Theology for the Masses

In this wildly ambitious work, Moreland seeks to cure Christianity from the malaise that plagues – the death of drama; he is mostly successful, though not for the reasons he would give. Written for a popular audience, the Kingdom Triangle is divided into two sections; the first attempts to show us the “crisis of our age,” attacking Naturalism and Postmodernism as the destroyers of drama. The second part is more hopeful, and is Moreland’s attempt to construct a solution to the problem by means of three foci: knowledge, the soul and supernaturalism. With his insistence upon objectivity and reluctance to engage the best of Christian postmodern thought, readers risk being more entrenched against any other approach to knowledge and theology. However, the other parts of the work shine in comparison. When Moreland is attacking naturalism and working to instill drama he is much more effective. This combination of strengths and weaknesses make this book a minefield for the lay reader. There is much good to be had, but one can easily get the impression that all postmodern and emerging Christians are to just as feared and protected against as the Catholic Church.[1]

Drama for your mamma (and the rest of the Body of Christ)

The chief contribution of this work is Moreland’s drive to instill drama in our lives. Moreland’s use of drama is interesting and is the most important theme in the book. Moreland sets it up as the life full of meaning and purpose contrasting it with the drabness of everyday life. His awareness of the hunger for drama is startling and speaks to a need which likely resonates with much of his readership. Wise are the ways Moreland suggests Christians resurrect drama and acute are the causes he identifies for its crucifixion. He identifies the narcissism, individualism, passivity, and immaturity of the self that our popular culture produces;[2] and advocates the flourishing of the self, which includes the development of self-denial, character, and the spiritual disciplines.

Don’t, Stop, Manifesting the Spirit…

Perhaps the most controversial part of the book for the target audience is Moreland’s insistence that we recover the activity of the Spirit in our daily lives. He calls this “being naturally supernatural”[3] and attacks Cessationists. In great contrast to his dealings with Postmodernist Christians and Catholics, he advocates love and charity towards people on different places on the continuum of the Spirit’s activities.[4] This advice is much needed in the North American Church today. He primarily challenges Cessationists by appealing to personal stories and the numbers of Charismatics in the world. Oddly enough, Moreland does not use Scripture to challenge Cessationists. Given his high view of and condemnations by means of Scripture, one would have expected the same here. Ultimately, his wisdom, gentleness, and honesty are instructive in this section.

I refute him thus!

“I refute him thus!” was Samuel Johnson’s exclamation as he broke his foot upon a rock in an attempt to refute Berkley’s idealism.[5] It is also method of attack Moreland employs in his critiques of Naturalism and Postmodernity.[6] Moreland’s treatment of Postmodernism is the chief disappointment Kingdom Triangle. Moreland, the unapologetic modernist, [7] constructs the frailest version of postmodernism possible for the purposes of rendering asunder with the mighty blows of the three-sentence-proof. Moreland goes so far as to dismiss and critique of his characterization of postmodernism by saying: “For one thing, my description of postmodernism is an accurate account that fairly captures and understanding of postmodernism … [so] I can hardly be accused of offering a caricature of the movement.”[8] This rather grumpy, defensive, and dismissive tone is found throughout his discussion of Naturalism, Postmodernism, and Knowledge. Moreland unfortunately, for one of Evangelical Christianity’s most highly regarded philosophers, reduces all of postmodernity into a “synonym for deconstructive relativism.”[9] Too often Moreland attacks his constructed postmodernism[10] with simplistic proofs which bypass the real issues at hand. An excellent example of this is his discussion of objectivity and language.[11]

This seems like a rhetorical strategy to appeal to the value of common sense and anti-intellectualism of his intended audience. This, combined with a lack of real engagement of the best of Christina postmodern theory will hinder the intellectual development of his readers in the wake of Modernity’s decline. It reeks of entrenchment rather than engagement.

The Gentle Curmudgeon

One final criticism of Kingdom Triangle is the bipolar writing style that Moreland employs. When attacking Naturalism and Postmodernism and constructing a theory of knowledge, Moreland writes in a grouchy, dismissive, and immature tone. He repeatedly deems things “sad” and uses brute force to argue his claims (see his listing to all the verse in the Bible that contain the word knowledge).[12] This is contrasted with the genuine love and concern from which he writes his other chapters.

Conclusion

Ultimately this book is a mix of the best and worst from Moreland. Moreland argues for the best possible modernist/foundationalist Christianity, and attacks the worst postmodern secularism, which he ties to all Christian postmodern thought. However, With the exception of the chapter on Knowledge, Christians would be wise to heed his words concerning the resurrection of drama. I would modify Moreland’s argument (that Naturalism and Postmodernism have caused the death of drama) to the Church’s acceptance of Modernism and lack of a response to its death have caused and sustained the death of drama. It is a shame this was not a two-volume work.

Notes:

[1] Moreland is deeply skeptical in this work about the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church , warning evangelical Christians to steer clear of their spiritual development classes (p.159).

[2] Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 142-145.

[3] Ibid., 182.

[4] Ibid., 178-179.

[5] For more on this, see Dinesh D’Souza, What’s so great about Christianity (Regnery Publishing, 2007), 171.

[6] While Moreland and I agree on the perils of Naturalism, Moreland has a too narrow of a definition of postmodernism, see notes 12 and 13.

[7] See his infatuation with the self and objectivity, and unquestionable support of the correspondence theory of truth in Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 78-88. and dismissal of critiques of modernity, such as the role of language creating worlds rather than nakedly describing them in Ibid., 85, 87.

[8] Ibid., 87.

[9] Franke, Character of Theology, The, 21.

[10] It is difficult to construct a positive definition of the varied modes of postmodernist theory. I follow Franke in maintaining that Postmodernism is best defined minimally as the critique of Modernity which requires “radical surgery.” See Ibid.

[11] Compare Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 86. with Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), sec. The Problem of Language.

[12] Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 114-120. Moreland opts for the brute-force technique for arguing that our knowledge must be certain (by his criteria and his criteria only, which happens to be foundationalist in nature).

When Meredith and I were married we were faced with a problem. After spending a year at a small Christian college we had been deeply wounded by the body of Christ that resided there. With seared hands and heavy hearts we settled in Columbia, MO and decided to seek out the perfect Church for us, one that we both agreed upon in terms of doctrine, worship, and a community with which we could get involved.  It took us nearly 6 years to find such a Church, and what finally did it for us was not what you would have expected.  What follows is a story of our journey and a catalog of our foolishness.

What were our goals in finding such a mythological assembly of Christians?  They must have all of the following:

1. Edifying/Entertaining Bilbe-based Preaching
2. Contemporary Worship service
3. Nice looking Chapel… but not too fancy, we were not Medieval Catholics, after all. ((Here you can see the influence of the Churches of Christ on my thinking, because they are strongly for minimizing resources wasted upon the “Church” building.
4. Must pay their ministers a living wage… but not too much!
5. Must have sound (read: Church of Christish, but not have the overly dogmatic foibles like Central and Dr. Sharp had) doctrine
6. Must be in a good location (after all, we can’t be bothered to drive far when we have to get up early on a Sunday)
7. Must be easy for one to get involved.
8. etc.

Let me begin this cautionary tale with one group that we considered, but only for the sake of its rejection.  After moving to Columbia, we caught wind of a nice Church of Christ congregation.  They seemed like they were full of honest and kind Christians.  They seemed generous with their resources, after all, I did start playing basketball in their gym on Tuesday night with co-workers.  They even had what seemed to be a contemporary worship service.  All in all, it did not seem like a bad choice.

But we’d been hurt (and hurt badly) by these “Church of Christ’ers” before and you know what? We were not going to give them another chance to hurt us in the future. (There is a “by God” in there somewhere)  We would rather stand in the sidelines than risk being hurt again.

So, we smugly passed this Church up.  We would gladly sleep in on Sundays and give our tithes to missionaries and families in need instead of participating in community with people that had hurt us before.

A Brass Bullet, Proudly Dodged.

It was not till later that we would see how foolish we were.

(Disclamer – I often spell disclaimer wrong.  Also, this might be a bit rambly.  I also don’t know how to spell ramble when I use it as modifyer.  I also like to screw up the changing of “y” to “i” when you plop a suffix on the end of a word.  I also like to draw out jokes several paces past the funny point.)

The local community of Christians that I am apart of does a wonderful job of stressing and acting upon the need for community among Christians (and others).  JR and myself have just finished a really good Sunday School series which envisions evangelism as the process by which we invite peregrini into our communities and build up a contextualized identity exchange by means of learning a new conceptual language, experience within a lived gospel, etc culminating with the peregrini choosing to accept Christ and adopt citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

One of the byproducts of this series was the awareness that we are horrible at doing this and that we need to make very specific and targeted changes to the way we live out the gospel.  We, as a group, aren’t finished with brainstorming and implementing the ways through which we will accomplish these goals, but we are making real progress. 

As we are making a more concerted effort to invite people into our comfortable communal bubble, there have been accompanying stresses upon our individual relationships.  People are able to hide in community, divisions cannot be worked out among strangers.  In reflecting on our community’s recent experiences and through discussing this with the ever-insightful Meredith, we decided that community and intimacy is a paradox:

Community hinders intimacy, but intimacy can only come through community.

We have decided that in order to be a real gospeling community, we must be constantly inviting, but if we are constantly inviting, we lose those intimate relationships with others in the community.

To use a small-scale example, myself, JR and Scott meet at least once a week to share what is going on in our lives, talk about video games and comics, reflect upon stuff, discuss theology, and pray for one another.  We have built a very intimate relationship with one another through this process.  On several occasions other friends of ours have stopped by and joined our conversations, whether it be professional acquaintances, personal friends, etcetera.  While these people are with us, we are unable to share ourselves fully with one another, we simply don’t have the requisite relationship with the new comers to do so. 

This does not just apply to the local assemblies of the body of Christ, Meredith and I have noticed that the same thing happens with us.  When we invite friends over, or host communal events, etcetera, we loose opportunities to build and maintain our own intimacy, one of the most precious commodities in a marriage.  Our challenge has been to build intimacy first, and when that tank is full, to be as hospitable as our natures allow.

Now, I am not saying all of this for the purpose of disparaging the notion of being an inviting community, I am doing do it precisely because I value such a notion!  Only through invitation can we build community, only through invitation can we fulfill Christ’s call on our lives.  However, we must confront and overcome the difficulties that arise in such endeavors.

How might we, as a gospeling community, maintain our intimacy while still being an inviting one?  I welcome all thoughts and insights, both from members of our own community and others.

Love this quote:

But don’t build your church on what you’re not

via Who Cares What You’re Not? – Craig G.

We conservatives gotta be careful that we don’t define ourselves as what we are not, but rather as what we are, cives regni dei. [1]

1. citizens of the kingdom of God [↩]

I have developed a certain fondness for Steven Anderson, the KJV only and Jack-look-a-like pastor from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, AZ.  This is due to his likeness to Matthew Fox and my fascination with his spoutings.  Hank first introduced me to Mr. Anderson by showing me his "”he that pisseth against the wall” sermon.  He really is a fascinating look at the mind of a modernist KJV-only fundamentalist. 

There is the whitewashed sexism, the anti-intellectualism, and a total and unblinking commitment to a method of thought and practice.  Well, I came across this sermon today entitled, Why Bible College is Unscriptural and Wrong.  It is a mind-blowing self-examination of this assembly’s beliefs.  Check it out below, or take the short cut and read it in its essay form. 

In this sermon, Mr. Anderson showcases all of the above traits.  He moves beyond modern Biblical notions of egalitarianism and complementarianism [1] and into rampant sexism when he remarks “…it is not right for a woman to teach me the Bible, or English for that matter…” [2] and “…and I like this part, by the way, for you women that think it is ok for a woman to wear pants…” [3]   He displays contempt and rejection of the education system though out the entire sermon and is described on their website as follows“Pastor Anderson holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament.” 

There is much disagreement between myself and Pastor Anderson on very real and significant issues.I strongly disagree with Mr. Anderson to the point of not being able to take him seriously and there is a strong urge to use my knowledge and expertise to take the man and his teachings apart because his spoutings upset me.

I have all the tools and I am upset – why shouldn’t I take him apart? 

  (take a little hermeneutics, add a dash of history, sprinkle come common sense and bake on competence for 30 minutes)

But I have to remember that this real person and all of the people in his assembly of Christians are my sisters and brothers in Christ.  How then do I interact with them?  I am also a religious studies student.  I want to look at the teachings and practices of the Faithful Word Baptist Church from a critical [4] standpoint.  I think it is my duty both as a fellow brother in Christ and as a religious studies scholar to look beyond the ugly veneer and attempt to understand and perhaps engage them.  It’s easy to point out our differences in implementation of practice and theology, but a much harder thing to engage the person in real dialogue and relationship.

He and I have points of intersection.  We both share a core belief on the doctrine of grace and the need to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. I share the concern that Mr. Anderson has with local assemblies not teaching their congregations the hard nuts and bolts of theology and Christian history.  We differ on a lot of things, but we are called to be a unified body and as such, sweeping dismissals of his practices and beliefs, which include a sweeping away of a measure of his humanity as well, is not the way to proceed. 

Attacking people that I disagree with is too easy; the much harder and much more profitable road is to find a way to interact and help them to flourish in the Truth. 

Any ideas on how to do this?

1. which I reject as sexist, but that is up for debate [↩]
2. ~25-26 minute mark [↩]
3. ~1:30 mark [↩]
4. and you have to remember that critical does not mean negative [↩]

I’m a member of a local community of Christians who reject eschatologies that posit a rapture, an antichrist, all that jazz.  We read the Apocalypse of John along with other ancient Christian, Jewish, and Roman apocalypses and find that it points to a veiled (read: symbolic) critique of the Roman empire and about the Christian’s place in that context. [1]

We see one full and final 2nd coming of Jesus, no half-coming where the good are raptured.   [2]

We perceive ourselves as a minority in the larger local church, Columbia, Missouri, and Midwestern Christian Communities.  Also, many of us personally used to buy into a rapture view, myself included. 

I bring all of this background information up because I see a disturbing trend in my community and I am not sure how exactly to constructively confront it.  We have a tendency to belittle Christians who stand within a raptural pale with a disturbing frequency.  And our group disdain is not limited to those that differ from us in terms of eschatology.  Among others, we belittle those who think violence can be justified, those who think that the republicans are a good voting option, and those that hold the myths in the Old Testament as literal history. 

We are not merely stating our disagreement.  With our internal rhetoric, we bemoan their ignorance, laugh at their theologies, and demean and ridicule behind their backs. [3] You see, we consider ourselves holders of the secret flame, as wise women in the midst of fools.  That is how we carry ourselves.  And that is wrong of us to do.

I am sure some of this comes from coping methods.  Some of us feel as though we have awoken from a lie (or series of lies) and we therefore project our feelings of past foolishness onto those similar to our past selves.  Additionally, since we perceive ourselves as a minority, our actions function as defense mechanisms. However, this is not a good way to deal with either our past theologies nor our perceived minority position.

What we need is a helpful and constructive way to engage these Christian others. Now, I agree completely that our interpretations are better interpretations. [4]   What we need to avoid is criticizing the people instead of their viewpoints. Also, we need to remember that these viewpoints help create and maintain our sisters’ and brothers’ identity. When we flippantly disregard their viewpoints, we are flippantly disregarding their identity.

What we need to do is to engage and dialogue with the Christian other instead of demonizing them. They have good reasons for thinking what they think, whether it be past experiences or past interpretive histories, etcetera.

I don’t know how to do that effectively nor how to help my community to do the same. Any suggestions? [5]

1. See the following:

   · Borgen, Peder. “Moses, Jesus, and the Roman Emperor Observations in Philo’s Writings and the Revelation of John.” Novum Testamentum 38, no. 2 (April 1996): 145-159.

   · Callahan, Allen Dwight. “The Language of Apocalypse.” The Harvard Theological Review 88, no. 4 (October 1995): 453-470.

   · Clemen, Lic. Carl. “The Jewish Apocalypses.” The Biblical World 34, no. 1 (July 1909): 33-44.

   · Frankfurter, David. “Apocalypses Real and Alleged in the Mani Codex.” Numen 44, no. 1 (January 1997): 60-73.

   · Maier, Harry O. “Staging the Gaze: Early Christian Apocalypses and Narrative Self-Representation.” The Harvard Theological Review 90, no. 2 (April 1997): 131-154.

   · Porter, Frank C. “The Place of Apocalyptical Conceptions in the Thought of Paul.” Journal of Biblical Literature 41, no. 1/2 (1922): 183-204.

   · Shodde, George H. “The Jewish Apocalypses.” The Biblical World 6, no. 2 (August 1895): 97-104.

   · Smith, Marian W. “The Apocalypse of John.” College Art Journal 9, no. 3 (Spring 1950): 295-307.

   · Votaw, Clyde Weber. “The Apocalypse of John: I. Jewish Apocalyptic Literature.” The Biblical World 31, no. 1 (January 1908): 32-40. [↩]

2. For instance, we explain two classical rapture passages, 1Thess 4:15-17 and Matthew 24:32-44, as follows. 

   · 1Thess: When a king would come into one of his cities in ancient times, he would ride up and stop just outside.  Then the leaders of the city would come out to greet him and then they would all go into the city together.  The King was always escorted into a city.  This is the imagery the readers would have recognized and we should pattern our interpretation of the text after. 

   · Matthew:  Notice a) the reference to the Flood and b) who is taken and who is left.  Who was taken away in the flood of Noah?  The unfaithful.  If it is to be the same as then, then those left behind when the son of man returns will be the righteous instead of them being raptured away!  This also fits well with Jesus’ imagery of the weeds being thrown into the fire and the wheat being left. [↩]

3. I am not just pointing the finger at everyone else in my community.  I am sometimes an active participant in this. [↩]
4. or I would hold other ones [↩]
5. If you are a part of my community, let me know if you think I am being fair here or not. This is how I perceive things currently. I am not trying to attack any one person. I just want us to grow ourselves and the Kingdom of God. [↩]

Religion Overthrowing Heresy and Hatred by Legros the Younger

I know I ask this ‘bout once a year, but what do you do with the category of “heresy?”  I keep wondering about the distinction between someone having a wrong doctrine and someone being cut off from fellowship and naming by other Christians.

On the one hand, I think my reformed sisters (and brothers) are wrong about a great many of things. This wrongness that I assign to them (and them to me) cuts deep, it pertains to matters as important as the nature of God and the process of salvation.  But I still name them Christians and fellowship with them as much as they allow (which can vary greatly, let me tell you). 

On the other hand, I think of some of my Latter-Day Saints brothers (and sisters) are wrong about a great many things.  This wrongness that I assign to them (and them to me) cuts deep; it pertains to matters as important as the nature of God and the process of salvation.  Because of this, I refuse to name them Christians (unless I am talking about how they self-identify) and fellowship with them in terms of our common humanity and not on the basis of a shared faith.

I’ll name the one set of wrongness “heresy” and the other I’ll brand “disagreements."  These may seem to be obvious examples, but where do you draw the line between them?  I’m not interested in dead men’s formulations being quoted ad nauseum,  I wanna hear about how you all deal with such things on the ground, in real life. 

Also, I get the sense that Christians, here and throughout time, have been quick to name, reject, and delegitimize views different than our own, as if they no longer had anything meaningful to say to us.  Do you get this sense?  Is it just me?  I am reminded of countless blog posts, conversations, readings of Church fathers, and Christian columnists summarily dismissing an idea, movement, or everything a figure had to say on the basis of a boxed, wrapped, and delivered heresy that we assign to them.  I will recognize the value of striving for truth and truth alone, but I wonder how useful this approach is – or when this approach is useful and when it is counter-productive to the growing of the kingdom of God.

When we stifle opposing voices, we turn them off and turn them away.  Our truth cannot be conquered by a lie and it need not worry itself (nor do we need to worry ourselves) concerning this.  Additionally, it may just be the case that people with certain wrong views can teach me a great deal – maybe it is God’s will for me do learn from them.  But it can’t happen if I reject them wholesale.  Additionally, if we set ourselves up as a community that ostracizes at the hint of dissenting, then we risk stifling doubt and risk cast people who might have such doubt along their journey towards the Father out, thereby alienating them from God’s community. 

Anyway, this is just some ramblings from a tired person who can afford to question such things at the moment.  What do you do with such things? 

The Church at Corinth was all kinds of broken.  The had problems over charismatic gifts.  They had problems over class divisions.  Gender roles split their spirit.  And on and on.

But, in light of all of that, look how God lead Paul to open his second letter to the Church there:

I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.  May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. 1st Corinthians 1:2-3

In spite of the very problems God that have splintered God’s Kingdom and turned us against one another, Paul writes to them as one unified part of the body of Christ.  It is their calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ which unifies them.  What a wonderful reminder and challenge present in those words.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give us grace and peace today as He did to the body in Corinth back then.

When, or at what point, do you break fellowship?

When does “not comprising” win over “be of one body?”

When do you break fellowship?

We, as Christians, are among the world’s best at sweeping, dismissive judgments. All one needs to do is subscribe to the Worldview Weekend newsletter to see that. This is not a new trend, however, as evidenced by the following quote by Epiphanius:

Passing this judgment [on them is like passing judgment] on a toothless lizard full of madness, I will go on to the next things, beloved, calling upon God to help our inadequacy and to enable us to fulfill our promise [i.e. to write this book] (Medicine Box, 49)

As dismissive judgments go, likening your opponent to a “toothless lizard full of madness” is pretty sweet. In this case the lizards in need of dentures were the Quintillians and they were dismissed because of their allowance of women as clergy and prophetesses.

I keep wondering how Luke 6:37 fits into all of this, if not in the 4th century, then in the current postmodern context in which we find ourselves.

Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Here’s the rub: how can I actually not judge and still maintain myself?

I consider myself to be a collection of definitions.  I am 6′1” tall.  I like basketball; I hate baseball.  I follow Christ.  I determine that which I am. Well, the things that I can choose – I can’t choose to be a white male, for instance.  I determine this by means of judgment.  I judge for myself that baseball is three minutes of action crammed into three hours.  I determine that math is a good way to use numbers.  I determine that there is nothing sweeter than a drop step or a juke+spin+hook-shot in basketball.  How am I not to judge, which is a command from the One that I follow when judgments necessarily make up an individual?  In other places in the Bible, we are commanded to test the spirits, to determine what is right.  How do we reconcile this?

As best as I can understand it, there is a distinguishment between moral and factual judgments.  We are to make so-called factual judgments about matters and hold them over and above the judgments of others.  On the other hand, we are to refrain from making moral judgments about people and their positions.

While this seems almost self-explanatory, I know I often need reminding of this.  Just look through the archives of masstheology.com, hundiejo.com, or brendoman.com as evidence of this.

What do you do with Luke 6:37?

Westminster Theological Seminary Suspended Professor Peter Enns effective at the end of this school year and will take steps to terminate his employment because of a book he wrote back in 2005 entitled Inspiration and Incarnation (review), which calls into question more conservative models of scripture while remaining wholly “[apologetic] and assum[ing] an evangelical faith in scripture from the outset.” [1]

Christianity Today has a write up on the suspension :Westminster Theological Seminary Suspends Peter Enns.

What do you think about the suspension? I know we have bloggers and readers that range from each end of the conservative to liberal spectrum when it comes to the verbal inspiration of scripture.

IMHO I don’t think that he should have been suspended at all, but then again, I tend to lean towards academic freedom and exploratory hypothetical theology which is left up to the students and readers to discern. I have not been in a position of power where Jesus’ words about causing one of these to stumble really apply as it would as being dean of a seminary. However, our view of scripture is not without its problems and it sounds like Enns has taken an honest and subtle look at the problem… and he is punished for it. Now, it is highly likely that this controversy will only boost his employability and sales of his book (my copy is on its way right now), but he now has to move his family, tear up his roots in a community, and evangelicals get a black eye from our own hand.

All of this reminds me about the unnecessary perils of venturing into the academic realm of evangelicalism. I want to be an evangelical scholar. We, as a community, are in desperate need of good scholarship if we are to both remain relevant and respected (listened to). But, if I teach or even consider that which is out of line, I am out of a job and perhaps blacklisted amongst the communities I wish/am called to serve. All of a sudden teaching at a small liberal arts college does not seem all that bad.

1. see the linked book review [↩]

So I found this quote by Alvin Plantinga taken from his magnum opus “Warranted Christian Belief.” To give a little context to the quote, Plantinga had been talking about his Calvin/Aquinas model for the necessity of the “internal instigation of the Holy Spirit” due to the noetic effects of sins. For fundamentalists like Plantinga (and myself) it offers some humor and insight.

“But isn’t this just endorsing a wholly outmoded and discredited fundamentalism, that condition than which, according to many academics, none lesser can be conceived? I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ’son of a bitch’, more exactly ’sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ’sumbitch.’ When the term is used in this way, no definition, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you fell obligated first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use); it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ’stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ’sumbitch’ simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like ’stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine’” (Warranted Christian Belief, pp. 244-245).

Question of the day (this time with an answer):

How do we, as Christians, conceptualize the Other?

How should we treat these people, both to their face and within our communities while they are not present? They think that they know how to best relate to that which is “wholly Other” – whether it be God, gods, the numinous, whatever you want to call it(s). We think we know how to as well. What do we do with such an impasse? Shall we let loose upon them the canon and be done with it? Do we assume all roads generate the same journey?

A good friend of mine and fellow author here at Theology for the Masses, JR Madill, navigated these very issues a few weeks ago in a talk on Christianity and Pluralism. Now, I don’t want to give away what he had to say, but I do want to say that I found his reply to be quite good and worthy of your consideration.

The 189th Christian Carnival is up at Diary of 1.

The theme for this week is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Every post has a Bonhoeffer quote as an introduction, either from his work or from a biography of his life.

Check it out!

I would encourage all of you to read Rose’s thoughts on being of one mind.
Rose’s Reasonings :: Will We Ever Be “Of One Mind”?

While you are at it, what does it mean to be truly tolerant? What good is diversity? Are these good things? Are these bad things? What definitions of each are you using?