Heretic's Guide - What About Jesus? (p. 4)

I've said a number of times in the comments that I can't go along with Spencer's understanding of the Christian Story as described in his book A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. Up to now, though, I've just focused on some foundational concepts that I think are at odds in the book. It's time for me to dive in and lay out what I think is the fatal flaw in Spencer's book - his failure to deal with what the text actually says and the picture that it presents of who Jesus was and what he did. Spencer reads the text and finds a guide, a path, a messenger of love and inclusion. In his words:

It is not a question of making claims about Jesus as truth but rather one of experiencing the truth of who he is, outside the confines of a religious system. To claim that other religions are true only to the degree that their views of God are the same as Christian concepts is to make a claim that Jesus himself did not make.

This last claim Jesus made in this troublesome little verse in the book of John is perhaps the key to understanding the others [the way, the truth]. "I am the life." Jesus' life, not just his acts on our behalf but the life he lived on earth, is "the life". Living a life like Jesus' is what it truly means to live. Jesus declared his life to be the way to choose - not the way of zealotry or paganism or compromise, but a life committed to God, committed to God's ways, and committed to grace.

Jesus' vision of God is not for the exclusive use of one community. It is not just for Jews or Christians or any other group. It is for anyone and everyone - Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, whatever...The real story, the real scandal, is Jesus' promiscuous view of God. Whatever the role his religion expected him to play, Jesus ignored it and chose instead to forge a new path that included freedom for him to embrace everyone.

To be born again, according to Jesus, is to commit oneself to the kingdom of God's purposes. It is to begin a journey with God in order to make the world a place of grace. It doesn't mean "getting religion"; it means committing ourselves to Jesus' vision of God's kingdom. What did Jesus say that is? In a word, love, plain and simple.

Spencer, I'm sorry. I wish I could go along with you here. It would make my life a lot easier. It would make my task as a person of Christian faith much simpler. It would make my message as a missional believer much more palatable. It would be fun; I could be Tony Robbins or Mr. Rogers or Joel Osteen. (Oops, how'd that get in there? ;)

But I can't.

I can't go along with hippie Jesus who has smiles and lollipops for everyone. It's just not there. It's a painfully selective reading of the text. Yes, Jesus preached a gospel of love and inclusion. Yes, he broke boundaries and welcomed "all and sundry", as NT Wright would say. Yes, he broke the "rules" and did things that offended religious people. But he offended more than just the scribes and Pharisees. He didn't pull punches. He offered a choice: two ways, one of life and one of death. And, he said, most people don't really care to find the first one. (Matt 7:13-14, in case you're wondering.) He said that he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. He said that judgment was barreling down on the nation, and yet they refused to repent. He said that, in the end, it would go better for Sodom than it would for the cities where he preached and did his miracles.

Was Jesus inclusive? He was - scandalously so. But he was also sharply exclusivistic, and no amount of polishing him up so that he won't offend our postmodern sensibilities can remove it. It's what a professor of mine has called the dark side of the gospel - the awful truth that rejecting his work has a cost, a price that we may find more than we can bear. It's painful and uncomfortable and ugly. But it's there - and to remove it or to ignore it is to do damage to who Jesus is and what he says.

The message of the kingdom isn't that everyone is in. Jesus never said that. It's the announcement of the world's true King and the coming of his Kingdom. Mark says it this way: "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" And good news it is - but it has a warning as well, lurking just between the syllables, a warning that we fail to heed to our own detriment.

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Heretic's Guide - Scandal of Grace (p. 3)

As I've mentioned previously, Spencer's categories in A Heretic's Guide to Eternity are religion and grace. I've already touched on his treatment of the term religion; now I want to tackle his definition of grace. In his words:

Could it be that love finds us no matter where we are and we don't have to do anything more to get it? Could it be that - beyond religion, reason, and conventional wisdom - grace is something to be opted out of rather than opted in to? Is it not something you get but something you already have?

What is grace? For me, it is a subversive and scandalous twist in human history - an unexpected and revolutionary turn of events that offered a new way of relating to the sacred and each other. Religion declares that we are separated from God, that we are "outsiders". Grace tells us the opposite, that we are already in unless we want to be out.

The problem, I think, at least in the Christian tradition, is that grace seems to have no meaning apart from sin. The two concepts are always linked. It's not that I think sin is a myth or that everyone is perfect; it's just that I believe linking grace to sin detracts from its beauty and intensity.

The problem with Spencer's definition here is precisely that last bit - the two concepts are linked in the Christian tradition because that's at the very heart of the Story. Wanting them to be disconnected does not make it so - grace, which I'd describe more in terms of favor or kindness that is unearned and undeserved, is subversive and scandalous precisely because of sin. This goes back to the very beginning of the narrative in Genesis. It's beautiful and intense because it is undeserved, because it is freely given, because it is unconventional and it smashes boundaries and breaks down the dividing walls that separate us from the love of God. But without that separation, where's the beauty? Where's the scandal?

Don't get me wrong - I know what Spencer's trying to say. But I don't like how he's saying it. I think what he's going after is what Scot McKnight has called "grace-grinding". But I think he fails somewhat by minimizing the problem of sin. As I mentioned in my last post, part of the role of a religious system is to define the problem - what's wrong with the world? (I'm borrowing that straight from Wright's NTPG, btw.) Grace is God's response to the problem - it's inextricably linked to sin in our experience, because that's how we describe what is wrong. Spencer would be well served here to reflect on a Christian description of the problem.

The concept of sin is meant to address the quality of our relationships, with each other and with the world in which we live, but the church has turned it into a "petty moralism that no longer speaks to...human persons in their complete intermingling."...Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as "sinners in need of a Savior." It's not that people view themselves as perfect; it's that the language they use to describe themselves has changed. "Broken," "fragmented," and "lacking wholeness" - these are some of the new ways people describe their spiritual need.

Two thoughts to conclude. First, just because an idea is unpopular isn't an indication of whether or not it's true. And that's particularly true, I think, for those of us who claim the Christian faith as our own. Pacifism, for example, is unpopular - but I still hold it to be a true description of a Christian ethic. How much more, then, the core narrative that holds all Christian ethic together? Second, Spencer offers what I think is a better, more compelling definition of sin than "moral misdemeanors" - right before he abandons the concept almost entirely! Frankly, I don't get it - instead of advocating a disconnection of the ideas of grace and sin, why not simply rehabilitate the concept of sin so that the concept of grace means more of what it's supposed to mean in the first place? Then, Spencer, you can stand in a healthy place of tension between the scriptural narrative and common interpretations of it - as it is, you abandon a thoroughly useful concept that is absolutely central to the biblical text and that would lend support to your argument rather than detract from it, for what I can't see as a gain of much of anything.

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A Heretic's Guide: Picking Good Examples (p. 2)

One of the primary challenges I'm facing in reading A Heretic's Guide to Eternity is the suspicion that I'm being faced with a false dichotomy. Ok, that's an understatement - I don't buy the principle division of the book, namely that of religion vs. grace. I touched on this in my previous post, and I thought I'd be able to move on to the first part of the book. But I find that it's a difficulty that keeps hitting me in the face. I can't get past it. A few examples may help:

Admittedly, all religions probably have a fringe element, but just the same, what is it about traditional religion that breeds dogmatic, sometimes fanatical, and even violent responses to the rest of the world? Over the years, terrible things have been done and justified in the name of God. Just look at any history book. Is it any wonder the world's population is beginning to look for alternatives? Frankly, fundamentalists of all kinds are scaring people off. The more zealous and powerful these people become, the more potential followers they drive away.

We need to move past religion. I believe the time is right for another way of looking at the Christian message, freed from the confines of religion and open to the possibility of a radical new incarnation and manifestation. The message of Jesus needs to evolve for our times.

I believe that the next phase of faith is to move beyond religion. Nowhere does Jesus call his followers to start a religion. Jesus' invitation to his first disciples was to follow him. It was a call to journey, a process that leads us away from some things and toward others. It wasn't a call to adhere to a set of rules for all time. In fact, one of the most commonly heard critiques of the Christian message is that it is out of touch with what is really going on in the world around us.

I guess I'm just not really sure what all of this means. Spencer, I think this argument is beneath you - I'm being serious on that statement. You're pitting the worst of "religion" against the best of - well, whatever else there is, I suppose. Have atrocities been committed in the name of religion? Absolutely. Please find one person of religious belief that will deny that, because I don't think they exist. And, yes, fundamentalism can lead to oppression and violence. But "progressives" have committed their share of atrocities also - let's not forget that there's been just as much violence done against religion in the past century as there has been for it. Evil doesn't need to borrow the name of God - it does just fine in human guise.

My question, though, is whether religion is the problem in and of itself. Frankly, I don't see it. Religion has just as often offered a critique of power as it has misused it. Slavery, civil rights, terrorism - all are issues where the problem might be seen as religion, and yet the resources for resolving the problem also come from religion. Religion, at its best, serves as a voice for justice, for the oppressed, for peace, and for understanding. It's simply not tenable to lay all of society's ills at the feet of organized religion as though just removing the "external and dogmatic belief systems" will usher in an era of warm fuzzies and hugs all around.

Let me offer my definition of religion, or specifically, what I take to be the core of the Christian faith qua religion. Is religion - is faith - simply an "external and dogmatic belief system"? Frankly, I hate that definition. It sounds violent and coercive - it makes it seem as though, if I were more spiritual, I wouldn't hold to my belief system. But that's untenable. Religions - faiths, and the Christian faith in particular - offer a particular view of the world, a particular story about what it means to be human, what is wrong with us, and what the solution to our problems might be. It's that story, that narrative, that forms the basis for a religion - not dogmatism or rules. Religions exist because we as people need a way to explain our experience as humans. As a Christian, I hold to a particular telling of that story. Other religions, of course, tell the tale differently. And, yes, those differences sometimes lead to conflict. But I believe that we, as humans, are storied people - we simply can't help crafting narratives in which to live. In the absence of religion, other narratives will be told as well. One currently powerful narrative is that told by consumer capitalism - it's not a "religion" in the technical sense, but you'd better believe it has the power to shape the way we think and interact with one another in ways that are undeniably religious.

So, from the beginning of the book, I feel as though I'm being fitted for Procrustes' bed - I'm given the choice between fundamentalism or freeform spirituality, and I frankly think it's a false dichotomy. I'm quite convinced that one can hold to the historic Christian faith and still offer a critique of "power-based interpretations of foundational texts". In fact, I think that the Christian story by its very nature critiques such interpretations.

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Heretic's Guide: The Question of Language (p.1)

I'm about halfway through Spencer Burke's new book, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. I thought I'd go ahead and start my interaction, because I'm finding that I have a lot to say and I don't want to lose my thoughts as I go forward. Before I begin, I want to reiterate my respect and appreciation of Spencer as someone I've had the opportunity to meet and get to know just a bit. I've said previously and will say again that he's one of the nicest and most winsome guys I've ever met, and his love for and appreciation of people is profoundly evident from the moment he walks into a room. I've struggled, consequently, with this review, because I have some challenging things to say as a result of the book thus far. I want, then, to be crystal clear that my differences are not with him as a person, but rather with his ideas as presented in AHGtE. Ultimately, though, I've come to two conclusions that I must hold in order to speak with integrity: first, when I'm asked for my opinion, I have a responsibility to present it honestly and fairly and to not cover it for the sake of maintaining an appearance of camaraderie; second, respect means not minimizing the differences between two positions, but recognizing them and speaking truly about them. With that said, Spencer, if you're ever in the Philadelphia area again, you have an open invitation to call me up for a beer or coffee or dinner. My treat. ;)

So, now that I've completely telegraphed where I'm headed with this, I want to begin by expressing something of why I find this book frustrating to read. Bob has already commented on this; so has Scot. But I want to reiterate what others have said: Spencer's use of terminology in this book is maddening. Maddening as in water torture maddening. Put briefly, Spencer is using language in unconventional ways in this book - and it makes digesting it difficult. The title is a case in point, although one that I won't belabor - what Spencer means by "heretic" is not what is normally meant by the term. Read Bob's post for further interaction with this point - I don't see a reason to restate what he's already done quite well. That's not the point of language that's a sticking point for me. The premise of the book, as I'm tracking it thus far, seems to be the contrast between "religion" and "grace". But here's where Spencer begins, I think, to invest these words with something of a different sense than what is commonly meant by them. For example:

To be honest, religion doesn't really work for me anymore. Being aligned with an institutional church or a particular system of worship seems increasingly irrelevant to my ongoing journey with God. In my experience, the customs, traditions, and even language of religion often seem to get in the way of honest dialogue about God. What's more, religion's airtight explanations and all-or-nothing theological arguments seem out of touch with the complexities of twenty-first-century life.

So, as Spencer continues through the book to engage this idea of religion vs. grace, I have to ask myself to what it is that he's exactly referring. The description that he gives doesn't seem to me to be religion per se; if that is, in fact, what he's saying, then I have to cautiously suggest that the entire book is based on a false dichotomy, and I think Spencer is no doubt smarter than that. Is he saying that all religion functions this way, or only some types of religious expression? I think the latter - but I'm not sure, because he never comes out and says it. As a result, I'm left with a choice that I have to make as a reader - is he being either frustratingly imprecise in his use of language, or harmfully stereotypical in his view of religion? I'm attempting to read generously here, so I'm opting for the former - but I concede that I might be wrong on that assumption. And I'm not going to begin to tackle the question of what he means by "grace" - that's for another post.

Some will no doubt say that I'm being needlessly pedantic about the meanings of words, that Spencer is merely being creative and pushing the language in a different direction, that it's helpful and challenging and stretching and all kinds of fun stuff like that. And I concede that I may have less patience for that sort of thing than I once did; I've become used to a certain level of technicality when reading theology, and Spencer is clearly not attempting to head in that direction (not a criticism, just an observation). But at it's most basic, language is about using shared symbols to communicate meaning. There is a sense in which it can be stretched and pushed, and then there is a point after which it looses its capacity to perform its intended function. In other words, stretch the meaning of a word too far and it looses its meaning altogether, like expired elastic that can no longer maintain its shape. And what is true of language is true of an intimately connected means of communication - that of story. But that's another post.

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Inspiration and Incarnation: The NT's Use of the OT (p. 4)

Jumping back to Inspiration and Incarnation, I want to briefly summarize Enns's third point of difficulty in understanding the nature of scripture. Enns contends that the NT authors' use of the OT is itself particularly challenging for evangelical hermeneutics, primarily because the NT authors didn't follow what is often portrayed as normative hermeneutical practices in interpreting the OT. This is something that, I think, often escapes contemporary readers - we are, unfortunately, sufficiently far removed from the OT narratives (generally speaking) that we don't catch the subtle oddities in the NT texts. As a result, when we run across something that we do recognize, we assume that the author is doing something that he may not in fact be doing. More on this in a second.

Enns supplies a wealth of information about both the actual uses of the NT by the OT. I simply can't begin to summarize it all - to be honest, I think the discussion of second Temple writings alone is worth the price of the book. An example will have to suffice. In 2 Tim 3:8, we find this statement: "And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses..." Jannes and Jambres are the names that are assigned to the Egyptian magicians spoken of in Exodus 7. But even a cursory reading of the passage in Exodus will reveal that, not only are these names not mentioned anywhere in the narrative, the number of magicians in question isn't even provided. So where do the names originate? While we can't be certain of their origins, we do know that they also occur in the writings of Qumran, as well as one of the targums. What we see in this instance is that Paul is participating in an established interpretive tradition and incorporating its assumptions and conclusions into a writing that we hold as inspired. Other examples abound, some more troubling - Matthew uses Hosea in ways that, were I to emulate, would have resulted in my failing any number of theology assignments; Paul on a number of occasions quotes an OT passage, but actively alters the passage so that the quotation more adequately presents the perspective he is attempting to communicate; and Jesus himself takes passages out of context in order to prove a point, such as his use of Exodus 3:6 in his argument with the Sadducees in Luke 20.

I'm going to resist attempting to draw conclusions at this point. Instead, I want to quote something that Enns says that I think encapsulates the issue nicely, and summarize my thoughts in my next post.

Furthermore, it will not do to argue that Jesus and the apostles adopted such tainted exegetical techniques simply as an accommodation to the faulty thinking of their contemporaries. There simply is no indication of this anywhere in the New Testament...To argue in such a way reveals more about our own assumptions concerning the supposed universal validity of our own hermeneutical standards than it does about apostolic hermeneutics. But apostolic hermeneutics is not to be explained in such a way as to conform to our expectations, nor should we be embarrassed about it or make excuses for it. It is to be understood. (p. 132, emphasis added)

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Thoughts on Moving Forward

An interesting package arrived in the mail yesterday - an advance copy of Spencer Burke's new book, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. It's already started to create some buzz; Scot McKnight shared his thoughts on the book, and some of the heretic watching sites have already begun to hammer away at it (about which I will refrain from commenting). I'm looking forward to reading the book - although, I must confess, I have some reservations about it, along the lines of Scot's critique (which, let it be noted, was a great model for how to handle differences constructively). I had the privilege of getting to know Spencer a bit during an etrek course that I took at Biblical a few years ago. Spencer is a great guy, one of the most winsome and personable folks I've ever met, and his comments on Scot's postings reflect exactly the spirit that I remember about him. Having said that, I remember at the time that he had begun to articulate some of the ideas that it appears have now developed into this book. It will be an interesting read, no doubt - I'm attempting to go into this with an open mind, but already I'm approaching with some concerns.

I think the thing that I'm wondering is the degree to which Spencer will be able to ground his thoughts in the narrative of scripture. I don't know what direction he's going to take, so I'm withholding judgment on this until I've finished the book. But I confess it doesn't look good from the back cover blurb. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised - I hope that to be true. At the very least, though, he's going to have to present a very different reading than I think can be sustained in order to arrive at where the description says he's going.

Can I be honest here? My concerns aren't just about Spencer's book. Steve McCoy posted several quotes recently from a book that he's currently reading about church growth. There was some interesting conversation in the comments; I myself don't particularly care for the way the quotes are phrased, but without reading the book itself, who am I to say? Still, the conversation at some point shifted to a discussion about growth in general and whether congregations should be seeking to grow. And the more I reflect on this, the more astounded I am at the fact that we actually need to have this conversation.

What bothers me about this is that, at its most basic, the Christian faith is adherence to a story. It's about aligning oneself with a particular way of understanding what it means to be human, what has gone wrong with our existence, and what must be done to fix it. There are a number of ways to tell that story and remain faithful to the Story. But there are things that all tellings of that story must retain in order to remain the same story. My interest in the emerging church began with a suspicion that the evangelical version of the story that I knew was fundamentally flawed - and that suspicion has long since been transformed into conviction. However, I confess that I'm not hearing much of late that represents a better proposal.

And that's profoundly disappointing. It's, on one level, simply sloppy. It often represents a failure to integrate the basic elements of the story into a cohesive whole - so, for example, when I hear that particular understandings of the atonement described as "cosmic child abuse," I think it's a pile of crap. No serious trinitarian theology can ever say such a thing and remain trinitarian. It's simply not possible. It's sloppy. And, vice versa, when I hear others saying that God is some kind of macho uber-man who "crushes Jesus" for our sins, I think exactly the same thing. Where's the trinitarian theology in that statement? It's sloppy. It's an awful way to tell the story. It's nothing more than American machismo read back into what started as an articulation of the Christian faith.

I had more that I was going to say, but I'm stopping here. This is moving towards a rant, and I really didn't want it to head that way. So - here's what I'm thinking. I have a few more posts on Enns's book remaining, then I'll tackle Spencer's. After that, I want to write about something that I've been thinking about for over six months now. I want to share with you how I read the story - a reading that begins with the image of God in Genesis 1 and continues to New Creation. Hopefully along the way I can present something that might serve as the beginnings of a way forward.

Inspiration and Incarnation: The OT and Theological Diversity (p. 3)

Continuing my discussion of Pete Enns's book Inspiration and Incarnation, I want to pick up briefly a subject that I think is particularly challenging to the traditional evangelical perspective on scripture. In particular, Enns discusses the difficulty that the theological diversity of the Old Testament presents to that perspective. I think that it also bears repeating that Enns is approaching this question from firm evangelical commitments himself - his presentation of these issues isn't meant to undermine a high view of scripture, but rather to bring the nature of the written text itself into conversation with that perspective, resulting in a more robust understanding of what it means to claim that scripture is God's self-revelation. In his own words:

One way that critical biblical scholarship takes diversity into account is to say that the Old Testament is full of contradictions and, hence, a quaint record of conflicting human opinions. Such an approach will never be an acceptable option for Christian thinking. An evangelical counterattack, however, is to defend the Bible against accusations of diversity by showing that such diversity is not there, involves only minor issues, or can be resolved in theory at some future time. But this alternative creates tensions of its own, and it runs the risk of avoiding the difficult issues altogether. (p.73)

I'm tempted at this point to delve into some of the texts that Enns highlights. I've decided against doing that. Anyone who has read the Old Testament at any level beyond a surface reading has no doubt begun to encounter the issues that Enns is discussing. If you are unconvinced that such diversity exists, I would humbly suggest a reading to illustrate: compare 2 Sam 11 and 1 Chron 20. Notice the tiny slice of history that the Chronicler omits following 20:1. It's absolutely fascinating the way these two narratives are constructed. I could suggest a number of others; however, the point isn't at all about exegeting specific difficulties. In fact, that may be precisely not the point. Enns goes on to state the following:

What the diversity of the Bible tells us is that there is no superficial unity to the Bible. Portions of the Bible are in tension with each other, as we have seen. That these tensions exist is a matter of simple observation. A better question is why they exist and what this tells us about the nature of the Scriptures and, by extension, the nature of God. (p.108)

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