Gadfly's Muse

Baying At The Moon: Brian McLaren's Take on the "Good News"

The word "lunacy" derives from an ancient idea that some folks' mental stability was tied to phases of the moon.  It's not too much of a jump to arrive at that term when reading some of the stuff Brian McLaren writes, and then to conclude that "baying at the moon" is a pretty apt description of it.

(Photo from HERE)

Following quote by McLaren (in italics, my comments are plain) taken from HERE

“The kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus said. “Rethink everything and believe this good news.”

[Notice when he quotes Mark 1:15 he translates "repent" as "rethink everything"!  McLaren takes the words of Jesus and stands them on their head.  Jesus understands the barrier to entrance into the Kingdom is sin and how sin is dealt with.   Man's problem in discovering the Kingdom of God is NOT that he needs to simply shift his ground of perspective, though that is required.  It is a dramatic reinterpretation of the world in terms of the need for grace, the grace of forgiveness, because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  McLaren doesn't like thinking this way though... it makes God so.... like someOne to be feared as well as loved.]

Christian Morality vs The Gospel???? Pondering Jacques Ellul

Ellul is not your everyday theologian/philosopher.  To say that he is a free thinker is pretty much to say that he is French.  His understanding of the Trinity smacks a great deal of Dynamic Modalism, an early heresy.  He was much influenced by Marx in his early days and I am not so certain that the influence has been sufficiently overcome. 

All that said... he is an engaging writer who needs to be sympathetically but carefully read.  Like Nehemiah's instruction to the workers on the wall - build the wall with one hand but keep a sword in the other.  That is how I recommend reading Ellul.

One sharp point he makes in this book which really got me thinking, was how "Christian Morality", as a philosophical system, is indeed "subversive" to the Gospel.

Drawing on the circumstances in Post-Constantine Rome, Ellul paints a pretty clear picture of the sharp contrasts and challenges facing the newly accepted and institutionalized Christian Church.  On the one hand there was the continued rampant and flagrant immorality which characterized the decadent pagan society that was officially on the decline.  Simply because the emperor decrees that pagan practices cease doesn't mean that they really do.  They changed their name, they became part of the prevailing "civil" moral code, they continued in the private practices of the general population.  When a person converted to Christianity, whether it was a real conversion or only one of convenience, they brought with them attitudes, habits of practice and thought, and general outlook, which was radically different than the Scriptures require. 

The Church, because of its newly ascendent political influence, was expanding rapidly.  The leadership was not numerically sufficient, or in most cases, spiritually equipped to deal with people as individuals.  Rather there was the equivalent of "mass conversions" or "catechisms".  Often these were based on pretty simplistic theological formulations and then follow-up and elder oversight was minimal.  Where Jesus had walked 3 years with a close group of 12 men (and one of them a devil) and a somewhat larger group of more tenuous relation, the leaders of the Church did not or thought they could not, really ground the new converts in a spiritual transformation.

The result, as is so often the case, the Church resorted to an imposed "Christian morality" which was required of its members, so as to distinguish the Church from the pagan culture as well as provide the test by which a person was "holding to the faith handed down."  Though this morality was that which was required of the texts in the Gospels, Paul, James and the other New Testament writers, it was divorced from the heart change from which this morality was supposed to flow.  In Ellul's analysis the Church put its members right back under the Law, only this time they substituted the words of Christ for the words of Moses.

That bears thinking about.  Ellul is of the opinion that true Christian morality is a fruit born out of Christian Freedom, a point which I with some caveats agree.  He is adamantly of the opinion that the Church cannot be large... that it must consist in small communities where diligent spiritual nurturing is present.  He decries the worldliness of mass Christianity for that reason. 

I do believe that the Law of Christ & the Law of Moses are not to be confused but neither are they to be considered antithetical.  There is a Christian ethic and it does have its purposes even apart from the heart change which is the only way it becomes acceptable to God.  For one thing a Christian ethic works to restrain evil and to demonstrate to unregenerate man his need for a Savior (the first two uses of the Law).  But Ellul is accurate when he says that an over-emphasis, or an uncritical acceptance of Christian morality as evidence of a true and lively faith is indeed counter to the Gospel and serves to subvert it. 

It is something to ponder in our own lives and in the oversight of those given into our care.

"I Want My Stuff"

(Photo- Sunset In New York, 2008, JAVanDevender)

"I believe one of the main ways that we grow in favor is by declaring it. It’s not enough to just read it it’s not enough to just believe it. You’ve got to speak it out. Your words have creative power. And one of the primary ways we release our faith is through our words. And there is a divine connection between you declaring God’s favor and you seeing God’s favor manifest in your life…You’ve got to give life to your faith by speaking it out."
Joel O'Steen, quoted here.

Read THIS (Sugar Daddy God, by Bill Bonner) for background to this post.

Job 35:13-16 Surely God will not listen to empty talk, Nor will the Almighty regard it.  Although you say you do not see Him, Yet justice is before Him, and you must wait for Him.  And now, because He has not punished in His anger, Nor taken much notice of folly,  Therefore Job opens his mouth in vain; He multiplies words without knowledge."

What I don’t understand, truly, is why the people in the pews show up.  First of all, even to a person with no Christian background at all, it just doesn’t have the ring of truth.  It requires a complete setting aside of the entire range of history.  “I want my stuff” would not have worked during the Great Depression.  Shoot, it wouldn’t have worked during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 with the British sacking Washington,DC, the War Between the States with hundreds of thousands of men dying or otherwise crippled, WWI and the parallel devastation of the Flu epidemic, etc. etc. etc.

If there is anything that common sense tells you it is that “wanting stuff” does not mean that you deserve it, are going to get it even if you do deserve it, or anything else.  It is just a statement of your present disposition.. “I want it”.  Usually it is followed by a temper tantrum when you don’t get “it.”

What Bonner is noticing is the “entitlement” attitude.  I am “entitled” to stuff simply because I exist.  There seems to be a significant portion of Biblical history devoted to God saying “NO, YOU DON’T!”  Christians do not hold “these truths (the ones in the Declaration of Independence) to be self-evident” at all.  Yes,  all men are created, or born, equally – they are born sinners deserving Hell  - they are not endowed by their Creator with any inalienable rights – the are sometimes shown the grace of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but these are always unmerited blessings from a Just God who has determined to withhold His wrath so that men may have the opportunity to repent.  Every day we should ask “give us this day our daily bread” – as a recognition that all good things, unmerited, come from God, even our daily bread.  He may require of us our life, our health, our prosperity, our relationships, our peace of mind, at any time – and yet, it would still be our duty to praise Him, to call Him good because He is good.

Job’s duty was to bow before God and call Him good.  Jeremiah’s duty was to proclaim God good in the face of Babylonian captivity.  Peter’s responsibility was to proclaim God good at Caesarea Philippi even when it meant that his Lord was to go to Jerusalemand be crucified.  “Get thee behind Me Satan” is just as much Jesus’ statement to those preaching a prosperity gospel today as it was 2000 years ago.

Yet they come, sit in the pews, wave their envelopes, and worship Mammon.   Sometimes I wonder if we still even have 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal.

Meditation on Calvin's Institutes - *WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THERE IS NO KNOWLEDGE OF SELF*

(The Eye of God, 2003, NASA, Hubble Telescope - see bottom for description) 

"....it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself."

John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. I, 1.2.

The freight train of sanctification is pulled by the diesel engine of repentance.

Calvin is here distinguishing between the knowledge available to the regenerate as opposed to the unregenerate. Here he speaks of a man who is able to gaze upon the face of God, something impossible to do unless God has turned His face toward the person (cf. Ex. 33:20). I don't think there is any discontinuity with para. 1 but rather extension into the subset of knowledge, the special knowledge that is available to the regenerate alone.

As with Heb. 12:1,2 the life of a believer is a race where we have to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith - of faith as a concept, a reality, a form of knowledge. The Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world entered into a Covenant of Redemption so that God could be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus Christ. We participate in that justification and grow in it as we ponder the perfection of faith in Jesus Christ - as His Beauty begins to dominate our lives and we actually begin, even in part to hunger after righteousness. It is our will that must change. We must begin to actually desire righteousness, that which no unregenerate person can ever truly accomplish. They may desire to avoid punishment but the righteousness they desire is so far removed from Christ's holiness as to be itself an abomination. But by pondering Jesus, the holiness of God Incarnate, we can begin to discover that which alone can fill the terrible void in the image of God that descended on man in the Garden.

In pondering that which is perfect our own self-knowledge, by God's gracious provision, becomes greater. We move from the discovery of sin in our lives to the discovery of our nature as sinner. We move from the
10 commandments to the Sermon on the Mount and in a process of sheer wonder and amazement we find joy in the process. As our discovery of the depths of our sin becomes more extensive so the corresponding freedom granted us in God's grace that covers all our sin overwhelms us and lifts our heads in joy. What I could never do He has done! What I could never be He already is! I may see now only in part but what I see, what I know is true.. I am a sinner saved by grace.

Calvin's best theology is his doxology.

Photo Credit: This is an authentic photograph -- or rather, composite of photos -- taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. The image was featured on NASA's Website as an Astronomy Picture of the Day in May 2003 and thereafter posted on a number of Websites under the title "The Eye of God" (though I have found no evidence that NASA has ever referred to it as such). The awe-inspiring image has also been featured on magazine covers and in articles about space imagery.

What it actually depicts is the so-called Helix Nebula, described by astronomers as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is dying star which has ejected masses of dust and gas to form tentacle-like filaments stretching toward an outer rim composed of the same material. Our own sun may look like this in several billion years.

Image Credit: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO).

The Corporate Nature of Salvation: What's Important About A Personal Relationship With Jesus?

My brother pastor, Jollyblogger, did a couple of posts on the subject of having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ."  You can find his most definitive thoughts HERE.

Mostly through its implications, this emphasis on "individualism" in Christianity has been a topic for my own pondering for quite a while.  My thoughts centered on whether the Bible teaches a "corporate view of salvation" as the primary point of reference, with individual salvation a necessary consequence or vice versa.  "Jolly" is absolutely correct in his observations about how the somewhat unique American emphasis on individualism forms a hermeneutical framework for our reading of Scripture.  His observations on how the para-church ministries perpetuate, encourage and even depend upon this emphasis on the individual are well taken.

George Marsden in his Fundamentalism and American Culture has this to say when discussing the impact of dispensationalism on the American cultural view of denominations (and therefore, corporate connectionalism):

An important reason that most American dispensationalists did not consider separation from their denominations a necessary consequence of their belief, was that they thought of religion primarily in terms of individuals rather than institutions.  The important spiritual unit was the individual.  The Church existed as a body of sanctified individuals united by commitment to Christ and secondarily as a network of an ad hoc spiritual organizations.  The institutional church hence had no particular status.  ... The true Christian was one separated from sin and worldliness. ... More immediately relevant was the question of how an individual was to live a spiritually separated and victorious life.

The context of this remark is a discussion about "separation from denominations" but the observation is relevant to my topic.

If it is true that the comprehensive purpose of God in all of His doings, throughout all of temporal history, is the formation of a people unto Himself and in whom He is to be glorified, as I believe it to be (cf. Jer. 24:7, 2Cor.6:16, Rev. 21:3, et al - the most consistent and oft repeated prophecy in Scripture), then the nature of the witness to His glory manifested by that accumulated congregation would seemingly be its aggregate witness rather than that witness of a succession of individuals as they cross the threshold into glory.

It is the nature of the witness to God's glory that therefore informs my own sense that the first priority is the corporate view of salvation with the individual's salvation being the means by which that corporate witness is attained over time.

Take for example Jesus' statement about His true Church - (John 13:35)  "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." The unique nature of Christian love that binds individual Christians to other Christians when there is no obvious, secular explanations for it (i.e. Jews/Gentiles, Slaves/Free, Males/Females loving each other across distinct sociological classes) could only be understood in terms of a divine intervention into the lives of the people.  It is the corporate witness of love (cf. 1 Cor. 13) that thus manifests and bears witness on earth, to the supernatural and incomprehensible love that God has for His people. 

When husbands and wives take to heart the teachings of Ephesians 5, they discover that their corporate witness together is a metaphor for the relation of Christ with His Church.  Jesus promises in Matthew 18 to be with His people in a special way when they are gathered together unto the discerning of His rule in the guidance of His Body, the Church.

At the heart of much of New Testament teaching is the typological significance of the entire assembly of God's people in ancient Israel and can only be fully understood when that significance is appreciated.  In the Exodus God saved a bunch of individuals but He did not save them as individuals... He saved them as a people and He instructed them to always consider themselves as members of a people in their relation to Him.  His law was given so that they would govern themselves in such a way as to point toward their corporate relation to their God in heaven (Dt. 4:6-8).

Across the board it appears to me that the American Evangelical emphasis on a Personal Relationship to Jesus as being the sine qua non for a true Christian spirituality is misguided at least.  It is the idea of joining a host, a militant host who fight with spiritual weapons in the war that is raging, that the Scriptures most often  use as a metaphor for the Christian fundamental world view.

This has far reaching though subtle implications for the life of sanctification.  As with JollyBlogger I do not deny the need for a personal relationship with Jesus... it is that we must view it as the work of initiation into the Christian life not the essence of it.

No Other Gods: Marilynne Robinson

After a tumultuous six months perhaps I can get back into this blogging scene.  Certainly I could not find a better stimulus for jotting down some thoughts than Robinson's guest editoral in the Jan. issue of Theology Today.  (Available at TheologyToday.ptsem.edu )

Robinson is an accomplished writer, a Pulitzer Price winning author and teaches at the University of Iowa.  I had never heard of her until this article caught my eye.  Her writing skills caught me right away and I read the work straight through, something unusual for me. 

I have picked up a few things here and there in Theology Today but it is not one of those publications that I expect to furnish more than an occasional tidbit or provocative paragraph.  Robinson's work is the best I have ever found in it.  In fact, I would say it may very well be the best, most concise, monograph providing the warrant for OT cosmogony and courteous, but deliberate polemical refutation of the sneering arguments of academic progressives that I have ever seen.

Robinson's own humble respect for God is evident.  She simply outlines where the Biblical creation account fits within the cultural mileau from which it originated.  She notes the self-evident differences between the Israelite motifs and those of the other ancient cultures.  In doing so, the plain superiority and radical distinctions of the OT stories are everywhere illustrated.  Our God cares for humanity.  We forget how revolutionary that concept was in its time.  She reminds us that Romans 1 furnishes a far more excellent reason why man's history is one of seeking supernatural explanations about life, the progress of time and the illusions of man's existence, than any of the currently popular ideas of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins.  IIt is amazing to find a respected academic postulating that our essential anthropology includes a yearning for the Divine.  It is even more amazing to find one stating that this yearning is not a defect but an impulse toward truth.  Man years for the Divine because the Divine exists and intuitively he knows it.

Robinson quotes Julian the Apostate to good effect.  It is a wonderful tactic to use one one's foes against each other.  I suppose in the entire article I found only one irritating statement.  In speaking about the pagan goddess Anat and the gruesome role she played in Canaanite mythology, Robinson states "...here we see the female side of divinity so woefully lacking in the Hebrew Bible." The unneccessary adverb "woefully" distracts from the excellence of her work.  God, for His own reasons, has depicted Himself as He sees fit in His bible.  We may note that He does not do so in female terms, it is not our right to criticize His methods nor express woe that He has not done it differently.  But that is about it as far as criticism goes.

Read her article. 

The Delights of Our Incomprehensible God: Reflections on John Piper's "The Pleasures of God"

This book has been out for a while but  I have only recently had the occasion to read it.  John Piper is the focal point of one of those breezes that God blows through His Church throughout the flowing ages. It's how He acts to bring needed correctives or counter-balancing emphases  where things may be drifting the wrong way.  For example, when man starts putting too heavy an emphasis on the fine points of theological speculation apart from doxology, God raises up pietists to remind us of othe importance of religious experience.  On the other hand, when revivalism gets out of hand, someone will start  raising the banner of right knowledge and doctrine.  God guides His church by stirring up the minds and hearts of people to act as a hedge to unhealthy tendencies,  and Piper, to my mind, fulfills a role like that today.

Piper's concern is to remind us that this grace in which we stand in relation to God, is a condition of joy and delight rather than grudging discipline.  As the herald of Christian hedonism he prophetically calls Christians away from the drabness of explicit or implicit practical legalism.  Too many Evangelicals consider discipleship as a general, stoical acceptance of toilsome religious duties and an unhappy scepticism of anything that gives pleasure.  Paraphrasing H. L. Mencken, Piper is fighting against the "suspicion that someone, somewhere is enjoying themselves"  as the prevailing character of Christian life.

Poverty: Abstract & Specific (part II)

In my previous post I gave a brief overview of some current events that make it somewhat pressing for Christians to clarify their thinking toward the so-called "problem of poverty." Much good and "not-good" is being done today under the auspices of dealing with this "problem" and it is an area where the a Christian's born-again natural sympathies can sometimes get in the way of his or her Christian discernment.

Perhaps some clarification could be attained if we first approached the question of poverty in general (abstract) and then particular points of poverty (specific) that may come before us.

Just as with everything else, Christians need to view poverty from the vantage of a balanced, God-centered world view. As with all other evils which flow from the heart and actions of sinful men, poverty plays a God-ordained role in the continuing progress of history. It is a peril to be avoided when possible, but it is also a threatened judgment by which God may chasten those who neglect His wisdom.

Even If An Angel of Light...... : Reflections on Brian McLaren & Generous Orthodoxy - Part IV

"Astonishing" is an over-used and abused word.  Very few things to which the word is applied truly are.  But it is the only accurate way to describe my reaction to McLaren's views on the "necessity" for a period of "pluralistic relativism" within the general as well as the Christian culture (presumably just in our country or other countries  and cultures at the same stage of emergence as ours) so that the next level of Christian consciousness can emerge.

To Brian McLaren, the transition from Modern & Post-Modern thinking to whatever it is that comes next must be through the  birth-pangs (cf. Gal. 4:19, Rev. 12) of a dogmatic relativism that is generously accepted.  It is something we must "go through" and "pass beyond" (pg. 287) so that we arrive at "something beyond and better."

Even If An Angel of Light...... : Reflections on Brian McLaren & Generous Orthodoxy - Part III

Today I would offer a few observations on Brian McLaren's views and apparent views on history and, indirectly, his views on Scripture.

McLaren appears to fall into the "Liberal-Optimistic" camp (to add another category to his multiple list) with regard to history and man's progress in it.  At the heart of his take on "emergence" is the idea that a "new" Christianity is emerging within the development of history and that, rather than being a new thing, it is really just a further increment in the manner in which man has developed in his social, moral and spiritual improvement throughout history.  For McLaren, history (and scripture) is narrative and the narrative is concerned with progress.