A Biblical Hardliner

In an effort to prove to my housemate Pat that I keeping with blogging this time around, I am going to make a statement that I hope others will comment on.

Here Goes:

There are things in the Bible that are concrete and not open for ‘interpretation’.

Time to unpack that statement.

The reason that I say this is because I’ve heard so many Christians tell me that God’s word is living and active, and if I say that something can only be a certain way, then I must be the most arrogant man in the Universe. 

In the Universe.

Well I’m not.  (yes, I know that, in itself, is a hilariously ironic – and possibly even hypocritical – response) Having done biblical studies for two years now, I’ve decided that people need to start taking certain things seriously in their ‘interpretations’ of the good book.  For those who aren’t in biblical studies, we need to delineate between two kinds of interpretation: exegesis and hermeneutics.  Exegesis is the interpretation of what the text originally intended/meant.  Hermeneutics is the subsequent study of how to apply the exegetical work. 

Essentially, the main/big difference between exegesis and hermeneutics is that exegesis should have one answer (albeit one with possible other layers, like any good author should be) and hermeneutics is far more up for grabs. Sadly, most people skip exegesis and move to hermeneutics or, even worse, blend the two into some horrific mind monster. That’s wrong. And this is where people get miffed at me.

This post is about the need for a correct exegesis of the Bible, of what it meant to the people of the time, (at which point I can, if I so choose, apply that knowledge to my life [hermeneutics]) but most Christians tend to get all existential (feelings-oriented) and New-Agey about their interpretations of the Bible. Case in point: Revelation is not correctly interpreted as pre-tribulation, pre-millenialism rapture promises and warnings.  I propose that this idea comes mostly from some guy getting a little loose and liberal with his theology, tradition and his scholarship and came up with what is now the 8-Bajillion-dollar industry we have today.

When it comes to application, go nuts.  Do whatever floats your boat.  But when it comes to what it says, there IS a right answer.

Deal with it.

 

WK

Emerging Church Vision Made Easy.

(Originally Published April 21, 2006 on http://www.wkinchlea.blogspot.com)

After strolling around on the internet the other day, I found myself upon the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.

Some of my regular readers (and by some I mean the vast majority) have no idea what Web 2.0 is, and for the matter at hand, that’s ok. The point is, I found it funny, and I thought others would too.

So I emailed the Tall Skinny Kiwi, thinking he would get a kick out of it, too (he does know what Web 2.0 is). A week later, I get an email saying he enjoyed it as well and thought there should be one for the Emerging Church too. (Y’know, lighten the atmosphere, add some humour….for kicks) He then asked me to see if I couldn’t hack it and come up with my own.

Having never touched Javascript before, naturally I said “why not?”, and began to reverse engineer the website to create The Emerging Church Vision Generator. Originally, I had just sent Mr. Jones the html file for his own amusement and usage, (I didn’t have my own extra website hanging around) but I got impatient and decided to publish it for free at Bravenet.

For those at all involved with talking about Emerging Church junk, I hope you find this funny!

What’s Wrong and What Makes it Right.

Christians really boil my blood sometimes.  And this time, it stems from one simply sentence: they always have to be right about everything.

And I’m not even talking heresy, here.  In Christianity, our core doctrines (take, for instance, the Apostles creed) are pretty loose and limber.  

Apostle’s Creed:

 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
    the Creator of heaven and earth,
    and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
    born of the Virgin Mary,
    suffered under Pontius Pilate,
    was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into the dead.

The third day He arose again.

He ascended into heaven
    and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
    whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
    the communion of saints,
    the forgiveness of sins,
    the resurrection of the body,
    and life everlasting.

Amen.

See? Lots of wiggle room.  The problem is, hard denominationalism seems to liken people towards dogmas.

*Definition time* dogmas = denominational creeds - A particular interpretation of a doctrine. For example, the Church has always believed that our Lord is truly and really present in the Sacrament of the Altar. This is a doctrine. Transubstantiation, which is a explanation of how He is present, is a dogma. - www.theadvent.org/liturgy/glossary.htm 

Dogmas tend to divide people – see the worship post from Saturday – and a divisive Christianity is a useless Christianity.  Adherence to universal doctrine that the Church has been able to hold on to since the 4th Century AD/CE is what we need to shoot for, not the details.  I think I disagree with the idea of RC transubstantiation vs. an easy symbolic communion but I will still embrace my Roman Catholic brother, because his community has an ethic of sin confession that my presbyterian background sorely lacks.  

Now, it’s important to differentiate between hard denominational dogmatics and tradition.  Tradition is great.  Without tradition, we wouldn’t have our creeds, the deep meanings of Christian symbolism/liturgies, or even the realization of the Trinity!  The Church Fathers are deep thinkers; check out Athanasius – cool guy.  The problem is, people tend to throw out ‘tradition’ because they are pushing toward an ‘openness’, but they keep hard to the dogmas, which were the problem in the first place!

So.  Conlclusion:  Tradition = Good, Hard Denominational Dogmatics = Bad.  Let us embrace tradition, while  casting off our closed-ness to other dogmatics.  

-WK 

The Thing About Doing Church.

Church is a funny thing. 

For the sake of clarity, let’s define church in a really narrow way today; in about the same way that we say we are going ‘to do church (insert descriptor here) today.’ In other words, today, church is going to mean communal times of worship, fellowship and learning, the norm being the Sunday service.

Depending on your faith tradition, church can mean something very different to you compared to your christian neighbour (whom you are to love) down the street.  Take, for instance, the difference between your general post-brethren community bible chapel vs. your general Canadian Reform church.  Big difference.  At the former, you will generally find full-band worship music (generally contemporary works by Hillsong, Matt Redman and a whole slew of others worship artists), lots of talk about evangelism through community projects and maybe, if you’re lucky, a drama before the sermon.  At the latter, on the other hand, you’ll find organ-and-piano-singing of the psalms (with a few hip new hymns that were written 60 years ago), rigid liturgy, lots of talk about the covenant and piety, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get out after an hour, to come back after lunch for round 2.  

Are they both right in the way they do church?  Yes.  Wholeheartedly Yes.

People do what their traditions and passions guide them to do.  I’ve run the gamut from attending Roman Catholic Mass weekly to attending Conferences at Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (the Toronto Blessing, for those in the charismatic ‘know’).  I’ve found meaning and a love for our Lord in both. Personally, I like new takes on hold hymns – the re-working and refining of tradition to blend the old with the new.  Now, few people do that in their entirety (well, none as far as I have seen, at least), but it works.

What doesn’t work, however, is when people impress form on others to suit their own views.  A Presbyterian goes on about those heretical Pentecostals.  The Heretical Pentecostal goes on about those dead Baptists.  The Dead Baptist goes on about the Devil’s Roman Catholic. You can see where I’m going with this.  This impression of form on others oppresses the content as a whole.  

The thing that people should keep aware of, when being concerned with another faith tradition laying claim to Christianity, is through adherence to doctrine (Nicene, Apostolic or Chalcedon – take your pick) and through the fruits of their labours.  And the latter you can’t really weigh too heavily upon, as each tradition has their own preconceptions involved with that as well, but that’s another post. Let’s go with love as a standard, that’s a good one.

Ultimately, I’m just saying that everyone needs to leave each other alone and quit griping about the church down the street.  Do your thing; they’ll do theirs.  Maybe you guys can get together and bowl or something. Bowling is a neutral, christian standard for fun.

Or so I have been told.

-WK

What is the Emerging Church?

 (originally published in the Canon25, Fall 2006)

 

The popular church press these days seems to consistently touch upon what is commonly known as the “Emerging Church” – the subject generally being quite negative.  Generally, these critiques revolve around how the “Emerging Church” disavows truth, loves disorganization and loves rebelling for the sake of rebelling.  Frankly, this is simple untrue. 

Before we go any further, let us first make sure we know who were are talking about.  Its most important to remember that “Emerging Church” is not and should not be a title, but a description.  The emerging Church is a porous description that blankets most churches who are trying to become conversant with postmodernism – those who are reshaping themselves to reach out to the disillusioned people of the 21st Century.  Essentially we’re talking about people who do church for the emerging generations. Get it?  Good.

Here’s the rub: most people think far too small when it comes to the emerging church.  Essentially, when people hear of the “Emerging Church”, most tend to think of the American contingent – or conversation – known as Emergent (http://www.emergentvillage.com), led by Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christian  and its subsequent sequels.  Almost all of the major problems that are arising amongst mainline evangelicals about the emerging church stem from Emergent’s statements on relativity, the agnostic views towards certain orthodoxies and fringe worship and prayer practices.  While not necessary putting any of these down at this time –mostly because these are also misrepresented – that is not the subject at hand. 

While Emergent and its followers are the most vocal and well-known people in the emerging sphere, their’s is a vocal minority.  Their ideologies and practices represent very little of the totality that is emerging in the world.  Simply stopping at blogs like Andrew Jones’ Tall Skinny Kiwi (http://www.tallskinnykiwi.com), one can see the world trends of the emerging church.  

So what are the main ideas that seem to encompass what it is to be emerging?  Scot McKnight, author of the scholastic blog, Jesus Creed (http://www.jesuscreed.org) and self-proclaimed emerging follower, says in a paper to the Westminster Theological Seminary on October 26-27, 2006, that there are 4 ‘rivers’ that flow into ‘Lake Emerging’: postmodernism, praxis (practice), postevangelical and politics.

Postmodernism should not be seen as moral relativism and denial of absolute truth, but of a time to re-assess what is actually being taught to society, or the church, and to quest for what is actually truth, and not generally-accepted truths. Christian postmodernists believe in absolute truth, they just don’t believe that we, as a people, know everything. 

One of those ‘in-the-know’ words amongst emerging thinkers is ‘praxis’.  Praxis – essentially, practice – is the short form for orthopraxy or ‘right practice’.  The emerging church phenomenon places a very large emphasis on doing.  They are primarily a missional people, reaching out to their community while they feel the evangelical community is still trying to get people to come to them.  Emerging leaders want their congregants and leaders to go out and live like Jesus the way Jesus actually lived:  healing the sick; embracing the fringe peoples; helping people see the light of God. Not only do they go out and ‘do’, but they also explore different ways of worship, much the same way Tyndale attempts to explore new ways of worship each week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

As for post-evangelical, Scot McKnight, echoing D.A. Carson is correct in saying that the emerging phenomenon is a rejection of many, if not most, evangelical ideologies.  It is important to know that these ideologies are not the ‘ideals’ that are whimsically called upon by prominent christian writers, but the generally-accepted facts of Christianity by the majority of evangelicals.  This is seen through through 3 ‘post’s: [1] post-bible-study-piety, the – for lack of a nicer term – phariseeism of our theological gnosis; [2] post-systematic-theology, the need to get away from firm lines and statements and to return to the biblical narrative as our starting point; and [3] post-in-vs.-out, the most controversial element, which can be best stated by reading C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, chapter 15, about Emeth the Calormene.

The Final stream of McKnight’s description of emerging is politics.  Generally, emerging politics lean left, usually quite left, when it comes to the political spectrum.  The importance of the social gospel is paramount to this group.  Most evangelicals see ’social gospel’ as bad word at best, but emerging churches see it as important as the ’spiritual gospel’.  Emerging canadians would most likely tend towards voting Green Party, if that helps frame the political sphere.

These are the 4 emphases the emerging church ‘movement’ are taking hold of: postmodernism, praxis, postevangelicalism and politics.  It’s important to note that these are emphases and not hard and fast rules or policies.  Everyone part of the emerging church will expend different amounts of energy on each of the emphases.  This is what makes the emerging church so hard to define, it’s like trying to describe something as porous as a historical movement, while it’s happening.  So as people criticize the emerging church movement, one can either take it as it is told to them or they can learn for themselves what the emerging church really is.  As Scot McKnight says in his WTS paper, 

In other words, if you define emerging as Brian McLaren, and then narrow Brian to his sometimes incautious – even if nearly always probing and suggestive – comments about postmodernity and epistemology, and then roll out the implications of what Brian would seem then to believe, and then close with two chapters about what the Bible says about truth, you will give the impression that emerging is about hard postmodernism and, if you got your guts about you, you should avoid these folks like the bubonic plague. Which is what some are doing… which is fine  … unless you want to be accurate. 

 

- WK