Who is the Neo-Reformed Zealot?

Reading the NYT’s recent article on Mark Driscoll and Scot McKnight’s blurb on NT Wright’s new book I thought I’d compile two lists of where I think the ‘neo-reformed’ are at and why in many ways we present something of a weird paradox to the rest of the Christian landscape as they try to figure us out:

Neo-Reformed (Things people don’t like):

1. We believe in the supremacy of God and his glory in all things.

2. We believe in the 5 solas.

3. We still believe in the inerrancy, authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

4. We are Calvinists – duh!

5. We still believe that people who die without Christ go to eternal conscious punishment.

6. We believe that the gospel is a word – i.e. you can’t ‘preach’ the gospel with actions – you can only proclaim it and live consistently with it.

7. We’re still complementarians.

8. We think that it is possible to develop a truthful systematic theology.

9. We will not budge on the importance of penal substitutionary atonement.

10. Yes, we think it is still possible to be a heretic and yes, there are quite a few those around in the church today.

Neo-Reformed (Things people like):

1. We have a largely open-handed approach to culture.

2. We’re always keen to re-think current practices.

3. Mission is a top priority for us.

4. In light of #3, we have a passion for church planting.

5. We’re more accepting of outsiders than previous conservative groups.

6. We’re into social justice and mercy ministry in a big way.

7. We’re greener than previous conservative groups.

8. #1, #6 and #7 are based on the fact that alongside our doctrine of Total Depravity and the brokenness of our world we’ve attempted to recapture the beauty of humanity and the creation through our understanding of the Image of God and Common Grace respectively.

9. Our Gospel includes the restoration of all things (See Tim Keller’s ‘The Gospel in All its Forms‘)

10. And horror of horrors – a lot of us still think NT Wright is a pretty good author and theologian even if we don’t always see eye to eye.

Paid Pastoral Staff? A Calling to the Ministry?

Andrew Hamilton has an interesting post, something I haven’t thought very hard or long about. In it he asks this question:

“Can anyone provide a compelling biblical argument for the existence of paid pastoral staff within a local congregation?“

It’s an interesting question. He concedes that you could probably make more than one good pragmatic argument for paid pastoral staff he then also mentions his own experience of calling to ministry as perhaps a compelling argument. That got me thinking even more. If I re-phrased his question then we have another question that is often taken for granted or thought very little about:

“Can anyone provided a compelling biblical argument for the existence of a subjective call to the ministry of a local congregation?“

Life is becoming more and more complicated the more I study the Bible – the questions just keep on coming, and often they’re questions that impinge upon me directly – like questions about paid pastoral ministry. Anyone got any thoughts on these questions?

Prescriptive vs Descriptive

My continued reading in everything missional is providing me with insight, surprises, encouragement and also concern and, at times, disappointment. Since I spend most of my time on this blog waxing lyrical about the upside of the missional movement I think its time I started to approach it from a bit more of a critical stance. I’ve already done that a bit in my last post.

Today I want to think a little about the usage of prescriptive texts versus descriptive texts in our developing of a missional ecclesiology. What has become apparent to me is that a significant amount of weight, in much missional writing, is given to the descriptive texts of the Gospels and Old Testament narrative. Now I’m not at all against gleaning insight from descriptive texts – I firmly think it is a task we must embark upon. But, I also think its a delicate task which requires a bit of hermeneutical skill. So for example, what does it mean to embody the life of Jesus in our mission? How do we follow the example of Jesus? Is everything he does a paradigm for us to follow? These are difficult questions that, in my mind, are bypassed a little in a lot of missional writing. I think Tim Chester exposes this a bit when he explains why he doesn’t believe in incarnational mission. I think its tricky and we need to be careful of not forcing the bible to match our missionary methodology of choice. In our desperation to convince others of the missional agenda we can misuse texts and make prescriptive requirements for others from texts that were never meant to be prescriptive.

Conversely, I haven’t seen enough interaction with the prescriptive texts of the epistles in missional literature. I haven’t seen many detailed discussions of passages like Ephesians 4 and how they should shape our missional communities. I think we’d all benefit from some serious study in these areas. Paul is the single biggest commentator on the life of the local church in the Scriptures and so we should be hearing more from him as we build missional ecclesiologies.

Thoughts?

Cultural Influence – The Decision we All Face

I engaged in a fascinating tutorial today which my church history professor took on the subject of the rise of scholasticism in Medieval Christianity. We spent a significant amount of time discussing the impact that the re-discovery of the works of Aristotle had upon the western church. As the westerners came into conflict with the Arabic speaking world through the crusades they came back into contact with large amounts of Aristotle’s work which had been faithfully preserved by the Arab scholars. The Aristotelian worldview and the culture it created confronted the lethargic western church and forced it to respond. Now what is fascinating from a historical point of view is the church’s response. Historically the church has responded to these cultural shifts in one of three ways:

1. One of the most common response is to condemn this foreign influence as being from the devil, damn it to the pit of hell and completely reject it.

2. Another approach is to adopt it wholesale to the point that it completely replaces one’s Christian worldview.

3. The third approach is to find some sort of compromise and integrate the foreign influence or new culture with the Christian worldview.

These three responses are evident so often in the pages of church history. We see them being expressed in the enlightenment period and how the church confronted Darwinism – we see it a bit today as the church confronts the current culture shift and post modernity. What I find interesting is the that many evangelicals tend to see the third response in a purely negative light. We’ve been trained to think of the concept of compromise in completely negative categories. This is actually extremely arrogant because it has to presuppose perfect knowledge of the divine revelation and its interaction with culture. When we paint the concept of compromise in purely negative terms it highlights a smug belief that we hold about our personal possession of absolute truth and that, functionally, we see ourselves as completely above reproach in all areas pertaining to the clash between divine revelation and culture. Yet the Bible itself tells us that this is not true – we don’t know all and are constantly revising and (hopefully) bettering our understanding of divine revelation and its relationship to the prevailing culture. Compromise CAN be positive when a new culture causes us to reflect upon the divine revelation with fresh insight and re-adjust our previous convictions that were in fact based upon faulty interpretations often derived from previous cultural influence.

The acknowledgement of this should bring about a great humility when dealing with the clash between the text and the culture. Its not a call for cultural relativism but rather a careful realization of existing cultural presuppositions and the onset of new ones. The reality is that everyone (even the fundamentalist) is working with and trying to negotiate these cultural presuppositions as they aim to be faithful to the divine revelation. I suppose the decision we all face then is whether or not to be honest about our cultural baggage and humble when we come to the Bible.

Functionally Illiterate?

In the past few years I’ve sat in a lot of group bible studies working with the English text of scripture. Sometimes I’ve been leading them, sometimes I’ve merely been a participant. The aim of these study groups has been to get to the plain reading of scripture (and that doesn’t always mean the literal reading of scripture. Often the two are vastly different from each other – but that’s another blog post). You want to get behind the author’s intent bearing in mind the various layers of context you need to work through in order to gain something of a satisfactory reading of the text.

As I work side by side with others in these groups I’ve begun to notice a slight discrepancy which has the potential for some error. A lot of first language English speakers in this country are functionally illiterate. They can only read the English text at a fairly basic and obvious level, without taking real cognisance of the grammatical flow of a particular passage. This has become especially apparent to me as we’ve looked at passages in the epistles where one needs to do a bit of discourse analysis to derive meaning. You can’t really do proper discourse analysis without a functional understanding of how grammar works. And this is exactly what I’m finding lacking in many people who speak English as fluently as the Queen.

What its done to my thinking is forced me to rethink how we do bible study because now I’m aware that not only am I trying to lead a group to unpack a text but in some ways we’re learning grammar too. A form of bible study that is heavily reliant on discourse analysis is going to miss quite a few people. The reality though is that discourse analysis is necessary if you’re after accurate meaning and so we need to somehow both do discourse analysis in small groups as well as teach it along the way in a simple understandable manner. We must bear in mind that we want to also help those studying the text with us in small groups or home groups to be able to gain skills that will help them access more and more of the text in their own personal reading. I’m not sure what that looks like yet. Any suggestions?

BTW – I know my grammar are rubbish on most of my post, but that are just laziness!

Further Reflections on Love – The Loveless Church

I’ve spent the best part of the last 8 years moving in conservative evangelical church circles. The majority of the churches I’ve been involved with have been churches where the gospel of Christ is central not just in belief but also in proclamation. Whilst moving in these circles I’ve also often heard a repetitive criticism attached to them. I’ve heard many people complain that these ‘bible-based, gospel-centered’ churches are great on a lot of things but not great at being loving. My immediate response has often been to suggest that person offering the critique doesn’t really understand what biblical love is and that by preaching the gospel we are showing the utmost love. Often my response was justified. But often it wasn’t and the criticism was valid. It is not completely unfair to evaluate a number of the churches with which I am associated as being un-loving, or at least poor at displaying love.

This is a perplexing problem for someone like myself who holds to the absolute importance of gospel-centered bible teaching as the very core of the church life. Why doesn’t it seem to be working in some cases? Well I don’t have all the answers to a question like that, but I have noticed something that I think is contributing in part. I think that often we’re being reductionistic about the call placed upon every believer by the bible itself. Let me quote a section from Tim Chester and Steve Timmis’ book, ‘Total Church‘ to illustrate what I mean. Concerning ministry to the poor the authors comment:

“The most loving thing we can do for the poor is proclaim the good news of eternal salvation through Christ. It is by no means the only loving thing we can do for them, but it is the most loving thing we can do.” (p.75)

Often I think we’re forgetting to add in their little qualification ‘it is by no means the ONLY loving thing we can do…’ And forgetting that qualification can make the world of difference to whether or not a church is loving. So I still affirm, with the authors, that to proclaim the gospel is the single most loving act we can perform as Christians – BUT – its definitely not the ONLY one. We need to shake off that reductionism and teach regularly how the gospel causes us to love in a number of different ways. And then we need to display that true love to a watching world.

Can you Defend Contextualization Exegetically? An Open Forum

Here’s a post by Gordon Cheng that suggests that Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17 doesn’t really advocate contextualization (be sure to read the comments). What do you think?

As for me, you’ll know if you read this blog that I’m a bit more in the contextualization camp – but in terms of defending my position exegetically (defend from scripture – sorry for the jargon) I need to give it a bit more thought.

Alright peeps – your turn (and remember no essay length comments!)…

Harmon on New Testament Unity

Matt Harmon outlines 5 reasons in support of the theological unity of the New Testament documents. He also helpfully points to further reading on the subject.

Quote of the Week

“This internet is a wonderful tool, isn’t it? Incredible insight with very little actual knowledge.“  – Michael Spencer responds to some would-be Christian watchdogs prowling around the internet looking for minute discrepancies to devour without understanding.

2008 Preliminary Reads

Here are some of the reads I’m intending to attempt along with all my college reading in the first two months or so of the year:

A Clear and Present Word – Mark D. Thompson

I’m busy with this one at the moment – almost halfway through. Thompson makes quite a compelling case that not only is God a speaking God but he is a speaking God that intends for his communication to be known by those he has created. I just finished a brilliant section where he tackles the issue of human language and exposes the potential problems it poses for communication between a transcendent God and his human creations.

Post-Christendom – Stuart Murray

I’ve read a fair amount of good reviews about this one so I thought I’d better check it out. I’d like to also match up the way he qualifies post-christendom with the current South African Christian context and see how true his picture rings here.

Neither Poverty nor Riches – Craig L. Blomberg

I live in South Africa where poverty and riches live side by side in a way that is found almost nowhere else in the world. I think, therefore, a thorough knowledge of what the scriptures say on the issue, authored by a proven biblical scholar, is a must for me and other ministers in this country.

Thanks for all the Literature Bart and Co.

After watching those Ehrman lectures I was wondering to myself how I might pastor people who came to me distressed after reading a book like ‘Misquoting Jesus‘ or far less scholarly literature like the ‘Da Vinci Code‘. So I did some searching around to see how many people have written academic responses to these sorts of works but written them at a popular level – as Ehrman himself does. Now we all know about the glut of literature written in response to the ‘Da Vinci Code‘ but what else is out there?

What I noticed, without having read much of it at all, but through reading reviews by other top scholars, is that there seems to be a whole lot of really decent literature out their refuting people like Ehrman, Price, Pagels and of course Mr. Brown.  Top evangelical scholars like Darrell Bock, Daniel Wallace, NT Wright, and others have written quite a few works. And so in once sense I’m glad that Ehrman and co. wrote these books because its made a whole lot of good Christian scholarship, in this area, available to so many more people than we previously had. As has always been the case in history, the church is writing theology for each occasion and there is some quality coming out.

Bart Ehrman on Youtube

I watched all 10 parts of agnostic, Bart Ehrman’s, Stanford lectures entitled ‘Misquoting Jesus’. I haven’t read the book but I found him quite fair and entertaining in the lectures. I don’t agree with him on a number of points – some of them rather crucial points to his whole argument – but I did find him engaging. From what I could pick up it seems that Ehrman would take issue with many of the findings of some scholars who come out of more of a classic liberalism when it comes to the dating of some of the original New Testament books. He seemed to come out a lot more conservative on that issue than I thought he’d be.

There’s nothing earth-shattering in his presentation and he says that himself – he’s not bringing new things out onto the table he’s just popularizing textual criticism for a wider audience. His work probably could cause a lot of anxiety in certain Christian circles that aren’t taught to think a little beyond the status quo. I suppose I should warn people, if you’re evangelical that is, to exercise a bit of caution if you’re planning on watching the material – don’t denounce Christianity and run out and follow him just yet. Maybe read a little further in the subject. You never know you might find that there are a fair number of quality evangelical scholars who might also have something worth saying.

Check out Ehrman’s wiki page make sure though that you read the transcript of a debate he had with William Lane Craig in 2006 or read Dan Wallace’s critique of Ehrman’s book.

Commentaries – Too Big – Brain – Too Small

I completely agree with Michael’s assessment of current trends in the world of commentaries on the Biblical text. My small brain hurts even thinking about it.

Is Multi-Site Church Biblical?

J.D. Greear, with a whole lot of insight from John Piper, has a go at looking at the biblical evidence for multi-site/congregation churches.

(HT – Justin Buzzard)

Tutu Gay Rant

Today Desmond Tutu has had a go at the broader Anglican church for the amount of time and energy it is giving to the ‘gay’ issue – most notably in the States where this particular issue is tearing the Episcopal church apart. He was rather critical of Archbishop Rowan Williams for not displaying the attributes of a ‘welcoming God’. Tutu was adamant that he does not worship a homophobic God.

So what do I think? First off I should point out that I have often admired the stands that Tutu has taken on certain social issues even if I wouldn’t see eye to eye with him theologically. But this post is about theology. Now I’m glad he doesn’t worship a homophobic God, because neither do I. I do however worship a God who designed sexual intercourse for the confines of the marriage covenant between man and woman. Hence when men exchange sexual relationships with women for relationships with men (and vice versa) this God calls that ‘unnatural’. I worship a God who thinks that the practice of homosexuality is wrong and in rebellion to his created order. I worship a God who calls on his followers to turn from all rebellion and to be able to clearly identify what is and isn’t rebellion. I worship a God who calls on Christian leaders to call sin as it really is. I worship a God who is concerned about the purity of his church.

Am I a bigotted fundamentalist? Well before you make that judgment let me share some further beliefs of mine:

I believe that God calls me to love all people – that includes homosexuals. I believe God calls me to not judge those outside of the church. I believe that God detests homophobia which is as much a sin as homosexual practice. I believe that where I sin in my life in other ways those sins should be considered just as vile in the Lord’s sight as homosexual practice. I believe I have to be ever vigilant in my own life to guard myself against sin, and to repent when I stumble (which I do often). I believe that God offers freedom from the penalty of sin through his Son, Jesus Christ. I believe that the only way to truly reflect the attributes of a ‘welcoming God’ is by declaring the glorious Gospel of his son Jesus.

Archbishop Tutu makes this statement:  ”God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another” – I have no doubt that God weeps over many of the atrocities we commit against each other. I also have no doubt that the God of the Bible weeps over Tutu’s idea of a pure church.

NT Wright on Sola Scriptura

The following question was recently posed to NT Wright: How does the doctrine of sola Scriptura influence your work and your method?

This is his response:

Well, in terms of method, sola Scriptura is what I’ve always tried to do, basically. You could put it negatively… If you find yourself thinking down a track where you think, Oh, well, if I go there, that’ll mean ditching this bit of the Bible or that bit, then all sorts of warning lights flash and say, “You probably shouldn’t be going there!” It may be that you’ve misheard your own mind, as it were, and there may be a way through this because there are always puzzles that we hit, but basically, my aim has been to expound Scripture and to expound Scripture in such a way that I do not set one Scripture over against another.

However, I have to say, and my work on the authority of Scripture, which you probably know – a little book called The Last Word in America. Silly title, by the way. That was Harper’s folly to call it that. It wasn’t my idea. Fancy having a book called The Last Word! I mean… it’s very silly. If I was going to write a book called The Last Word it would be on Christology, not on Scripture. “In the last days, God has spoken to us by his Son…”

But I’ve been trying to stress that the risen Jesus does not say to the disciples, “All authority on heaven and earth is given to the books you chaps are going to go off and write.” He says, “All authority on heaven and earth is given to Me.” So that if we say that Scripture is authoritative, what we must actually mean is that the authority which is vested in Christ alone is mediated through Scripture.

That’s a more complicated thing than simply having a book on the shelf, full of right answers that you can go and look up. It’s more a way of saying that when we read Scripture and determine to live under it, we are actually saying we want to live under the sovereign lordship of Jesus mediated through this book.

When you say it like that, then all sorts of other things happen as a result, like what is the sovereign lordship of Jesus all about? Is it simply to fill our heads with right answers to difficult questions? Well, right answers to difficult questions are better than wrong answers to difficult questions. But no, the authority of Jesus Christ is there to transform and heal and save the world, to make the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. So the question then is, how does the authority of Scripture serve that purpose?. And that’s actually much more interesting than simply using Scripture to settle or raise indeed doctrinal disputes within the church.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Preaching Errors According to Manchester #2

Part #1 – here.

Simon Manchester’s second error – ‘Craft beats meaning’:

Another (similar) idea around today is that craft beats meaning. No-one would put it this foolishly, but there is more attention paid (in this error) to the presentation than to the meaning. What is the long-term benefit of a passage used devotionally (without proper biblical theology) if its packaging is better than its truth? What is the point of abusing a text to sell a clever idea? Some sermons are so formulaic in their presentation, only a discerning person realizes that its all ‘form over facts’ – and that’s the sad problem! Sermon craft is a great servant in preaching; it helps the communicator and the listeners. But its a bad master when it pretends that there is an only way to do things (clever story to begin, three points and a bombshell to finish). The Bible is  bigger than our craftiness.

I think its often easier to follow a set form in preaching than to let the rich diversity of the text inform how you craft different sermon forms. But we’re lazy – well I’m lazy – and so often the ‘clever story, three points and a bombshell to finish’ just gets perpetuated because of that. One of the things I’ve done to try and combat this in my own preaching is to listen to a lot of preaching from a lot of different preachers and then have a sort of eclectic approach to form that doesn’t stifle the text but rather, as Manchester says, is a servant to the text. So I regularly try to listen to Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Don Carson, Phillip Jensen, John Woodhouse, John Chapman, Simon Manchester, Dick Lucas, Vaughan Roberts, Richard Coekin, Justin Mote, John Stott, plus some of our own preachers here in South Africa. Its one way to avoid getting stuck in formulaic preaching that stifles the text.

Preaching Errors According to Manchester #1

First off – this has nothing to do with the errors of a certain football team of which I refuse to speak of on this blog!

Simon Manchester of St Thomas church in North Sydney writes the Pastor’s Brief in the November issue of the Briefing. His article is entitled, ‘Preaching with Biblical Confidence‘ and in it, amongst other things, he lists four common errors in modern preaching which I thought would be good to reflect on and make some comments. Error #1 – ‘Clever beats substance’:

There is a strange idea around at the moment that clever beats substance. Put more crudely, this view seems to think that the Bible is pretty dull and hard to sell, but with some marketing, we can sneak it past people’s guard. This loss of proper confidence in the Bible confuses the power of the clever gimmick with the substance of the powerful Word. But once a preacher has grasped the way God works (by his word) and the impact of his message (in the Word), it lights up everything he says, and people learn quickly who to trust. 20 minutes of straw followed by five minutes of wheat at the end is a strange way to feed your listeners. Somewhere the preacher has to think (and say), “Here is the book that will explain your life and the God behind everything. Now listen!” It’s embarrassing to treat Scripture as weak or dull.

I’ve listened to a few MP3 talks by Simon Manchester and he is very far from dull and boring – he packages the central thought of the text really well and so I’m pretty sure he’s not going against packaging your sermons well and being ‘clever’ in that way. I think he’s more concerned about packaging the text out of a sermon.

I was wondering how I might be guilty of this in my own preaching and I thought about the way that I like to discuss epistemology in my preaching. For me epistemology is one of the key issues evangelical Christians face today and so invariably I’ll have something to say about it in one of my sermons. The danger is that I often feel that if I don’t make a convincing enough argument about Christian epistemology then the sermon will lose its power. This article reminded me that the power is not in how well I craft my epistemological arguments (as important as they are) but rather in the text and the faithful presentation thereof.

Are We Simpletons?

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs of late where my guess would be that the authors wouldn’t classify themselves as ‘evangelical’. I read them because I appreciate the way these folk wrestle with so many pressing issues and how they integrate multiple academic disciplines with such skill trying to probe into important topics facing the broader Christian movement. Yet as I read these folk I often wonder what they think of us.

Let’s say that by chance they drop by …daylight and browse around, reading some of the posts. I wonder what they think about 4 young evangelicals who believe the Bible is God’s authoritative, infallible word for life and salvation, that salvation comes only through repentance and faith in Christ because of his work of substitutionary atonement and that hell is a real and coming judgment for those who reject Christ? Do they think we’re simpletons? Naive in our faith? Closed minded and narrow? Anti-intellectual? Misguided? What do they think?

Reformissionary on Preparing Sermons

Steve McCoy has a great little outline of how he goes about studying the bible and preparing it into a sermon each week – he has some great advice.

If only all pastors put this sort of effort into their preaching.