95 'wiki' theses for Reform?

Ok guys, here we go with another discussion thread. It seems to me that we have come to agreement, that while holding to the creeds and the whole history of the church, there is a need for ‘wiki’ reformational updating in the Evangelical wing of the church.

I mentioned 5 things I think need a ‘wiki’ updating in the last thread. In this discussion, lets come up with a comprehensive list of things that need reforming in the current U.S. Evangelical church. I’ll start with repeating one area I think that urgently needs to be reformed. Let's look for "change you can believe in." (ok, sorry, just kidding!)

I composed a little ditty for this discussion…

♪♫ 94 theses to post on this thread…
94 theses to post!
Write one down, discuss it all around,
93 theses to post on the blog….♫♪

(click below for musical accompaniment ... these guys remind me of us talking theology in our blog... or of me and John Meadows on our way to the Kansas City Shepherds conference with Frank Dawson in 1975!)

The 'wiki' nature of the church: Why not convert to Catholocism or Orthodoxy?

While there is a bit of a lull in the previous thread, i thought I would post a couple of paragraphs from a great post today by McKnight in jesuscreed. He is answering a letter from someone who is asking him if he admires the historic communsions (RCC and EO) why he does not go all the way and convert to one of them from evangelicalism. His response is classic ... I recommend that you go do jesuscreed.org and read the entire post ... It is called Why I am not Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

Here is a portion of his response:

"Third, the reason I think this way is seen in how Tradition plays itself out in each Church: for each of these communions the Tradition becomes massively authoritative and, in my view, each of these communions has become un-reformable. They read the Bible through Tradition and I believe in reading the Bible with Tradition. (my emphasis, not McKnight's)

And reformability is central to the “wiki” understanding of how God speaks: God spoke in the Bible in ongoingly fresh ways; that reveals the importance of returning to the roots in order to gain fire for the present. Return for reformation is the very essence of my “wiki” understanding of the Bible and of how God speaks.

I believe both the RCC and the EO, even with routine observations to the contrary by its adherents, are un-reformable.

I value, and value with profound respect, the great traditions of the Church, including Nicea and Chalcedon and Wittenberg and other moments as well. I check interpretation against these; but that does not mean I don’t think fresh light emerges or that something could be improved or modified (COMMENT: thats what I'm talking about! Let's have that conversation...)

Fifth, what this means — if you are still with me — is that I believe in ongoing discernment of what the Spirit is saying to the Church, and I believe this discernment is a function of church leaders and churches in communion with one another. Discernment for the day is different than infallible teaching for all time. Therein lies a major difference." (COMMENT: this 'discernment' is what I have been calling for along the lines of the Sons of Issachar...but there is a lot of pushback)

How do we define the ‘kingdom of God’?

Scot McKnight points out the need for a clear definition in his article about Brian McLaren and the ‘emergent’ gospel in Christianity Today.

McLaren Emerging

[CHRISTIANITY TODAY] “Kingdom and Church Kingdom talk has become trendy and fashionable among emergents, and God be thanked that they are one group among many that are forcing us to reexamine what we think about Jesus' kingdom vision. But the lack of a thorough definition of kingdom is a major concern. On my blog, I spent several months slogging through what the Gospels say about the kingdom, text by text. I have discovered two points that cannot be denied: There is no kingdom without faith and attachment to Jesus Christ, and there is no kingdom without attachment to Jesus' followers. In other words, Jesus' kingdom vision is not that far from Paul's church vision, yet there is little ecclesiology in either Secret Message or Everything Must Change.

So my second question for McLaren is this: What is the relationship of kingdom to church? Can his emergent view of the kingdom lead to the New Testament picture of the church?”

[joseph] Here are two of my own favorite scriptures regarding the KoG:

Luke: 17:22 - "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

Romans 14:17 - "For the kingdom of God is … righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,"

I define the KoG as “The heavenly father’s loving leadership in our lives through the authority of Jesus and the daily guidance of the H.S. “ The kingdom becomes manifest in our lives through our moment-by-moment inner surrender to his life and initiative which inevitably result in inner righteousness, peace and joy which exercise a gravitational pull that changes the external world around us."

So .. .how do you define ‘the kingdom of God’?

Barn-builders or kingdom movements?

The following is a compressed version of some of Steve Humble's thoughts; any misrepresentations are due to Brian's editing!

The primary purpose of God has always been to have a people on earth who recognize him as king over their own lives, over all men, and over all things. This people of God are to be formed in God’s character and to live on earth the way God lives in heaven; that is they are to represent (re-present) their king and manifest his kingdom on earth.

After the Fall, God began to build this people when he called Abraham and made covenant with him and his descendants. God’s people, the children of Abraham, were called to be the blessing of God and his reign for all the nations. However, once God had dealt with Israel’s propensity to serve the gods of other peoples, most of Israel turned the focus inward, believing that they were the center and epitome of God’s interest.

But God’s purpose, unveiled in Christ, was to have a people—the followers of Jesus consisting of both Jews and Gentiles—who would represent God throughout the whole earth, a kingdom people dispersed into all nations, manifesting God’s kingdom in their individual lives and in their community with one another. This call to be communities of the king and his kingdom is the substance of the new covenant.

The people of the kingdom are to follow the pattern of life modeled by their King; that is, we are to lay down our lives individually and corporately for the life of the world (John 6). We, the sons of the kingdom, are seed. Seed does not exist to be stored in barns, at least beyond the short run. Some seed goes through death and resurrection like the First Seed and thus the seed is multiplied. Other seed serves as food, giving life to other creatures. The issue is not to build big barns but to sow out the seed.

Like Israel, “churches” can become ends in themselves, whether on the local or the denominational level, often times using their resources to build bigger and bigger barns. The “churches” tend to be self-focused to a great extent, rather than to offer themselves up (individually and corporate) as living sacrifices of worship. A kingdom movement is focused on giving life. A “church” movement tends to be a consumer of life.

Manifesto II

Continuing our conversation on "An Evangelical Manifesto" (www.evangelicalmanifesto.com), here's the next section (from the Executive Summary of the full Manifesto):

Third, we are concerned that a generation of culture warring, reinforced by understandable reactions to religious extremism around the world, has created a powerful backlash against all religion in public life among many educated people. If this hardens into something like the European animosity toward religion in public life, the result would be disastrous for the American republic and would severely constrict liberty for people of all faiths. The striking intolerance shown by the new atheists is a warning sign. We call on all citizens of goodwill and believers of all faiths and none to join us in working for a civil public square and the restoration of a tough-minded civility that is in the interests of all.

Fourth, we are concerned that globalization and the emerging global public square have no matching vision of how to live with our deepest differences on the global stage. In the Internet era, everyone can listen to what we say even when we are not speaking to everyone. Global communication magnifies the challenges of living with our deepest differences.

As the global public square emerges, we warn of two equal and opposite errors: coercive secularism and religious extremism. We also repudiate the two other positions. First, those who believe their way is the only way and the way for everyone, and are therefore prepared to coerce them. This position leads inevitably to conflict. Second, those who believe that different values are relative to different cultures, and who therefore refuse to allow anyone to judge anyone else or any other culture. This position sounds tolerant at first, but it leads directly to the ills of complacency. In a world of such evils as genocide, slavery, female oppression, and assaults on the unborn, there are rights that must be defended, evils that must be resisted, and interventions into the affairs of others that are morally justified.

Discussing "An Evangelical Manifesto"

The following is excerpted from the "Executive Summary" of An Evangelical Manifesto (www.evangelicalmanifesto.com). I encourage you to read the whole document, if you can. After first staking out a theological understanding of the term "evangelical" ( a definition I found sound and unremarkable), the document goes on to say:

"Second, we wish to reposition ourselves in public life. To be Evangelical is to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Fundamentalism was world-denying and politically disengaged at its outset, but Evangelicals have made a distinguished contribution to politics—attested by causes such the abolition of slavery and woman’s suffrage, and by names such as John Jay, John Witherspoon, Frances Willard, and Sojourner Truth in America and William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury in England. Today, however, enormous confusion surrounds Evangelicals in public life and we wish to clarify our stand through the following assertions:

"First, we repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen. One error is to privatize faith, applying it to the personal and spiritual realm only. Such dualism falsely divorces the spiritual from the secular and causes faith to lose its integrity. The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, Christians become the “useful idiots” for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology. Christian beliefs become the weapons of political factions.
Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, economic system, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, or nationality. The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness.
"Second, we repudiate the two extremes that define the present culture wars in the United States. On one side, we repudiate the partisans of a sacred public square, those who would continue to give one religion a preferred place in public life. In a diverse society, it will always be unjust and unworkable to privilege one religion. We are committed to religious liberty for people of all faiths. We are firmly opposed to theocracy. And we have no desire to coerce anyone or to impose beliefs and behavior on anyone. We believe in persuasion.
On the other side, we repudiate the partisans of a naked public square, those who would make all religious expression inviolably private and keep the public square inviolably secular. This position is even less just and workable because it excludes the overwhelming majority of citizens, who are still profoundly religious. Nothing is more illiberal than to invite people into the public square but insist that they be stripped of the faith that makes them who they are.
"We are committed to a civil public square – a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths as well. Every right we assert for ourselves as Christians is a right we defend for all others. "

Romans and Revelation

Joseph provides a quote from NT Wright's book, "Surprised by Hope":

"Maybe what we are faced with in our own day is a similar challenge: to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it, but on the question of how God is going to rescue the world through human beings ... if we could reread Romans and Revelation...in the light of this reframing... I think we would find much food for thought" (p. 185).

Let's accept the invitation/challenge: what parts of Paul's letter to the Romans, or John's Revelation, would you cite to support or challenge Wright's contention? Those who are reading "Surprised by Hope" should feel free to add material from that book to this discussion.

One favor/request: can we try to point to specific sections in Romans, Revelation, other NT documents, or Wright's book in making our comments?

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society - intro.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Cambridge and Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

Here is a passage on page 9 that adjusted some of my own thinking:


“In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, so often quoted in the interests of religious agnosticism, the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of the truth. The story is constantly told to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions and philosophies.”

I move the rest of this post, Newbigin's bio and some introductory comments over to my blog http://c-far.blogspot.com/ for the sake of brevity. You can go there if you want to read the whole thing and come back here for comments.

ok -- my new copy of McLaren just arrived as I was writing this ...I'll hit it this week.

Everything Must Change II, Chapter and Verse

We're continuing our look at Brian McLaren's book Everything Must Change. In order to focus the discussion just a bit, let's try this: please cite a specific section that either (a) says something you strongly agree with, (b) says something you strongly disagree with, or (c) says something that raised some questions (e.g., "I really didn't get this--can someone help me understand it?" or "Hmmm... I hadn't thought of it like that before... now I'm wondering if... ?") One passage could serve for all three kinds of responses.

Everything Must Change I

We're starting a book discussion on Brian McLaren's book Everything Must Change. We'll take it in chunks: after "Everything Must Change I, we'll have EMC II, EMC III, etc. If you're reading the book, skip the next section of this post and go directly to Comments. The following will attempt to summarize the first two sections (roughly the first 70 or so pages) for those who haven't been reading.

McLaren begins with the two questions that have preoccupied him for years, What are the world's biggest problems? and What does Jesus have to say about them? His main contention is that, while the Gospel of Jesus has in fact has a lot to say about these matters, the Western Church has largely proven to be a failed religion in responding to the world's present distress (e.g., environmental degradation, hunger, violence, slavery, addiction, etc).
In the second part, he develops the metaphor of a Suicide Machine to describe the impact of modern Western civilization on the Creation and the human community. All societies have legitimate needs for prosperity, security and equity, and all have a "framing story" that meshes these three areas of need into a coherent whole. (One example would be the way in which the framing story of the pax Romana justified the Empire's manner of providing prosperity, security and equity.) He contends that our current societal "machine" (using the term metaphorically) has become suicidal in the way it attempts to resource prosperity, security and equity in a manner that ravages the ecosystem in which it is necessarily embedded. He further argues that the Church has been largely complicit in the development of this suicide machine, either because of a deficient theology that assumes God has no interest in his Creation but only in "saving" people out of it, or because the Church in the West has tended to enjoy and depend upon the blandishments of the modern enterprise (or some combination of the two).
McLaren concludes section two as follows: "... we have raised the possibility that Jesus' message might be seen as an alternative framing story that, if believed, could save the system from suicide. To test this possibility, we will need to consider the possibility that "Jesus" as we have understood him has... been domesticated and made part of the dominant framing story. For Jesus to save the system, we must first, in a sense, save Jesus--by reframing him outside the confines of our dominant and largely unquestioned assumptions" (page 73).