Good Theology

I'm all over the map lately. I'm working on yet another book that's prompted a few thoughts. This one is Clemens Sedmak's book Doing Local Theology, which is a nice little volume talking about how this contextual theology stuff actually works in practice. (Anyone getting sick of this yet? My class is over in only four more weeks... ;) Anyway, Sedmak proposes three criteria for "good theology" that I thought were just fascinating. He writes this:

What is "good theology" according to Jesus? As we have seen, theology is not exclusively an academic endeavor. It is about personal and communal transformation, based on a relationship with God....Jesus emphasizes the practical consequences, the fruits. He emphasizes the spirit with which theology is done. He emphasizes the need to care for the people and to be with the people.

He goes on to discuss his three criteria for good theology:

• Realness - Realness means that the theology is true to life. Reality also serves as a check to our own thinking, to constructing systems that are intellectually coherent but practically unworkable.
• Fidelity to the founder - In his own words, this means being "faithful and honest to the mission and message and person of Jesus".
• Practical consequences - What is the fruit? What are the practices that naturally flow from the theology? Again, in Sedmak's words, "Theology is a way of following Jesus."

True to reality, true to Jesus, and resulting in true praxis - what more can we ask? I think that's as fine a definition of good theology as I've ever read. If what I write and dream and think and live could fit those three criteria, then I think I would count myself successful.

Technorati Tags: books, contextual theology, Sedmak

Culture as Meaning - p.2

One of the challenges of talking about culture is that it's so much a part of who we are that it's functionally invisible to us. We typically only notice a small part of what makes up our culture - much of our context only becomes apparent in contrast with another context, where the differences illustrate our own cultural patterns. A case in point that Hall discusses is the way in which many of us in western cultures approach time. The notion of time is completely contextual - even trying to define "time" is extraordinarily difficult. We can only grapple with its meaning by assigning context to it through the use of units and measurements. But even these are somewhat arbitrary, and the importance we place on those segmentations is a matter of context. Most of us in western cultures are used to dealing with time in a linear fashion. Each moment is perishable and unique - once it is past, it is unrecoverable. Consequently, we value our delineations of time and place a high priority on adhering to schedules and being mindful of days, hours, minutes, etc. But other cultures may not approach time in this same way - time might be viewed as cyclical rather than linear, and units of time as arbitrary. In some cultures, schedules carry far less weight than they do in mine - I have difficulty grappling with the implications of that, but it enlightens me to an aspect of my own culture which otherwise would be invisible.

Now, to get back to the question of meaning and its relation to context, let's consider this from a different angle that Hall also touches on: space. Spatial relationships and orientation is also a contextual concern - the use of space carries particular meanings in some contexts that it does not carry in others. The best way that I can think of to approach this is by way of example. A few years ago, a friend and I were discussing the arrangement of the worship gathering at our church with the pastor and another member of the church. At the time, we were meeting in a high school auditorium. The pastor was expressing concern that the worship team led from the stage, while he preached the sermon from the floor in front of the stage. Here is the significant point - the meaning that he assigned to the spatial location of worship and preaching was that we were demonstrating that we valued worship over scripture. I argued the opposite - by locating himself closer to the people, we were conveying that we valued scripture, and in particular that we valued it as a community.

In both arguments, the meaning that we assigned to the location of the preacher and the worship team was limited by our context. For the pastor, the meaning was a function of an unstated understanding that elevation conveys significance. For me, the understanding was different - proximity conveys significance. Now, bear in mind that neither meaning is inherently correct - both are contextual projections onto spatial arrangements. The question, though, that must be answered is this: which meaning is in play?

The pastor's decision was to move the preaching to the platform and to teach the reasons that we were doing so, to instill an understanding in the community that we were demonstrating significance through elevation. Here's the problem - the community didn't share that underlying assumption. The range of meanings that could be assigned to the spatial orientation was limited by context, and that meaning simply wasn't available. No amount of communicating would change this - instead, what happened was that a disconnect was created between what was said and what was done, with competing messages coming from word and deed. By distancing himself spatially from the people, he instead created a relational distancing as well - a very slight one, to be sure, but it was present nonetheless and exacerbated other concerns related to his exercise of authority.

The implications for this are huge. If we approach a context with forms already established, we risk actually damaging the message. This is why, on some level, describing the emerging church as concerned with "coffee, candles, and couches" is simultaneously both accurate and dead wrong. Forms in and of themselves are absolutely unimportant - that's why they are critically important. In other words, what is important about form is not the form itself, but what the form communicates, specifically in a given context. Forms should be seen as fluid and ad-hoc, able to change at need to convey the desired meaning in a given context.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, Edward Hall, culture, meaning

Culture as Meaning

I've been reading another book with bearings on my recent thoughts on contextual theology. The book is The Silent Language by Edward Hall - it's a fascinating discussion of the nature of culture from the perspective of an anthropologist. This is actually something of a complicated subject to approach; before picking up the book, I thought I had a good grasp of what culture is. As it turns out, I've been continually surprised by how much I take my own context for granted and how inextricably I am bound to it.

One of the questions that it's raised for me is the purpose of theology, and in particular, the purpose of a contextual, local theology. Hall argues that, on some level, all culture is a matter of communication. Culture represents the conscious and unconscious systems that represent the frameworks in which we approach and describe experience. This includes elements such as language but also includes things like understandings of time and space, to name a few. In other words, culture represents all of the shared mechanisms that people in a particular context use to extract meaning from experience.

This question - meaning - gets to the heart of theology. Theology, after all, concerns itself with questions of ultimate meaning. After all, when we talk about matters of faith, we aren't talking about experiences per se, but rather about their meanings. Theology is, in some sense, the attempt to make sense of experience in light of faith. I think this definition would be somewhat contentious in some circles; many want to remove experience from the equation entirely. But even if we hold to the belief that theology is an attempt to understand revelation, isn't the act of revelation in and of itself an experience? At the very least, we have to make sense of what we have received and attempt to put it into practice.

Hall's point through much of the book is that culture - context - frames the way in which we approach this question of meaning in such a way as to define the possible meanings that we extract from those experiences. Put another way, I can approach a given experience from a variety of angles, but those angles are defined by my context and, ultimately, do not exhaust all possible meanings.

Wow, that's horribly abstract. Here is the point - as a male, as an American, as a thirty-one year old, as a resident of suburban Philadelphia, as an employee of a large financial firm, as a theology student, etc - I can think about theology in a number of ways. But there are a number of ways that are not available to me, simply because my context doesn't make them available.

I think I need an example for this.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, Edward Hall, culture, meaning

Bevans's Models and the Emerging Church

I've put off posting this for a bit because I'm sorting through the implications of Bevans's categories as I think about the emerging church. I think I have a framework I'm comfortable with, so I'm going to throw out some thoughts and see where they land. Besides, I do my best thinking in process anyway. ;)

As I discussed in my earlier post, Bevans presents six models for approaching the question of contextual theology. I want to reiterate his thoughts that no model exists in isolation - all of the models are, to some degree or another, in play at all times. But by identifying a primary model that is in place in a given system, we can identify something of the shape of that particular model and also discuss its similarities and dissimilarities to other systems. In other words, this isn't meant to identify deficiencies in any particular system so much as it is to identify the distinctions and provide a framework for thinking through the differences. With that said, here are my thoughts: the emerging church is characterized, for the most part, by an approach that is rooted in praxis while many of the critics are more comfortable in a translation framework.

One of the common statements that seems to be heard when discussing critics like Carson (for example) is that the emerging church is primarily a movement of practitioners, not academics (and let's not have the movement/conversation discussion, k?). On the surface, I've always thought this sounded like a weak defense. On some level, practitioners are in just as much need of good theology as academics - more, in fact, given their close connection to the body-at-large. But I understand the concern that's being articulated, even if it could be framed better - practitioners have different concerns than academics, and, generally speaking, don't spend their time constructing airtight systems but rather look at theology from a rubber-meets-the-road perspective. And this, of course, is exactly what is described by the praxis model, as defined by Bevans - "acting reflectively and reflecting upon one's actions". Putting this into the context in which many of us serve, the movement (in a personal sense) towards an emerging theology was driven precisely by this reflection - reflection on the fact that the old formulations were inadequate, that they addressed concerns which no longer existed, and that they produced Christians who looked strangely unlike this Jesus who we claimed to follow. So we started to change our approach. I'm going to speak personally here, but the stories I've read lead me to believe that I'm far from alone in this. My context was youth ministry, and my problem was that the gospel I was preaching of what amounted to salvation through right doctrine failed to create followers of Jesus. So I began to change my approach. I swapped games for prayer, speaking for discussion, loud for quiet, spectating for participating, and entertainment for service. And I lost students in my ministry - but I gained Jesus-followers, a trade about which I have no regrets. And as I reflected on what had happened, I came to believe that somewhere along the line I had gotten the gospel wrong, and that what I thought was translation was actually something else, something distorting.

And there, I'd argue, is the rub. Many of our critics are firm believers in the translation model, assuming that all we do is take unchanging truth and translate it into the context. And there is a sense in which they're correct; the gospel doesn't change. But the question that I confronted was whether we ever encounter that gospel outside of the bounds of a culture - is there such a thing as a disembodied, uncontextual gospel? Can we simply translate what has come before, without doing the hard work to discern if what we received is accurate and in line with our Story as told in scripture? I think that the gospel, as we tell it and receive it and pass it along, always carries along contextual baggage - our tellings of the gospel are always a mix of participation in and critique of culture. And there, I think, is the second sore spot - both the emerging church and its critics hold to a countercultural model, and hold to it strongly. The distinction lies in defining in what way we are countercultural - but that is a subject for another post.

Technorati Tags: books, emerging church, contextual theology, Bevans, praxis, translation

Thoughts About Suffering

One of the things that I've been working through in my recent coursework is something of a theology of suffering. In truth, I'm not really satisfied with that description - it conveys the impression that we can think abstractly about questions of suffering, when in fact I think we always filter these things through our own experiences of struggle, loss, grief, pain, etc. But there is a sense in which we can have a framework through which we approach these questions, and to that extent, I think it's fair to think of a theology of suffering, with the caveat that it's more than an abstract reflection.

One of the things that, I think, we struggle with the most when we face loss of any kind is the question of the relationship between God's sovereignty and our pain. It's the classic theodicy question - if God is all-powerful, and God is good, why does evil/pain/suffering exist? But I've been thinking lately that part of the reason that we have difficulty with this question is because we start in the wrong place. Instead of approaching it from the standpoint of sovereignty, what happens if we begin with the incarnation, with the realization that, in Christ, God became human and suffered as well? I thought I'd post a few thoughts from a paper I just completed. I think that, as I continue to reflect on this question of suffering, this needs to be the starting point.

Even Christians, who hold the incarnation and the person of Jesus Christ to be the penultimate revelation of God’s self to humanity, often fail to start with that self-revelation in considering the question of loss. Often we instead begin with the question of sovereignty, and extrapolate our thoughts of incarnation as the derivative consideration. This, on some level, is actually profoundly un-Christian...So what does this mean for the Christian? It is my opinion that what is challenged most forcefully by this recognition is western Christianity’s conception of power. We are a culture that has the power to remove much of our suffering. We are, at least those of us from the majority middle- and upper-class demographics, well-fed and comfortable. We have readily available health care, adequate to lavish housing, and enough economic stability to indulge our desires as well as meet our needs. Our conceptions of power, then, center on its use to create and maintain these suffering-free zones in our lives. The thought of anyone willingly entering into a position of lack is inherently foreign to us – comfort and ease are the highest virtues of life and the marks of success and blessing. As a result of this conception of the use of power, we enter into contemplation of God’s sovereignty assuming these values to be universals. What is challenged when we face loss, then, is not in fact the sovereignty of God at all – rather, it is the idol of a comfortable deity who desires comfort for his creatures.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: theology, suffering, sovereignty, power

Bevans's Six Models

So it's been over a month now since I decided to work through Bevans's Models of Contextual Theology and, while I've played around with the subject since then, I haven't actually gotten to the meat of the book yet or why I think it's significant for the emerging church. Hey - at least I've stuck with it this time! At any rate, I thought I'd post a brief description of each of the models that Bevans uses along with a few of his caveats and then, using this as a springboard, talk about why the emerging church rubs some folks the wrong way. And if I can do it without making anyone too angry, so much the better. ;)

Bevans says this about models:

[I]t is my contention that no one model can be used exclusively and an exclusive use will distort the theological enterprise. While every one of these models is in some sense a translation of a message, an adequate theology cannot be reduced to a mere application or adaptation of a changeless body of truths. Even the biblical message was developed in a dialogue with human experience, culture, and cultural and social change, and a theology that neither issues forth in action nor takes account of the way one lives one's life can hardly be theology that is worth very much. At the same time, any theology that is not in some sense countercultural cannot be a truly Christian theology. (p. 33)

So with that in mind, Bevans outlines the following models by which we can approach the question of contextual theology:

• The Translation Model - This model focuses on the gospel as an unchanging message, and seeks to translate that message into the verancular of the context in question. The context matters only insomuch as it sets the agenda for the translation.
• The Anthropological Model - This model sees cultures as the places of God's revelation, and approaches each context asking the question, "Where is God already at work here?" It emphasizes present experience moreso than received tradition.
• The Praxis Model - Bevans has a great quote here; I'm tempted to steal it for my tagline. He describes praxis as "acted-upon reflection and reflected-upon action" (p. 72). Theology arises from this interplay of reflection and action - it is a model in which thought and deed are linked.
• The Synthetic Model - Bevans describes this as sort of a middle-of-the-road model, one that tries to take seriously both the tradition that has been received while taking seriously the context in all ways, including, as he states, the fact that context sets the theological agenda in some sense. He goes on to further describe this as a dialectic in some sense between faith and culture, with each informing and correcting the other. (I think I'm doing justice to him here - this one was somewhat vague.)
• The Transcendental Model - Ok, I'm going to confess right away that I didn't particularly follow this one at all. What I gathered here is that this model is more concerned with how one goes about the theological task than it is about what is decided or understood. It seems to be rooted primarily in the experience of revelation as an event or happening instead of as something received or passed on. Bottom line - I wasn't experiencing much of anything except frustration here.
• The Counter-Cultural Model - This model focuses on the challenge that the gospel issues to every culture. But, Bevans notes (rightly, I believe), that while the gospel offends, we should take care that the offense is from the gospel itself and not from our own poor attempts at enculturation. This is an absolutely significant point, one that I'm going to return to eventually. Suffice for now to say that Newbigin and Hauerwas, two of my significant conversation partners in my own theological journey, were both mentioned here, as was the Gospel in Our Culture Network.

I'd be interested to hear of any thoughts that strike you immediately as you read through this list. My own personal excitement from reading this book was in finding language to express what I think is my own theological approach in some of these models - for me, it was sort of like a theological personality inventory, I suppose. At the least, I can talk about why I approach theology the way that I do.

Technorati Tags: books, emerging church, contextual theology, Bevans

Prayer Needed

Some of you may have heard about Bob Robinson, a fellow blogger who had emergency heart surgery over the weekend. Scot McKnight has reported that Bob has taken a turn for the worse. Please pray for his full recovery, as well as for his family and friends in this extraordinarily difficult time.

Father, you are the architect of life. You knit our bodies together from the dust of the earth. We ask that you would remember your son Bob, that you would remember his body and hold it together with your strong hands. Remember his family and friends; send your Comforter to speak peace and hope to them. Author of faith, grant that they would have faith to trust in this difficult time.

UPDATE: Lorna reminded me that I needed to link to Scot's updates here and here. Things are apparently improving, but Bob still needs our prayers. Thank God for what he has done so far and what he continues to do.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Cup holders do not count as contextual theology. Discussing their addition to a new $24 million building erected by Eagle Brook Church in Minneapolis:

"Our little coffee shop is humming on Sunday mornings," Anderson said. "It's a huge hit."

But church leaders figured it was difficult to stand, sit or praise the Lord with your hands in the air while worrying about dumping a hot latte onto fellow Christians. So they decided to add cup holders - anything to boost their reputation for putting people at ease.

"You can't underestimate the value of energy and buzz," Anderson said. "Those things bring people through the door."

You can't make this stuff up. Unfortunately. This one earns the tag "pathetic".

ht: blind beggar

Technorati Tags: megachurch, coffee, cup holders, pathetic

N.T. Wright on Contextual Theology

Ok, not exactly - but I finished The Last Word over the weekend (thanks Jared!) and found a number of insights that are cogent for what I'm trying to think through:

To affirm "the authority of scripture" is precisely not to say, "We know what scripture means and we don't need to raise any more questions." It is always a way of saying that the church in each generation must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand scripture more fully and live by it more thoroughly, even if that means cutting across cherished traditions.

Which is the bottom line: "proving the Bible to be true" (often with the effect of saying, "So we can go on thinking what we've always thought,") or taking it so seriously that we allow it to tell us things we'd never heard before and didn't particularly want to hear?

Fantastic little book - I read it in a few hours and found an incredibly helpful way of articulating some thoughts that I've had percolating under the surface for a while now. But to the point at hand - Wright reminds us of what I mentioned previously about the necessity of doing theology contextually. Critics of the emerging church (to take one example) often suggest that to consider context as a dialogue partner for theology subordinates doctrine to culture, or some such. But that's more a danger, I think, of theology that is unconsciously contextual. Our context always affects our theology. So what is better - to recognize context and attempt to consciously engage scripture from a recognized vantage point, or to ignore context and pretend to an objectivity that is impossible to realize? Isn't the one who is unconscious of culture at more risk of syncretism than one who is consciously attempting to engage scripture from a certain vantage point?

I would suggest, along with Wright (I believe), that approaching the theological task with context firmly in mind is to recognize the authority of scripture. It is to ask scripture to speak into a context, to challenge and redeem it. Failing to do so is to perhaps miss God's activity in the present and to instead seek for God's activity only in what has already been said, instead of what God is now saying.

Technorati Tags: books, emerging church, contextual theology, N.T. Wright

Back

Apologies for the lack of attention to the blog this week. My wife's uncle passed away on Monday; we spent our week with her family in New York. It was actually a really nice time, all things considered. Shared loss is easier to bear, and finding reasons to celebrate in the middle of loss is, well, redemptive in some sense, I think. Still, it was tiring and left me with a fair amount of coursework to finish, which I completed at 2:30 AM this morning - nothing like a late night to get back into the swing of things... At any rate, things should be back to normal this week - I'm going to attempt to finally finish my thoughts on Bevans's book, and I've got a few other things that have been floating around in my head, so as long as life cooperates, it should be a good week. ;)