularly the rule of non-contradiction.
By Experience i mean the spiritual experience of the Christian community (and not individual, private, or personal experience as you might have imagined).

The question that remains is how the four sources relate to one another. Without going overboard with details, I like Wesley's idea of the four sources as having an ongoing conversation with one another, "with Scripture having the primary place of dignity and authority"*** and experience having a role generally subordinate to the others. That being said, I like the little bit I've learned about the Liberation Theology's perspective on the role of experience in the movement from action to reflection to action.

That's probably more than any of you needed to spawn meaningful discussion on the matter. So take your best shot! Like I've written above, my goal here is to develop "an holistic personal Christian theology, inviting the input of the global community to help stimulate creativity and maintain accountability." (But I'm secretly hoping Karl will have something else to keep him busy this week so he'll go easy on me!)

*I should point out here that much of the rest of this post is drawn from that class' primary text, The Mosaic of Christian Belief by Dr. Roger Olsen, who also happens to be a professor at our seminary. He is not, however, my theology professor. Anyway, I think it was Spurgeon who said, "All originality and no plagarism makes for very dull preaching indeed."

**Olsen, The Mosaic of Christian Belief, 57. See what I mean about all originality and no plagarism? Er, what Spurgeon meant?

***Olsen, Mosaic, 57.

Baylor's Sloan to step down

2005-01-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

The Waco Tribune seems to have the first decent report. (Update: Christianity Today now has a report, including some reaction from Sloan's detractors and lots of background information.) If you're not sure why this matters to the church, the American academy, or the future of evangelicalism, read this article by Hunter Baker at National Review Online. You might also check out Joe Carter's take on the "Baylor Experiment" here at Evangelical Outpost.

I want to get it on record right now that I had nothing to do with this. Just because I happened to start at Baylor two weeks ago doesn't mean I'm in any way responsible. Totally coincidental.

I also want to get on record that I don't have a good feeling about this. Time will tell, but I don't think this is necessarily a good thing pro ecclesia, pro Texana or pro any of the rest of us, for that matter.

Update: At his groupblog, The Reform Club, Hunter Baker shares that Christianity Today has asked him to write an online piece about Sloan's resignation and its significance for Baylor. Keep an eye out for it.

Update: Hunter's piece is up at CT and it's excellent. Read it here.

Procrastination is the thief of...ooo, McSweeny's!

2005-01-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

A Partial Listing of Religiously Themed Lists at McSweeny's*,
Many of Which May Be Considered Blasphemous
Or at the Very Least, Tacky

1. Things I Would Often Think about in Church

2. How Many Members of Each of the Following Religions It Takes To Screw in a Lightbulb

3. Potential Names for Christian Rock Bands Taken from Lines in Emily Dickinson's Poems

4. Fluid-Related Terms Indicative of a State of Grace, Mostly from Various Obscure Religions

5. TV Guide Movie Capsules, Heaven Edition

6. This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please

7. Five Favorite Heresies of the Roman Catholic Church, Disguised in the Form of Unused Episode Titles for the Hit Situation Comedy Friends , and Their Dates

8. Prince Song or Inspirational Signage Outside Byron United Covenant Church?

*If you have a job, a family, or a life (none of which I have right now), don't even think of clicking on any of these. You have been warned.

Holy See encourages ecumenical dialogue

2005-01-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News is running the following story from AFP today: Christian unity* must be goal of every Catholic, says Pope

Unifying the various branches of Christianity should be the goal of every Catholic, Pope John Paul II told pilgrims at his weekly general audience as he promoted a week of prayer for Christian unity.

He said the week of prayer was "dedicated to reflection and prayer on the need for all the baptized to work for the restoration of full Christian unity."

"The pain of separation is felt with ever more intensity," the pontiff said, adding that the world awaited a "clear and unanimous" worship by all believers in Christ...

I wonder how many other Christian denominations or identity groups have an organized prayer event focused on church unity? If you know of others, drop us a line in the comments.

You might also like to check out the resources available for this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the site of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. (And by the way, I wonder how many other denominations or identity groups have an executive level council for the promotion of church unity?) While you're at it, just check out the front end of the Vatican's site. It's incredibly well done.

*If you're not sure why church unity matters, read this. Then read this.

Anyone going to South by Southwest?

2005-01-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about the 12th annual 2005 South by Southwest Festival and Conference, March 11-20, Austin, Texas:

The SXSW INTERACTIVE FESTIVAL brings together uber-geeks and digital innovators from around the world for four days of keynote speeches, Trade Show, panels, parties and assorted evening fun. Now in its twelfth year, this is the event where the web's most creative minds share their ideas about how interactive technology will shape our future.

There's a Film Conference and Festival as well. Did I mention student rates? Shoot me an email if you're interested in going; if I go I'll probably drive down from Waco and there might be room for one or two here at chez NeoTheolog.

A sad day for emergent

2005-01-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

Hot off the presses at The Holy Observer: "Local Emergent Church Recedes"

Rancho Buena Vista Community Church, until recently called Vista Journey, has 'receded' from the 'emergent' church movement, according to its pastor, Andrew Hardy..."Yeah, we were really into that whole 'emergent' thing for quite a while. But it got old real fast. Like I'm really gonna preach in a recliner for the rest of my career!"

Read the rest of this tragic story here. Perhaps someone should send a "vision re-casting cohort" out to Vista Journey to help them reconnect with their postmodern God-vibe?

104 years of consistency

2005-01-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

My wife's grandmother, Mary Wambach, passed away early this morning in the assisted living facility where she's lived for the last few years. She was 104 years old. I invite you to rejoice with me at the passing into eternity of this wonderful saint!

Mary raised seven children all by herself as a school teacher in Montana in the 1920's and 30's. She taught them all to love the Lord, and each of them married another lover of Jesus. As I recall, all of their children have also committed their lives to Christ. My wonderful wife, the youngest of Mary's grandchildren, is just one of dozens of recipients of this generational grace. Though I never knew her as well as I wanted to, I am so blessed by the quiet consistency of Mary's faith. I look forward to many wonderful hours spent with her in heaven.

I'm also blessed to know that Mary got to meet her youngest great-grandchild, my 4-month-old son Harry, just two days before she left this world for the next. God's timing is perfect and wonderful! Thank you, Father!

Father, I celebrate your blessing on Grandma Mary and her entry into the place you've prepared for her. But her passing comes at a time when I'm so frustrated with my own lack of spiritual consistency. May her example inspire me to be who I truly am in my spirit, who you've made me to be, as it has inspired so many others for so long.

May her reward be rich indeed and may her heart rejoice as never before when she hears you say, "Well done, Mary, my good and faithful servant."

God and the Denominations

2005-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

In my ten years online I've probably subscribed to a hundred daily "inspirational" email lists, but the only one that's stood the test of time is Robert McAnally Adams' Christian Quotation of the Day. Today's quote is a perfect example of why (and it just happens to fall in the center of mass of my deep passion for church unity). Check it out:

The 'outsider' who knows nothing of the mixture of tradition, conviction, honest difference, and hidden resentment, that lies behind the divisions of the Christian Church sees clearly the advantage of a united Christian front and cannot see why the Churches cannot 'get together'. The problem is doubtless complicated, for there are many honest differences held with equal sincerity, but it is only made insoluble because the different denominations are (possibly unconsciously) imagining God to be Roman or Anglican or Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or what have you. If they could see beyond their little inadequate god, and glimpse the reality of God, they might even laugh a little and perhaps weep a little. The result would be a unity that actually does transcend differences, instead of ignoring them with public politeness and private contempt.
...J.B. Phillips, Your God is Too Small

Maybe I should design a bumper sticker along the lines of the Sojourners "God is not a Republican or a Democrat" ones I've seen all over the Baylor parking garage. "God is not a Baptist...or a Presbyterian...or a Roman Catholic..." Would you buy one?

Community through a glass and darkly

2005-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful experience today--I got to meet for the first time someone I've been friends with for a couple of years. That probably sounds strange to you unless you've had the opportunity to meet in "real life" someone you've carried on a relationship with in cyberspace. I've dialogued with Lucas, the theoblogian of My Four Walls fame and Tame the Monster, for probably close to two years; that's forever in the blog world! We've exchanged email, chatted, and commented on each other's writing. We've operated in the same blog-circles. If you'd have asked me yesterday, I probably could have spoken at some length about Lucas, his passions, and his gifts.

A week or so ago I got an email from him suggesting that we meet in person over coffee. When we moved to Waco, it never even occurred to me that it would put me within comfortable driving distance of my blog-friend. We met today and shared a couple hours of great fellowship--a true blessing to me, as I hope it was for him.

As we were leaving, it occurred to me that I had gotten to know Lucas better in just a couple of hours face-to-face than I had in a couple of years online. That was when the Scripture passage came to mind:

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

The verse was like a little jewel from God, and as I turned it over in my mind, different facets shone:

The cyber form of community we experience through blogs, chat, email, forums, and the like is true community, but it is rudimentary at best. Until technology progresses, it is a poor substitute for realspace community.
Praying, reading Scripture, worshiping, and taking part in the sacraments have a great deal in common with our cyber-community. They allow us to know God, but only in a rudimentary way. We will know God better after a moment in heaven than we will after a lifetime of relating to him through the spiritual disciplines.
In a similar way, we will experience community with one another in a deeper and fundamentally more satisfying way in the coming kingdom than we do here today.

Thanks, Lucas, for a great time. I'm eager to do it again. And thanks, Father, for giving me one more reason to look forward to death.

God of Earth and Outer Space: Another Perspective

2005-01-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

Catching up on my blog reading this morning I came across a great post by fellow Waconian (or is that Wacoite?) Myles Werntz in his blog Taking Off and Landing. It's called "God of Earth and Outer Space" and in it Myles expresses his frustration with the U.S. space program. Here's a quote of note:

It all goes back to this gnawing suspicion that the stars are there not to be conquered, but gawked at, awed--that some things in creation are there simply to be looked at, and not mined. I've never understood the ramptant fascination with travelling as far as we can into the known solar system, only to confirm what we always knew, that life doesn't exist anywhere near here, and if life should exist in another galaxy, they'll let us know if we need to hear from them. When there are so many unexplored caverns of the human heart and psyche, the expense of hurtling a radar into the deepest ink black makes no sense to me.

In the interest of providing another perspective, and in the hope of spawning some dialogue on the issue, I decided to do something I've never done before. I'm blogging the text of a sermon I preached in our church almost exactly a year ago, the Sunday after what were arguably the two most important space events of 2004: the landing of the robotic rover Spirit on the Martian surface and President Bush's announcement of an ambitious new space exploration initiative. I hope a few of you at least will read Myles' post, and then read my sermon. I'm eager to read your thoughts in the comments.

The sermon began with a video clip: the title sequence from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As the camera pans across beautiful starscapes to focus in on the planets of our solar system, the voice of Patrick Stewart (otherwise known as Captain Jean Luc Picard) speaks:

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds...to seek out new life and new civilizations...to boldly go where no man has gone before.

There was a time in my life when those words had the power to set me quivering with excitement and anticipation. I used to race home from school each day to catch reruns of Star Trek on television, and I stayed up until 1 AM every Saturday night to watch them on our local public television affiliate...not because it was great TV--it wasn't--but because I shared The Dream. Star Trek was created in an era when The Dream was a national one--the late 1960's. Inspired by President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and emboldened by Soviet competition, The Dream propagated across our culture like a virus--to explore, to seek out, to boldly go where no man had gone before. But the Dream had it's beginning long before that...before Goddard, before Von Braun, before H.G. Wells, before da Vinci. The Dream is an ancient one...

This morning, inspired by recent events and emboldened by what I believe is perhaps the crucial hour for our generation's fulfillment of the Dream, I'd like to open God's word with you and show you something that perhaps you never imagined was there. For it is in God's word that we find the source of the Dream, and God's plan for it's fulfillment. Turn in your Bibles to the eighth Psalm, and let's read verses three through eight.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

O LORD , our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

As we study this passage this morning, we need to remember that a psalm is a song, and that it's primarily not about information but about emotion, not about knowing something but about feeling something. David is sharing his feelings...and we need to feel what he feels.

David is in awe of God's handiwork and of God himself. "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place..." (3). I imagine David in the palace courtyard on a cold, clear night lifting his eyes from the path in front of him up, up to the sky, and being overcome by the sight. It would be something few of us have ever seen, living in a world where artificial light is cheap and plentiful, although you can see it here where we live perhaps more clearly than anywhere you'll ever live or visit again.

Seeing that sight did something to David. It's not that it taught him something; it made him understand something that he already knew. God is powerful...creative...BIG! David is astonished that such a powerful and creative and BIG God would not only notice human beings, but care for them. "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him" (4). Astronomers tell us that there are 100 billion galaxies visible from earth. That's more galaxies than all the human beings who have ever walked the planet! And each galaxy has somewhere around 200 billion stars! And God alone is responsible for all of that...amazing!

But David is also asking a question...and we need to appreciate the question in order to comprehend the answer. You've got to try to grasp your own infinitesimal smallness to really get the point of the rest of the song. Because that point is beyond imagining--it's so far out that we'd consider it absolutely insane were it not absolutely biblical. David is asking, "In light of the vastness and grandeur of the universe, of what possible importance or value can man be to God?" And the incredible answer is this: God doesn't simply notice human beings, and he doesn't simply care for them. God has made us his partners in governing the works of his hands.

That's not really very meaningful when, in your mind, you're the only show in town. But when you understand where you stand alongside the rest of the universe, it's incredible! We must understand our smallness to appreciate our bigness. Despite the fact that you couldn't create a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much less a star or a world, God made you just "a little lower than the heavenly beings" (5), than God himself! Despite the fact that you are a speck so small as to be unworthy of the adjective "microscopic," God has "crowned [you] with glory and honor" (5)! That crown is important, because who wears crowns? That's right, rulers do...and with such great honor comes great responsibility.

That's what's at the heart of this song. David is communicating an expectation...and we need to live up to it. "You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet" (6). There are echoes of God's first words to human beings here, words etched upon our consciousness from time immortal: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Gen 1:28). That's the divine mandate, the purpose for which human beings were created: increase, fill, subdue, rule. There's a pattern for human growth outlined here. You cannot rule until you've subdued (and isn't it interesting that even before the universe was corrupted by man's sin it still needed to be subdued); you cannot subdue until you fill, you cannot fill until you increase in number. And that pattern must be followed in any given niche of the universe into which humanity expands. This is what God expects of us as a race; it is our most basic, most fundamental purpose, our essential reason for being. It is the responsibility we bear along with the crown of divine glory and honor. It is our manifest destiny. And it is the source and fount of The Dream.

Two weeks ago, humankind took its latest step toward the fulfillment of that destiny when a six-wheeled robot landed on the surface of Mars. Now Mars is a dangerous place. Planetary scientists have taken to calling it the "Planet of Death," not because it's inhabited by multi-tenticled aliens wielding death rays as we once thought it might be, but for reasons far more pragmatic. Of the all the probes we've sent to scout out Mars, only a third have survived. Occasionally, that's been our fault; we've made lots of mistakes. It's incredibly difficult to design, build, and operate a machine that will function under the hellish conditions of launch, interplanetary transit, entry through the Martian atmosphere, and on the cold Martian surface. More often than not the failures have been due to those harsh conditions proving harsher than our best efforts to overcome them. But this little robot survived...and I'd like to say that it survived, at least in part, because as it was plunging though its "six minutes of hell," I was sitting up at my desk, watching, and praying.

Another robot rover, the twin of the one exploring Mars right now, is plummeting through space to a rendezvous with the red planet next Saturday night. Their names, Spirit and Opportunity, are symbolic to me of both the divine mandate responsible for them and the critical times in which we launch them out into the void.

As we speak, there are two human beings, Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri, out on the edge of the final frontier, two pioneers and explorers manning our lone outpost in space, the International Space Station. They are our vanguard, putting themselves at risk, enduring great hardship, so that we might fulfill our destiny--increase, fill, subdue, rule. They, too, need our prayers. For the last two weeks an air leak has plagued their tiny outpost; life is dangerous on the frontier. We ought to care about these things enough to pray for them!

This week President Bush announced a new initiative aimed at getting America's space program moving forward again. "Inspired by all that has come before, and guided by clear objectives, today we set a new course for America's space program. We will give NASA a new focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own." The President's courageous plan has a perilous journey of its own to make--through the halls of our U.S. Congress. It deserves our prayers, and our more active support. Did you know you can go to www.house.gov or www.senate.gov, find the people who represent you in congress, and email them to show your support for the President's vision? I urge you today to do that, because its the right thing to do. The President has said, "We have undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and understand is part of our character." He's right. It's a part of our character because God has placed it there.

When I was a teenager in 1987 I attended the U.S. Space Academy, a program for youth based at the Marshal Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It was the year after the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost with all hands on lift off, and towns like Huntsville, whose economy is driven by their contribution to space exploration, were rallying around a slogan that captured the passion and determination of a nation. I first read that slogan on a huge banner that hung across the main concourse of the Huntsville Airport as I arrived to begin my week at Space Academy. It brought tears to my eyes then, and it still does some 17 years later: "The Dream Is Alive!"

Is The Dream still alive today? It is, because it is a God-dream, a Divine spark placed in the soul of every human being by the God who created the cosmos and who longs to show us what he's done. If creation is a book about God, we on Earth have barely read the preface!

And who knows what we'll find when we go? Wonders beyond our imagining, to be sure. And perhaps...just perhaps we'll find others, like us and yet curiously different. It's probably not worth speculating much here on the existence of life beyond our world; God's Word is strangely silent on the subject...or is it? "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They, too, will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd" (Jn 10:16). "For God so loved the world [and the Greek word here is kosmos, the universe!] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16). And at the end of Mark's gospel we have this command: "Go into all the world [kosmos again!] and preach the good news to all creation..." (16:15). Perhaps there are others out there who need to hear the universal truth that their Creator loves them, and sacrificed himself so that they could know him.

Astronaut Gene Cernan, the last human being to walk on the moon, said these words as he stepped into the lunar module that would carry him back to earth for the last time: "We leave as we came, and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." This morning I tell you that God is willing...so let's go.

So...is there a cash award?

2005-01-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

ABC News has named bloggers among their People of the Year! Congrats to all my blogging friends around the world. Do you think we can parlay our new found influence into something worthwhile? An invitation to the Oscars, maybe? By the way, where do I go to pick up my entourage* and my bling bling?

*Please, no Apple Mac Unit jokes in the comments.

See Neotheolog relocate.

2004-12-14T13:01:00.000-08:00

Relocate, Neotheologue, relocate!

See Neo, Mrs. Neo, and the little Neos ride an airplane.

See them ride and ride and ride.

See them ride some more.

Oh no! One of the little Neos is sick! Hear him scream?

The Neotheolog family is back in America! Hooray!

See them get in their new van? It is red. It is pretty.

See Neo drive the van. Neo drives fast!

Oh no! The policeman tells Neo he is driving too fast.

The policeman tells Neo this isn't the Autobahn.

Texas policemen are very strict.

Lucky Neo. He gets to take a "defensive driving class."

Neo drives much slower now. It takes a long time to get from Pennsylvania to Phoenix driving 60 MPH.

See the Neotheologs eat Thanksgiving dinner with their family.

Goodness, Neo eats a lot! Neo looks like the Michelin Man!

Oh no! Another little Neotheolog is sick! See him barf? Barf, little Neo, barf!

Now Neo is sick too. Neo looks green. Is it hard to drive when you are green? Yes, very hard.

Now the Neotheologs are back in Texas. See their new house?

It is a townhouse. Neo will not have to mow the lawn! Hooray!

Oh no! ANOTHER little Neo is sick! Hear him cough? He sounds like a dog!

Soon the Neothelogs will have DSL in their new house. Then Neo will blog.

See Neo blog. Blog, Neo, blog!

Thanks to all of those who have been checking NeoTheo(b)log daily! Life is beginning to return to normal for us, and blogging should commence again within a few days. Much Christmas grace and peace to all of you!

Hard testing? Hardly.

2004-11-16T20:47:00.000-08:00

"Your test of faith is more precious to you than gold."

That's what the marquee said, right under the words "Bible Community Church" on the sign across the street from the Conoco station in the unincorporated village of Roberts Switch, Tennessee. I laughed cynically as I read the words again. "I know there's no such thing as coincidence, Father," I prayed through clenched teeth and rising blood pressure, "but couldn't you be a little more subtle?"

Ever tried to make a 1600 mile car trip with four children under six years old? Then you know the reason for my cynicism. The Conoco station in Roberts Switch, Tennessee was our sixth potty stop of the day. We were beginning to suspect that our three-year-old daughter had either a bladder infection or a terminally terrible timing. The two babies were crying tag-team style, giving each other short rest breaks in order to further their attempt at the North American long-distance crying record. My five year old was the gem of the bunch; all he wanted was to hear the same Disney song over and over again...and over and over and over and over and over...

So you can imagine why I felt a little bitter when I read Community Bible Church's cute little marquee quip. "Very nice, God. That's just great. If that was meant to make me feel better or restore a little of my patience, you're going to have to try harder." You could hear my teeth grinding. Even over "Hakuna Matata" and tag-team screaming.

The afternoon only got worse from there. I'll spare you the gruesome details. Suffice it to say that there was absolutely no danger of my wife or children mistaking me for Jesus by the time we collapsed into our hotel room tonight. As I review the day, I sincerely regret many of the things I said and did in anger and frustration.

As I sat here reading three days of accumulated email in the blissfully silent darkness of our room, I came across a message from a member of the church we left last week to move back to the U.S. A neighbor of hers, a young Portuguese woman who visited our church with her husband and five-year-old son on several occasions, was in Lisbon for some medical tests, trying to understand some strange symptoms she'd been experiencing. After spending the morning at the hospital, she'd just returned to her hotel room with her husband when she suddenly began hemorrhaging--bleeding from her eyes, nose, and mouth. She slowly slipped into a coma and within a few hours was dead. Apparently she had been suffering from an aggressive cancer for some time without knowing it. Her husband barely had time to say good-bye; her little boy, left back on the island with relatives, never had the chance. Before the shock has time to wear off they'll have to bury her and figure out some way to get along without her for the rest of their lives.

"Please don't lead us into hard testing, Father, and deliver us from the evil one." I pray it almost every day. Sometimes the "testing" I have to endure makes me wonder if God is really listening. But sometimes, when hearing about someone else's trial lifts me out of my reverie of self-pity for a few moments, I realize that I don't have even the faintest notion of what "hard testing" is. Father, help me to value these "little tests" of my faith and endurance. In fact, I hope you'll provide more of them so that when my "hard testing" comes, I'll be able to bear up under it in a way that honors you and ministers to those near to me. And please forgive me for my selfishness today. Amen.

(NeoTheo(b)log will receive less frequent updates than usual for the next week or so while we travel to our new home in Waco, Texas. Thanks for your patience and faithfulness. Our readers are a great blessing to us!)

Holding no keys

2004-11-04T23:03:00.000-08:00

This morning held one of the strangest mixes of emotion I've felt in a long time. As I was making last-minute preparations to leave our home and ministry of five years to return to the U.S., I took the keyring out of my pocket and slowly, one by one, removed all the keys that I no longer need. Church key...church back door key (not sure why I carried that one, the lock only works from the inside)...house key (church owns the parsonage)...garage key...car key (we're leaving our car for the interim pastor to use)...

And then suddenly I realized that, when I was all done, there would be no keys left on my keyring. I know I can't adequately describe for you the feeling that came over me as I came to that realization, but maybe you'll be able to relate to it better if I tell you that it was like being released from prison after a long sentence. (Not that I imagine many regular NeoTheo(b)log readers are ex-cons.) It was a recognition of freedom, to be sure. I felt immediately exhilarated, but in a split second a wave of fear overwhelmed me. So many of the things that have grounded me for the last five years, that have defined me, are no longer mine. I could feel the comfortable context of my life being washed away like sand under my feet...

Of course, my life isn't really founded on our church or my house or my car, but it sure can feel like it is sometimes. Maybe it takes these kinds of life-changing events, times when your life-paradigm shifts so suddenly that you get motion sick or the bottom drops out so fast you experience emotional and spiritual vertigo, to remind you that in reality you've built your house on a rock and that "upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it" and that Jesus has entrusted us with "the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven."

NeoTheo(b)log will be taking a few days off while we relocate. Thank you so much for being a part of this blog and for your prayers for us as we begin this incredible new adventure. See you on the other side!

Welcome Classical Anglican Net News Readers!

2004-10-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

If you've arrived at NeoTheo(b)log via one of our two posts cited today at Classical Anglican Net News' Lambeth Commission site, welcome! Here's some quick links to posts you might find interesting:

Windsor Report: (A most important) foreword, in which I wonder if all the reaction against the touchy-feely tone of the Report is justified and decide is probably isn't.

Windsor Report: Blogospheric reaction, in which I scan the blog world in a more or less random fashion and discover that it looks a lot like the real world--nobody can agree on much of anything.

Gimme that "Old Time (Pagan) Religion", in which I wish I'd coined the term "Episco-pagan" and quote a Roman Catholic liturgy, which would probably leave my Baptist grandmother a little disappointed.

Oh, and if you're interested in the topic of building unity in the broader church, or if you like U2 at all, check out my series of posts that brings the two together: One: An Extended Look at Christian Unity and Disunity.

Once again, welcome! Glad you dropped by!

God On Their Side?

2004-10-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

In a fascinating, if somewhat unbalanced article for AlterNet's Rights and Liberties section entitled "God On Their Side", Jeannette Batz Cooperman, a regular contributor to National Catholic Review, examines the growth of Evangelicalism and the decline of "mainline" Protestantism in the U.S. Driving that shift, at least according to the sociologists and historians Cooperman interviewed:

"Different birth rates account for 70 percent of that growth: Evangelicals have had an extra child per family for about 35 years. The other 30 percent comes from a process few sociologists of religion anticipated. Upwardly mobile Evangelicals used to mark their arrival in the local establishment by joining the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church. No more. Now they stay evangelical and start a power brokers' prayer breakfast."

But question the provocative title implies--what if God really is on the Evangelical side, what if their growth is evidence of God's favor--is the one question she never asks, and in fact can't even seem to imagine might be a valid question to ask. The closest she comes is this tantalizing bit of truth-telling, tacked on at the end of a litany of sociological and political excuses for the decline of mainline Protestantism:

[Mainline] Protestant young people haven't heard much conviction or urgency in their churches; there's been little to engage their emotions or spark their idealism. The formal elegance of the liturgy feels out of step and hollow to them, because so many of its precepts have been thrown into question. Above all, there's no base motive, because nobody's convinced there's a hellfire in which sinners burn, and nobody wants to say that mainline Protestantism is the only way to heaven. "Without a robust sense of sinfulness," observes Michael McClymond, a theologian at St. Louis University, "the appeal for salvation through Jesus Christ is less than compelling."

Hmm. So what you're saying is that abandoning the traditional Christian doctrine of total depravity inevitably leads to the collapse of the church because people who don't need redemption don't need church?

I think I just found the "ministry plan" for the next church I serve...

Gimme that "Old Time (Pagan) Religion"

2004-10-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table . . . The plate of raisin cakes is raised and a woman says, "Mother God, our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven and baked these cakes in your honor in defiance of their brothers and husbands who would not see your feminine face.

Sound like an ancient Canaanite fertility liturgy? Not so much. It's actually a "Women's Eucharist" being promoted by the Episcopal Church USA's Office of Women's Ministries. It's written by Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk, rector of St. Francis-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Malvern, Pennsylvania, who apparently moonlights* as the druid priestess "Glispa" and who, along with her husband, ordained Episcopal priest and druid priest Bill Melnyk ("Oakwyse"), also authored a wiccan lunar ritual (warning: extremely sexually graphic) for their druidic clan, Tuatha de Brighid.

Since the Christianity Today Weblog broke the story yesterday, the official ECUSA website where it was (in their words) a "worship resource" "available to be downloaded and used by all" has been taken down, but the Office of Women's Ministries' formal response leaves something to be desired:

The material questioned in Olsen's article, "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" was sent to us in good faith in response to our recent call for resources. We regret we did not realize that the material was copyright protected. Proper notifications were not included by mistake and so the page has been withdrawn from our website.

In other words, the problem with the "Women's Eucharist" isn't that it encourages worship of an ancient Canaanite diety expressly condemned in Scripture, then blasphemes the body and blood of Christ by calling that idolatry a "eucharist." The problem is that the Office of Women's Ministries didn't properly document their sources. Shame on them.

CT Weblog's continuing coverage includes this truth-telling by CT blogger Ted Olsen:

We're no longer talking about whether the Episcopal Church is truly Anglican. We're talking about whether it is Christian. It is time to choose a cup . . . The brazen defiance of God that has come to light in the past few days should bring all Christians to their knees. One simply cannot be shocked that ordained priests can sacrifice to deities specifically condemned in Scripture without wondering what idols literal and figurative we're worshiping in our own lives. This is a time for repentance and to plead for deliverance from evil. The last thing is it time for is spiritual pride. (Linking mine.)

Amen, Ted. Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.**

*Ha! I made a funny! "Moonlights...druid priestess..." Get it? Ah, nevermind...
**Yes, I know I'm linking to a Roman Catholic liturgy. It's called irony. Go read the thing.

Sermon Sound-bite: The Hammer and the House

2004-10-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

From "Three Ways to Simplify Your Life: Matthew 7:7-14," preached Sunday, October 24, 2004.

"Praise Him, sun and moon!"

2004-10-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

lunareclipse, originally uploaded by neotheolog.

Come, see a Real Live Preacher...interviewed at Christianity Today

2004-10-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Christianity Today posted an interview with Gordon Atkinson, "The Blogosphere's Favorite Real Live Preacher," yesterday to coincide with the release of his book, RealLivePreacher.com. The interview has a "homey" feel to it, which is surprising given that it was conducted by IM, but not so surprising if you've ever read RLP's blog. That "homey" feel permeates Real Live Preacher; perhaps that's why it became such a success in terms both commercial and spiritual.

Blogging for Atkinson started as a place to let the "real person," the one on the inside that we rarely reveal to the people in what we ironically call the "real world," come out and play. What fascinated me about the interview is how the "real person" didn't stay holed up in the blogosphere for long; he began to influence Gordon in non-virtual ways, changing the way he experiences at church life in particular, but presumably other of life's experiences as well. The "real person" started taking over. From the interview, it sounds like Gordon is happy with that.

I can imagine that I would be, too.

Not that the "real person" inside me is anything great--trust me, he's got more than his share of "issues"--but it sure would be nice to hang up the mask, drop my defenses, and just relax. Perhaps moving to a new town and a new life and ministry will give me an opportunity to do that.

CT also posted a (regrettably short) review of Atkinson's book. The review, by Cindy Crosby, made the following statement that grabbed me by the collar and still hasn't let go: "It's not difficult to see why Atkinson's postings created a virtual community.".

Has she got this right? Can a person's writing actually "create community," virtual or otherwise? Is that what the blogosphere is about?

That idea, along with the transformation that blogging induced in Atkinson, are forcing me to rethink my own blogging from the foundation up. To put it in the terms of the question of the day, "What in the blogosphere am I here for?"

"We're one, but we're not the same..."

2004-10-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

"...we get to carry each other, carry each other."

Here's the next in my series called "One: An Extended Look at Christian Unity and Disunity," built around U2's song "One" from their excellent 1991 album "Achtung Baby." To see previous posts in this series, click here. Am I beating a dead horse here? Preaching to the choir? Overusing clichéd metaphors? Leave me a comment!

The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind--
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they'll be as unified and together as we are--
I in them and you in me.
Then they'll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you've sent me and loved them
In the same way you've loved me.

You know why I think more of us aren't taking Jesus' words in John 17:20-23 (taken above from The Message) at face value? I think it's because secretly, in places we don't like to admit even exist in our hearts, we don't want to be one. Because we think being one means being the same, being like "them." And we don't want to be like them. Oh sure, we like them well enough...but we don't want to be like them. After all, if I wanted to be like them, I would quit being one of us and become one of them, right? Whether "they" are the Baptists, the Lutherans, or the Catholics, whether "they" are the liberals or the fundamentalists or the institutionalists or the emergents, we assume that becoming one with them means becoming like them.

But is that a valid assumption? Certainly God intends for there to be a great deal of commonality in the church--"one Lord, one faith, one baptism"--but what is the Biblical or historical basis for only one liturgy, only one hymnody, only one interpretation of the peripheral doctrines of the faith? Where does God say that he expects us all to be exactly alike in every aspect? Setting aside for a moment the Old Testament example of Israel's internal diversity, a quick look at the "one" passages of the New Testament frequently shows the writers balancing unity with heterogeneity:

There is one body . . . but to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. Ephesians 4:4, 7

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and . . . we each have different gifts, according to the grace given us. Romans 12:4-5, 6

Add to this the example of the early church when it was faced with an expression of the faith that was foreign to its own experience:

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." . . . The apostles and elders, with the whole church . . . sent the following letter [in response]: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things." Acts 15;1, 22, 28-29

In other words, God doesn't expect you to be exactly like us, and so neither do we. In other words, "We're one, but we're not the same."

If being one doesn't mean being completely alike, then what does it mean? If unity doesn't look like the absence of meaningful distinctiveness, then what does it look like? Perhaps, as Bono sings, it means carrying each other.* I think there is powerful Biblical evidence for a unity based in Christ and expressed in cooperation.

Trinitarian theology is rich with this idea. From its deepest, most mysterious roots in Genesis to its more fully formed expressions in the New Testament epistles, the Trinity is presented as the elemental and pre-eminent community, its members sharing one essence yet not identical, all working together at the divine mission of expressing God-love to humankind. In the Trinity there is no competition, only cooperation. In a way that is perhaps beyond our understanding, the Father needs the Son to do the work of dying for people's sins and the Son needs the Spirit to convict the world and empower the church until his return. Their distinctiveness is necessary to accomplish the mission, as is their willingness to cooperate with one another.

And so it may very well be with the church, that temporal expression of the Trinity's distinctiveness and unity, the "eschatological covenant community of love." Our accomplishment of the divine mission hinges not only upon our essential unity, but also on our willingness to live out that unity--and so express it visibly and undeniably to a watching world--in cooperation with one another.

I wonder, though, if in our pride we'll find "carrying each other" like this any more palatable than surrendering our distinctiveness to someone who isn't "like us." Lord, please show us how badly our churches need one another, even (especially?) the ones who aren't like us.

*The photo above is of the statue "He Ain't Heavy Father, He's My Brother" which stands on the grounds of Girls and Boys Town National Headquarters in Nebraska. The statue was inspired by the loving cooperation Boys Town founder Father Edward Flanagan witnessed among many of the orphans in his care, also the inspiration for the song "He Ain't Heavy" (recorded by The Hollies, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John, and Cher, among many others) and the feature films Boys Town with Spencer Tracy and Andy Rooney and more recently The Road Home with Kris Kristofferson and Charles Martin Smith. It seems that our culture finds this kind of loving cooperation strangely compelling...

Windsor Report: Blogospheric Reaction

2004-10-21T09:15:00.001-07:00

Just a few links to other bloggers* reacting to the Lambeth Commission on Communion's Windsor Report, with emphasis on those promising a more in-depth response after absorbing the whole report:

World of Your Making: To Walk Together (several articles)
"[Hans Frei's] idea of a generous orthodoxy, of looking for a larger perspective and seeking common ground, has certainly been helpful to me as I wrestle with the Windsor Report and all the commentary surrounding it."

Waiting in Joyful Hope: The Windsor Report
"The report . . . is highly theological and technical, but it is not bland: it will provoke a lot of reaction, and actually takes a stand on some issues, which is good (and seems to not often be characteristic of the Anglican approach to things)."

Prydain (several articles)
"My reaction to what I have read is one of disappointment. Rather than exercising one of the marks of a true church according to the 'Homilies'--discipline--the Commission has simply laid the groundwork for more discussion."

For All The Saints (several articles)
"While (or ‘whilst’, in keeping with the Windsor Report) the spin from the right is largely measured disappointment . . . the spin from the left seems to be pretty much all concerned happiness and light."

blog.boydston.us: Lambeth Commission
"From everything I've seen so far the glass looks more like it is half-empty than half-full (or maybe even almost completely empty!)."

No Claim to Sainthood: Let the Games Begin
"So much for reconciliation. We'll just have to see what develops."

Newbie Anglican: Disappointed and Disturbed (several articles)
"I really have a hard time seeing how such a lack of clear discipline can work with either children or wayward bishops."

Thinking Anglicans: A History of Debate (several articles)
"In all of this, the one redeeming feature may be that it accepts that there are differences of opinion which are genuinely held by Christian people."

Father Jake Stops the World: The Windsor Report
"We bring the love of Christ to the world by affirming a litmus test as to who is 'worthy' enough to be a full member in our elite little club?"

Captain Yip's Secret Journal: Skimming Windsor (several articles)
"I like [the Report] better and better as time goes by. This is a careful, learned, and gracious work of pastoral theology."

And if after reading through all that you need a dose of something a little lighter, check out cartoonist Dave Walker's explanation of the Windsor Report.
"These 53 bishops have been naughty. They must stand in the corner and not have their tea until they can explain to us why they have been so naughty."

*Found among the most interesting looking of the first 50 or so results of Googling “windsor report reaction blog” (and a few interesting looking secondary links from those results). In other words, this list manages the stunning feat of being both random and subjective at the same time.

Sermon Sound-bite: Love the sinner, hate the sin

2004-10-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

From "Judging without Being Judgmental: Matthew 7:1-6," preached Sunday, October 17, 2004.

Windsor Report: (A most important) foreword

2004-10-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Ted Olson, the Christianity Today Weblog blogger, makes a great deal of journalistic hay over the touchy-feely tone that the Lambeth Commission on Communion adopted for its Windsor Report.

The Episcopal Church was not told to repent for violating the teachings of Scripture, church tradition, and current church law. Instead, it was asked to express "regret" for "breaking the bonds of affection" and for hurting people's feelings. Throughout the document, feelings and sensitivities take precedence over doctrine, holiness, and fidelity.

"The Commission has been made aware of the hurt and alienation felt by individual Anglicans, parishes, and dioceses" as a result of the Robinson consecration and New Westminster ceremonies. The recommendations are made "mindful of the hurt and offense that have resulted from recent events." But orthodox Anglicans have repeatedly insisted that "hurt and alienation" have nothing to do with this. The question is whether the Episcopal Church is apostate, not whether it's unkind.

But I think Mr. Olson is missing the point. In his Foreword to the Windsor Report, the Most Reverend Dr. Robin Eames, chairman of the Lambeth Commission, reminds readers that the mandate given the Commission by the Archbishop of Canterbury has much more to do with communion than it does doctrine, much more to do with maintaining the "bonds of affection" (i.e. kindness) than with ferreting out apostasy.

The mandate spoke of the problems being experienced as a consequence of [recent] developments and the need to seek a way forward which would encourage communion . . . It did not demand judgment by the Commission on sexuality issues. Rather it requested consideration of ways in which communion and understanding could be enhanced where serious differences threatened the life of a diverse worldwide Church. In short, how does the Anglican Communion address relationships between its component parts in a true spirit of communion (5, emphasis mine)?

In other words, the Commission's job wasn't to assign blame, but to recommend a process by which all parties could begin the long work of reconciliation. "This Report is not a judgment," Dr. Eames writes, "It is part of a process. It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation."

Eight years of marriage counseling have taught me this: When people have hurt each other, you can't do anything else constructive until you deal with the hurt. You can dissect every argument, analyze each painful blow, objectively assign responsibility to one person or the other, and offer creative solutions all you want, but until you've dealt with the hurt, it won't do any good. Because they're not listening. They can't listen, and they won't listen, until they've dealt with their hurt and all the emotions that go with it. The "way forward" the Lambeth Commission charts in their Report wisely recognizes this. "If realistic and visionary ways cannot be agreed to meet the levels of disagreement at present or to reach consensus on structures for encouraging greater understanding and communion in the future it is doubtful if the Anglican Communion can continue in its present form" (6).

Dr. Eames concludes his Foreword with an expression of the Commission's prayer for their Report. "The Lambeth Commission . . . offers this Report in the prayerful hope that it will encourage the enhanced levels of understanding which are essential for the future of the Anglican Communion" (6-7). In other words, they are praying that their work will help all sides to begin getting over their hurt so that they can draw close to one another again and begin to work through their differences in a spirit of kindness and love. That's what I'm praying too.

Windsor Report: You didn't think I'd ignore this, did you?

2004-10-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

The Lambeth Commission of the Anglican Communion published today its official report, outlining the findings of its investigation into the Episcopal Church USA's ordination of an openly homosexual bishop and a Canadian diocese's authorization of same-sex union ceremonies. I just downloaded the report (the meat of which is about 45 pages long) and I hope to work my way through it before the end of the week. Aside from the obvious implications for the Anglican Communion and the church as a whole, it's probably the biggest Church Unity story of the year, in spite of the fact that it's essentially intra-denominational. I'll blog my thoughts, but I hope you'll forgive me for starting tomorrow; I had a meeting with our church's Budget Team tonight, and as I often do after meetings of the Budget Team, I have a splitting headache.

As usual, Christianity Today's Weblog has a great roundup of reactions in both the secular press and from Anglican leaders worldwide, as well as some insightful commentary from the Evangelical standpoint.

Sermon Sound-bite: Fear and Faith

2004-10-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

From "Five Reasons Not to Worry: Matthew 6:25-34," preached Sunday, October 10, 2004.

"It's too late tonight..."

2004-10-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

"...to drag the past out into the light."

This is the latest in a series of posts entitled "One: An Extended Look at Christian Unity and Disunity," built around U2's song "One" from their excellent 1991 (God, has it really been that long?) album "Achtung Baby." To see previous posts in this series, click here.

Judging from the comments posted to my most recent entries in this series, some of you are getting a little tired of what looks like little more than complaining about the disunity of today's church. Nathan over at Fighting the Little Fights gives voice to the frustration: "All the theorizing and pondering in the world are utterly useless unless they lead us towards a workable solution." And of course he's right. So what's the solution?*

At first glance it would seem that the history of the people of God offers little in terms of practical advice on building unity. After all, our forerunners in the faith are the ones responsible for the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation**. But maybe we're just not looking back far enough into the history of God's people.

The Old Testament history of Israel is a picture of unified diversity. The nation was made up of twelve tribes, each one distinct from the others (Jacob's blessings on his sons and grandsons in Genesis 49:1-28 lays the groundwork for this). But despite their clear distinctiveness, they were still united; in fact, they were more than that, they were one in the eyes of God and the world. Their marching order as they crossed the desert (Numbers 10:11-28) and the arrangement of their camp around the Tabernacle (Numbers 2:1-31) were visible, daily reminders of this oneness. They shared one purpose and when they came together under the God's leadership, nothing could stop them. There is redemption at work here, the first signs of the redemption of the awesome power of united humanity, first seen at Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 ("If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing will be impossible for them").

Disunity occured in Israel when individuals or tribes began to compete against one another (Absolom and Jeroboam are classic examples) or when they united together to reject God's leadership (as they did on the Plains of Moab). Jesus summarizes the principle behind their fragmentation when he says, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand" (Matthew 12:25). If Israel's history can teach the postmodern church anything, it's that our problem isn't being "divided," i.e. the things that make us distinct from one another. Our problem is that we are divided "against ourselves." We get into this unfortunate condition every time we place a higher value on the things that make us distinct than on the things that make us one, or when we unite together to rebel against God's leadership. We would do well to heed Paul's warning to the beseiged church in Galatia: "If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other" (Galatians 5:15).

Bottom line sound bite for your church marquee: Competition among Christ-followers or churches is always destructive! If we're going to (re)build true, visible unity in the twenty-first century church, we need to find a way to honor distinctiveness without promoting division.

*I feel compelled to point out here that I'm not really going to answer that question in this post or at any time in the near future for that matter. There are two reasons. First, the problem of the church's disunity isn't just "something I'm blogging about." It is shaping up to be a life calling, something I think God wants me to devote myself to for the long haul. I think it was Spurgeon who said something like, "If someone told me I had five years to live, I'd spend the first four preparing." I think there's some real wisdom there. And that leads me to the second reason why I won't be offering any substantive answers to the disunity problem any time soon: I can't. If you've been following this series of posts, you may have noticed that each one starts with at the global-historical level and ends with something very individual and personal. God is dealing with me personally right now about how my own sins have contributed to our disunity. Maybe when he's done with that he'll have produced an agent who can offer some answers to the rest of the church.

**Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to say that the Protestant Reformation was a bad thing from an holistic perspective. But when you view it strictly in terms of church unity, it's hard to see the "reforming program" as a success. It makes me wonder if there wasn't a better way...

"People trust this thing..."

2004-10-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

I found "Inside the Soul of the Web" from Wired 11.05 so profoundly compelling that it deserved more than just a passing reference over at the Blog-within-the-Blog. The author surveyed 24 hours worth of the questions people ask Google, and the results come out looking like a global prayer list for the internet age. Perhaps that's just my subjectivity speaking, but Greg Rae, a Google engineer who analyzes the query logs, speaks of the search engine in almost divine terms: "I know people trust in this thing. They believe it will have the answer. And I don't want it to fail them."

(In case eavesdropping on the world's questions depresses you, Gary Zamchick has a lighter look at Google's aspirations toward divinity.)

"Lift high the cross of Christ..."

2004-10-05T05:07:00.000-07:00

lift_high, originally uploaded by neotheolog.

Your opinion: The Gospel Power

2004-10-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Here's this week's readers' poll. In your opinion, who is doing more to advance the Gospel this week: Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch or Irish rocker Bono? (It probably has something to do with how you define "Gospel...")

Leave your answer in the comments...but here's the caveat: Along with your opinion, you also have to state your bias. In other words, what is preventing you from forming a totally objective opinion on the subject?

"I laughed, I cried, it moved me..."

2004-09-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

The moving company came today and picked up all of our household goods, so I guess that makes it official: After five years serving God on our tiny island in the middle of nowhere, your faithful NeoTheolog (that's me), Mrs. Theolog, and all the little Theologs are moving. In early November we'll leave our home and ministry here and relocate to Waco, Texas, where I'll become a full-time student (heavenly bliss!) at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. And yes, we'd love your prayers! (If you know any churches in that area that could use a slightly worn but still useful pastor, that would be nice too!)

It's been a long journey--12 months from the time we first considered a move like this until today. I've blogged a little bit of it (my exposure to Garry Friesen's Decision Making and the Will of God, about which I blogged extensively, was the kick-off) and over the next few weeks I'll be taking a stroll down memory lane, describing in a little more detail how we came to this decision.

For those anxiously awaiting my further thoughts on the unity of the church and how they tie in with U2's song "One" (Hi, Mom!) I'll be posting those in the week ahead too. Without one's library, office supplies, and other various and sundry toys, what's to do but blog?

Oh, and if any of my readers are anywhere near Waco, drop me an email. Maybe we'll be neighbors!

Ecumenism in the news

2004-09-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

Two big-media stories with an ecumenical slant today that call for more than just a passing link. First, check out Customized Communion Throws A Wedge Into Efforts to Unify at The Washington Post (feel free to use username "neotheologue[at]godsfamily[dot]com" and password "neotheologue"). Though it's largely a primer on different Christian Communion practices, and in fact seems to offer more evidence of a convergence among Christians than a widening gulf, one comment in particular pointed out what a "wedge issue" Communion doctrine really is. It came from Monsignor James P. Moroney, executive director of office of liturgy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in the context of Senator John Kerry (a Roman Catholic) participating in Communion at an AME church in Boston recently. Here's the quote from the Post:

Moroney . . . said the church generally does not condone the participation of Catholics in non-Catholic Communion, but he said it's a matter of degree of theological difference and a decision to be made by the local bishop.

"If a Catholic goes to an Orthodox Church and receives Holy Communion, are we concerned with that? No," Moroney said. "If he went to a Baptist church, that would be considered inappropriate."

In the wise words of Chancellor Gorkon, "I see we have a long way to go." (Don't forget to check out the handy chart on Christian Communion beliefs and practices in the sidebar, or here.)

The second story, U.N. Envoy Seeks to Enlist the Clergy to Ease Conflicts, comes from the New York Times (again, use username "neotheologue" and password "neotheologue" to access if you like). It's an interview with U.N. Ambassador and former senator John Danforth. Ambassador Danforth is also an Episcopal minister; you may remember him as the officiant at President Reagan's funeral service. Speaking about what he sees as a troubling silence from religious leaders in the face of terrorism, he says, "What is needed is a much stronger voice from the faith community, some kind of place or forum for mediating religious conflict and involving the participation of people of faith." Danforth believes that the U.N. is best equipped to make such an effort happen. What kind of concerns should this forum address? Danforth answers with questions: "What is the relation between government and religion, to what extent is government an arm of religion and, in those countries where it is, to what extent do they provide for the rights of religious minorities?"

Definitely an interesting idea, and one that deserves serious study, because as the Ambassador puts it, "A lot of people think religion is the answer. But right now, religion is the problem." Neotheolog doesn't know if that's true or not, but it seems obvious that the statement seems to capture the opinion of much of the world today regarding religion and, increasingly, people of faith. If such an effort is to be undertaken, it ought to be Christ followers who initiate it. It will be to our eternal shame if we don't.

Gmail loves NeoTheolog

2004-09-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am apparently such a good and faithful Gmail user that the good folks at Google have decided to offer me six, count 'em, SIX more invitations to Gmail! Anyone who would like one, comment to this post or send me an email.

(In case you're curious or need some user testimony before you sign up with another webmail service, NeoTheolog plans to get rid of all his other email services and convert to Gmail only by November 1. It's that good.)

"You act like you never had love..."

2004-09-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

"...and you want me to go without."

(This is the latest in a series of posts called, "One: An Extended Look at Christian Unity and Disunity." To see previous posts in this series, click here.)

"This is how we know what love is," says John, the "Apostle of love," in 1 John 3:16, "Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." (Sounds like something out of the 70's doesn't it? "John, the Apostle of Luuuuuv.") But if you asked the average person how they learned what love is, I think you'd hear something along these lines:

"My parents were very affectionate. I always felt loved in our home."

"I didn't know what love was until I met my wife. The first time we kissed...fireworks! And it's the same today. That's true love."

"I didn't know what love really was unti I had kids. They're always happy to see me, even when nobody else is! That's what love is."

"My friends have a way of always making me feel good about myself. I know what love is because of that.

But the idea John is trying to communicate is that Jesus taught humanity what love is. And it wasn't through his preaching or his miracles, his powerful words or powerful acts. Nor was it through his relationships with the people around him, like his mother or his disciples or the seekers he met along the dusty roads of ancient Palestine. It wasn't through his birth, his life, or his resurrection. None of that provided the textbook definition of love.

It was through his death.

Jesus taught us what love is by dying for us. As my mentor and friend Dr. Bob Marsh once said, "The only place we can go in this universe and empirically know God's love is Calvary and the cross." In a perfect world, when you look up "love" in the dictionary, you see a picture of Jesus on the cross next to these words: "That expression of care and concern exemplified by Jesus' self-sacrifice for the sinful world."

Of course, that's not the definition of love our society teaches us. Love, the pop culture prophets and pundits tell us, is something you feel. When you feel it, you do it, and when you don't feel it, you don't. For example, when I feel love for my wife, I act in loving ways toward her: I buy her gifts, I offer her my help, I share a home and a life with her. When I cease to feel love for her, I stop acting in loving ways: I become distant, I treat her coldly, I divorce her and go looking for somebody else that I can feel like I love. The world has "dumbed down" love to the same level as the animal instincts that drive humans to rut like dogs when not controlled by something higher than instinct, like societal norms, religious conviction, or spiritual transformation.

Jesus teaches by his example that love is more than a feeling, it is a commitment. I act lovingly regardless of how I feel, because Jesus acted lovingly toward me and as an expression of Jesus' love for those around me. "This is how we know what love is," John says, "Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."

What does all this have to do with the unity of the Church that Jesus willed when he prayed, "May they be brought to complete unity?" Ask yourself this: Which definition of love is your church or denomination teaching by the way it interacts with the rest of the churches and denominations in the world? By our level of fellowship and cooperation with other groups of Christ followers, are we telling the world that love is something that you feel, some vague sense of affection or fraternity that is largely confined to words, or something that you do? Are we "laying down our lives" for the rest of the church, in spite of the issues that separate us, or are we like the bad example John offers:

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Amen, John. Let it be.

Say hello to the newest Theolog!

2004-08-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why I've not posted any new content this week, here's you're answer. Meet Herald Miles, or Harry for short. He finally showed up on Saturday morning, weighing in at a whopping (though normal for the boys in this family) 9 pounds 11 ounces and just a hair or two over 20 inches long. He and his mama are doing great and enjoying their stay in the hospital, while Dad is about to go crazy with the other three little theologs here at NeoTheolog World Headquarters. Women, if you ever get the feeling that your husbands don't appreciate all you do, just have them try to get the kids ready for church some Sunday morning by themselves!

I've got a draft post in the queue that represents the next installment in my recent series on Church unity...look for it Tuesday!

C.S. Lewis on George MacDonald

2004-08-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

I will attempt no historical or theological classification of [George] Macdonald's thought, partly because I have not the learning to do so, still more because I am no great friend to such pigeon-holing. One very effective way of silencing the voice of conscience is to impound in an Ism the teacher through whom it speaks; the trumpet no longer seriously disturbs our rest when we have murmured '..Thomist', 'Barthian', or 'Existentialist'. And in Macdonald it is, always the voice of conscience that speaks. He addresses the will: the demand for obedience, for "something to be neither more nor less nor other than done" is incessant. Yet in that very voice of conscience every other faculty somehow speaks as well -- intellect and imagination and humour and fancy and all the affections; and no man in modern times was perhaps more aware of the distinction between Law and Gospel, the inevitable failure of mere morality.

...C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), preface to George Macdonald, an Anthology, courtesy Christian Quotation of the Day

You know, I don't think I'm any great friend to that kind of theological pigeon-holing either.

Found: Two excellent blogs

2004-08-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

Nathan at Fighting the Little Fights recently took a spin around the dance floor with my belle du jour, church unity. You can read his thoughts on the topic here, but better yet, put him on your BlogRoll and check him out regularly.

And while you're at it, BlogRoll Baraita too. Be warned, though: Naomi's not even close to superficial, so don't go over there unless you've got some serious time to spend reading and thinking. Here recent post on liturgical development, The Holy One, is exemplary of her level of interaction with "the friction of the day."*

*Anyone who can guess the song that quote's from without the aid of Google wins 10 NeoTheoBucks to spend at the NeoTheo(b)log store! Rod, you're not allowed to play.

"Did I disappoint you...

2004-08-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

...or leave a bad taste in your mouth?"

The latest in an extended rant on church unity, playing off the lyrics of U2's song "One." Links to previous posts can be found at the end of this one.

This summer I'm preaching through the Sermon on the Mount in our church. Last Sunday found us doing some "corporate thinking" about this familiar passage:

You're familiar with the command to the ancients, "Do not murder." I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother "idiot!" and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell "stupid!" at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.

This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immdeiately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

Or say you're out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don't lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you're likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won't get out without a stiff fine (Matthew 5:21-26, The Message.)

How many times do you suppose that text was read last Sunday? How many Sunday School teachers and small group leaders taught from it? How many preachers crafted sermons around it? How many worship leaders added a reading of it to their worship sets? How many officiants read it as part of the liturgy? Statistically speaking, thousands of Christian leaders must have shared those ancient words to hundreds of thousands of Christians and seekers last Sunday alone. Thousands of us, wearing the prophet's mantle, speaking with the voice of authority, teaching the Church to seek reconciliation and prioritize relational harmony.

I'm almost sickened by the hypocrisy of it all.

How can we preach against slander when so many of us regularly talk down other churches, denominations, and expressions of the Faith? How can we preach against ungodly anger when we've allowed animosity to grow between one branch of our denomination and another? How can we teach them that reconciliation is their highest religious duty when, in spite of the fragmented state of Christendom, it's "business as usual" in most of our churches? How can we counsel them not to delay in making things right with their adversaries when we've allowed the Church to remain shattered for centuries? How can we convince them of their responsibility to make things right with those who've wronged them when we don't take seriously our own responsibility to work for relational harmony within Christ's Church?

Lord, when you find me standing in the pulpit telling Your people, "Do as I say, not as I do," please have mercy. I know how much you hate hypocrisy.

Click below for the previous posts in this series:

"Is it getting better..."
"Will it make it easier on you..."
"You say 'One love, one life...'"
"One love, we get to share it..."

Is blogging helping the mission or hurting it?

2004-08-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Si Johnston has an interesting discussion going on over at his blog about the role blogging plays in the carrying out of the Great Commission. Do all these words we write help or hurt? Do they empower us to accomplish the mission or distract us from it? Here's the crux of my response:

In his contribution to the book The Futures of Evangelicalism, an intriguing essay called "Theology and the Futures," Alister McGrath considers why "a large section of the evangelical movement has not seen sustained theological engagement as a pressing priority" (21). He then describes three benefits of the academic study of theology: it enhances our appreciation of the depth of our faith; it engages our emotions responsibly; and it enables us to behave in ways that reflect a deepened personal appropriation of the gospel (29).

I'd argue that faith-blogging serves the same purposes. So the key isn't less thinking and more working, or less working and more thinking, but a healthy balance between the "inner work" of thinking through our theology in the context of our community and the "outer work" of putting our theology into practice both within the community and without.

Go and add your thoughts at Si's place!