introduction to Discussion of In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center on the Confessing Christ Lisrserv

Gabriel Fackre’s work loomed large in the conceptualization of In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center even as from the beginning of my Christian walk (1972) I have consistently taken a comprehensive approach.  Early on I had read and agreed much with Horace Bushnell's 1848 essay, “Christian Comprehensiveness,” which I view as having much contemporary relevance.  As a result of what I can only describe as a most authentic born again experience, I linked up with the Pentecostals in 1974, which was my entry into evangelical thought and culture (obviously, there was a big piece missing, namely the Reformed perspective, which I didn't begin to grasp till decades later).  I appreciated very much the Pentecostal emphasis on the Holy Spirit as well as on the Bible, but never seriously took in their dispensationalist theology, their literal interpretation of the Bible, their interpretation of evolution and geology, and social and political conservatism. My stock line was that I take the Bible most seriously, but not necessarily literally, especially where it did not apply; namely science and history. In my role as a Campus Minister Associate, while in graduate school, I led student groups that consisted both of mainline Protestant and evangelical/Pentecostal members.  

I typically sided with the evangelicals on basic issues related to the centralities of the Grand Tradition, while veering toward the mainliners in terms of temperament, the rejection of an inerrant biblical hermeneutics, which I felt went beyond what the various writers of the Bible attest to, and in my understanding of the difference between history and theology, and my appreciation for evolutionary science. My book is a distillation of such issues in an effort to carry on this evangelical/mainline dialogue in a more formal, scholarly manner, in a way also, that contains significant aspects of my own evolving spiritual odyssey.

In terms of comparisons, beginning with Ch. 4 on Bloesch, I open each chapter with a comparison of that person and the author in the previous chapter; in Ch. 4 on Bloesch and Packer.  Ch. 5 opens with a brief comparison between Bloesch and Fackre, where I speak of Fackre's greater willingness to embrace a hermeneutics of suspicion and greater swaths of theological liberalism even if, ultimately, only through the distanced voice “critic-in-residence.”  This is followed by a section titled, “Fackre's Theology in Brief.” Both of these introductory sections were designed to prepare the reader to launch into the more extended and substantive aspects of Gabe's theology of Scripture and narrative theology of God.  Ch 6 opens with an extended comparison between Fackre and Brueggemann that included commentary on the biblical theology of Brevard Childs.  I titled this introductory section, “Brueggemann and Fackre Compared: Narrative Theologians in Divergent Veins.” A major difference is the contrast between Brueggemann's “angular” reading of particular texts contrasted to Fackre's emphasis on the ultimate harmonization and importance of the entire Scripture.

I would encourage those working out of UCC perspectives to look closely at the chapters on Bloesch, Fackre, and Brueggemann, who, respectively, represent the conservative, centrist, and moderate liberal wings of the denomination, and in a more general sense, the mainline Protestant perspective.  I would hope that chapter 7, on neo-orthodoxy, would also be of interest to those influenced by traditional mainline theological perspectives, where the collective impact of Barth, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and the Niebuhr brothers, at least, at one point in time, loomed so large.  In addition to the original neo-orthodox writers, I also drew on Douglas Hall's Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of "Neo-Orthodoxy" and Gary Dorrien's, The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology.   While there are various reasons why contemporary evangelicals and mainline Protestants would marginalize or outright reject the significance of the neo-orthodox perspective, in my view, there are valid reasons—not the least of which is the recent Barthian revival and the enduring significance of Bonhoeffer—for viewing it as an important theological thread in constructing a vital center.

Inerrancy, Hermeutics, and the Complexity of Biblical Interpretation

There is much that warrants sustained commentary in current discussions on biblical interpretation.  Of particular importance is that of grappling with underlying presuppositions of the various positions surrounding this issue. Among other considerations, the diversity of genres within the Bible and the role of progressive interpretation within the flow of the biblical grand narrative—that within the framework of its story, begun at creation (well before a single word of text was written) and extending echatalogically beyond our located time in history, as well as our location within that flow between the first and final coming of Christ—need to be factored into current discussions. I can only offer few points here.

There is an important interpretive stream in biblical theology that contends that God's holy Word is inscripturated within the biblical text. There is another important stream that the Word of God can be accessed through the text which becomes available to receptive and faithful readers through various means of revelation. That the original biblical writers, from their distinctive perspectives, were inspired by God, in which what they wrote was stimulated by God's spirit within them, even as what they perceived was invariably processed by the various historical conditions and natural limitations in which they wrote and received as inspiration.  

1. In this respect, one could say that God, through the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of Scripture, while granting that any temporal hermeneutics is (or has been) processed through an array of interpretive filters, which can be, and typically are, fallible in various significant and not so significant ways. With such limitations in mind, one might say that the Spirit of God is embedded in the text regardless of contemporary reception. That is, in contrast to certain postmodern readings, there is meaning (that is, authorial intent) in the text, as such, even as such Authorial intent needs to be filtered through the authorial intent and time and culture bound limited knowledge base of the various biblical writers.
2. The Word of God is also mediated through the Bible, with more of an accent here on reception by interpretive communities through which the Bible, in its canonical integrity, uniquely conveys the Word of God in a manner that was not possible for other texts.   

Consequently, through this text (both in terms of particular passages, as well as through the flow of the Grand Narrative, with the emphasis on Christ as the interpretive center of the Bible), I receive the Word of God afresh as it is revealed to me in the various fallible ways that I perceive it.  Yet, given point 1, without the meaning of the text, as such, I only have a subjective basis, in which truth statements cannot be made about the Bible or revelation, itself, because there is nothing beyond the reader-based given of a potentially infinite array of perspectives.

 To put this in terms to which I have elsewhere referred, the biblical revelation as the Word of God, as referenced in both points 1 and 2, is grounded in an ontological truth claim that can only be processed through the prism of limited epistemological filters.  Though we see Jesus, we do so through a glass darkly.  I contend that acknowledging both sides of the epistemological/ ontological continuum is critical to a well-grounded faith and to a faithful biblical hermeneutics.

 Consider 2 Timothy 3:16:  "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (ESV).

• All Scripture.  For the author of Timothy that meant the OT.  For us, that means both testaments, in which the revelation of Christ is the central reference point for all valid interpretations. To take one extreme example, the role of violence in the OT is a complex manner, one that I cannot enter into here.  Regardless as to whether it is persuasive, Walter Brueggemann (clearly no inerrant interpreter of the Bible) addresses this issue here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl0hK3ZTVyc  and here http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Presence-amid-Violence-Contextualizing/dp/160608089X

• Is breathed (is inspired) by God.  This is not synonymous with an inerrant interpretation; only that all Scripture, as the primary source of Christian revelation, is uniquely inspired both in its textual formation and in its receptive capacity in a uniquely different way than other texts.

• Profitable for....  I believe this speaks to the potential value of the biblical texts as a primary source of edification in all of the ways identifies by the epistle writer and more.  That is, all Scripture holds the potential for such edification in a uniquely revealing way distinct from other sources.

I agree that, as a formal doctrine, inerrancy is a modern product, grounded in the culture wars between modernism and fundamentalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—a culture conflict that continues to carry a good deal of resonance in contemporary US Protestant theology, biblical interpretation and religious culture.  I do not reject the notion that prior to the late 19th century there was nothing analogous, which gave to Scripture a central interpretive role grounded in authoritative truth claims.   However, different epistemologies were at work in different eras of church history that shaped how such claims were made, which matter significantly on how "literalistic" one may be about the meaning of such claims.

Early in his career, J. I. Packer was willing to forgo the concept of the term, inerrancy because he felt it interfered with the more important truth claim that “Scripture has complete and final authority over the Church, as a self-contained, self-interpreting revelation from God.”  He argued that the primary evangelical aim was to proclaim, “What Scripture says, God says; and what God says in the Scripture is to be the rule of faith and life in His Church” (“Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, p. 73).  Packer viewed this as an axiomatic principle, which still left room for considerable hermeneutical nuance. From his vantage point, biblical interpretation remains an unfinished process in which the revelation of God in and through Scripture can only be ultimately grasped doxologically as an article of faith, in which Scripture as a primary source of our embedded knowledge of God is an aspect of the mystery of God's revelation to humankind.

Packer builds on these premises in his collection of essays titled, Engaging the Written Word of God, to establish one of the most astute evangelical biblical hermeneutics of the mid and late 20th century. I do not argue that Packer has the last word on this, but that his is an important perspective where he tackles the issues surrounding inerrancy head on.  I encourage those who are invested in this issue, regardless as to where specifically they stand, to give his work a close look.  I maintain that there are a multitude of riches embedded in Engaging the Written Word of God that will repay the diligent reader much in terms of his or her time http://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Written-Word-God-Packer/dp/1598569619. 

Reflections on the Relationship between Donald Bloesch’s Mediating Theology and His Underlying Pietistic Spirituality

In Reclaiming Pietism: Retrieving and Evangelical Tradition, Roger Olson and Christian Collin Winn provide a succinct overview of the theological and spiritual odyssey of Donald Bloesch http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Pietism-Retrieving-Evangelical-Tradition/dp/0802869092.  Specifically, they depicting something of the relationship between his theology and his persisting quest for an intense spirituality grounded in the pietistic legacy of his early years—a legacy that remained a central touchstone throughout long and fruitful life (pp. 161-166).  As Olson puts it in one of his blog postings: “Bloesch’s approach to theology was basically pietistic with some neo-orthodox flavoring put in” (“Recommendation of Donald G. Bloesch’s Theology,” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2010/12/recommendation-of-donald-g-bloeschs-theology/).  Given the substantial influence of Karl Barth on Bloesch’s theology, the neo-orthodox influence on him may be more pronounced than that. In any event, Olson and Winn aptly describe Bloesch as a “mediating” theologian, in which he sought a centrist “via media, particularly between” “fundamentalism and liberalism” (p. 161).  Working through such tensions in the quest for a comprehensive Christian orthodox theology, drove Bloesch’s irenic vision, particularly in his most expansive work, his seven volume Christian Foundations series https://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/author.pl/author_id=277.

The tensions are reflected in the relationship in Bloesch’s theological formation between—as someone nurtured in the pietistic tradition—the liberal Chicago Theological Seminary he attended as a graduate student (where he encountered the neo-orthodoxy of Barth, Tillich and Reinhoold Niebuhr, as well as professors who embraced the early roots of what became known as “process theology”) and the more theologically conservative “Presbyterian-related University of Dubuque Seminary in Iowa” (p. 162) where he taught during most of his career. This tension was also reflected in his membership in the United Church of Christ (UCC) (a leading candidate for the most liberal Christian denomination in the U.S.) and his founding role in the Biblical Witness Fellowship, a conservative confessing movement within the UCC sharply opposed to the denomination’s leadership liberal leanings.

As someone rooted in the pietism of “Spener, Francke, Zinzendorf, and Christoph Blumhardt” (cited in Olson’s blog), it would be instructive learn what drew Bloesch to Chicago and to the UCC, notwithstanding his rejection of their more liberalizing tendencies in biblical interpretation, theology, and ethics. Such knowledge may remain elusive until a full scale biography of Bloesch is written. Perhaps there was some intellectual gap in his pietistic upbringing propelled by an intrinsic curiosity that drew him to a broader range of theological insights and issues that could only open up by moving outside the horizons of the pietistic heritage. 

What one can reasonably conclude is that Bloesch’s extensive engagement with neo-orthodoxy and theological liberalism played a formative role in his understanding of some of the most fundamental issues that have shaped the contours of twentieth century European and U.S. theology.  When combined with the pulsating power of the pietistic impulse that reverberated through his being through the entirety of his life, once can reasonably surmise that such engagement provided a source of motivation and a set of resources to take on the hard work of developing what ultimately became his mediating theology in the critical areas of Scripture, Christ, God, the Church, the Holy Spirit and eschatology, as depicted in the various volumes of his Christian Foundations series.

A thorough discussion of the relationship between Bloesch’s theology and his pietism would take a good deal of work well beyond what can be explored here.  One can gain a sense of it in two of his central volumes: A Theology of Word and Spirit: Authority and Method in Theology and God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom Holiness, Love.  Consider a defining passage in the first volume:

We believe the gospel because the Spirit seals the truth of the gospel in our hearts, and the truth is self-authenticating. The church helps us understand this truth in the context of the fellowship of love, but it is not the source or origin of this truth (p. 188).

In the second text, Bloesch identifies “God’s love and holiness as constitute[ing] the inner nature of God.”  Bloesch continues this meditation on the quintessential nature of God in the following manner:

These two perfections coalesce in such a way that we may speak of the holy love of God…and of his merciful holiness.  In the depth of God’s love is revealed the beauty of his holiness.  In the glory of his holiness is revealed the depth of his love.  The apex of God’s holiness is his love. The apex of God’s love is the beauty of his holiness.  God’s love transcends his holiness even while he infuses and upholds it.  His holiness is adorned and crowned by the magnitude of his love” (God the Almighty, p. 141).

I had some knowledge of the spiritual depth underlying Bloesch’s theology, as reflected in these passages, even, as in my research, I have concentrated on the latter aspect of his work.  Olson and Winn have presented a persuasive overview of the formative pietistic influences on the totality of Bloesch’s Christian formation.  Given Bloesch’s quest to give shape to a vital centrist theology that is both irenic and mediating, a deeper appreciation of the pietistic impulse underlying his project could provide an important resource to better understand the range and depth of his formal theological studies. An in-depth probing into some of the specific ways in which Bloesch’s spiritual quest and theological reflections intersect could contribute much toward a deepening Christian world view that is theologically comprehensive and spiritually quite rich.  Clearly, that work remains to be done.

Review of "A Fundamental Truth"

I have selected a sermon by Terri L. Hansen, titled “A Fundamental Truth: I Have Been Raised by Christ (Colossians 3:1-4)”[1]

As part of a young couple’s class, Ms. Hansen’s group chose to read and discuss Richard Foster’s highly influential text, Celebration of Disciplines, which provides practical helps to illustrate how God’s grace can be revealed in “transformative ways through the [intentional] practice of spiritual disciplines.”  Given Celebration’s inclusion of various “Catholic” spiritual practices, such as “contemplative prayer, solitude,” and confession, while also including the traditional Protestant emphasis on devotional Bible study, prayer, worship, service, and study, Hansen describes the book as an eye opener among those in “Baptistic, evangelical homes and churches.”[2] Celebration of Disciplines set Ms. Hansen on a “spiritual journey,” through which she also discovered the works of John Ortberg, James Bryan Smith, and Dallas Willard.  Along with Foster, the cited authors are (or were) part of the Renovare Institute: School of Christian Spiritual Formation http://new.renovare.org/institute/overview.  The overarching vision of the Institute is that of stimulating a pietistic sensibility across denominations and branches within contemporary Christian practice. 

Ms. Hansen draws on Colossians 3:1-4 to structure the theme of her sermon, placing the emphasis on the first verse, “You have been raised by Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (v. 1) and the correlate, “for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (v. 3, NIV).  In amplifying her theme, and echoing Foster, she states that “we should put the formation of our souls into Christlikeness [in this life] as our number one priority.”[3]

I find the Ms. Hansen’s sermon helpful because it illuminates the strengths and as well as a few weaknesses of the Renovare Movement.  A major benefit is the opening up to the reader of the spiritual richness of the collective works of the contributing authors, who veer toward what I will call the Wesleyan pole of the Protestant theological and spiritual continuum.  Hansen references a critical insight about the Renovare theology and psychology of spirituality; namely, that while “we can’t directly impact the condition of our souls,…we can direct our heart and mind on things above.  That is, “through the practice of spiritual disciplines and activities, we indirectly [my emphasis] improve the conditions of our souls.”  This is accomplished through the spiritual disciplines like meditation, prayer, study and solitude (Foster), which results in “creat[ing] a condition in ourselves” that leads us to existentially desire “to becoming like Jesus.”[4]  

This emphasis on the power of indirection, through the grace of God, to progressively shape our character formation into the image of Christ is especially pronounced in Willard.  As he states it, “as our spiritual dimension has been formed” by the cumulative impact of everything that has influenced us, “so it also can be transformed.[5]   To elaborate, for Willard, Christian character formation emerges through intentional spiritual practices that gradually transform a diligent practitioner’s “ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations.”[6] It is through such a process that we become intentionally able, through the grace of God, to progressively put on the mind of Christ, and live in the spirit of God more and more.

As one who has read a good deal of this literature with small groups, with my wife, and on my own, I have been much edified in my Christian walk.  The works referenced by Hansen and other texts by these authors has stimulated much food for thought in helping me to connect my faith journey with some of the finest reflections and tried and true practices within the cumulative history of the Christian spiritual tradition.  Hansen provides the reader a most useful service in opening these authors to readers in her highly engaging and accessible sermon which draw the reader in.  I will continue to engage these authors—especially Willard—for some time to come in providing essential spiritual guidance and inspirational energy to my own faltering efforts.

Willard and the other Renovare writers are careful to link the practice of the spiritual disciplines to the grace of God and also to the ongoing process of sanctification while acknowledging the enduring reality of the persistence of individual and collective sin. Nonetheless, there is a tendency in this literature to downplay what I will call the Calvinist pole of the Protestant continuum, particularly on the sovereignty of God, the Lutheran emphasis on the justified sinner, the persistence of radical evil, and the tension between “the already” of Christ’s first coming and the “not yet” on his second coming” when God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28). 

In setting our hearts on things above (Col 3:1), we are still in his world, and—I maintain—only partially not of it (John 17:14); for we live in the reality of both Romans 7 and 8 and not of 8 only.  We have died in Christ and our life is hidden in him, but this is only a first eschaton reality in which we are given the deposit of the Holy Spirit, while we wait in faith for our full identification with Christ in the final eschaton.  While “my destiny is secure” regardless of “what happens in this life,”[7] I am still affected by what happens and I still “groan” to put on the full adoption that is promised to me, but which has not become a complete reality (Romans 8:18-27).  Thus, I am concerned when Ms. Hansen says that because “we live in the Kingdom—in the very presence of Christ already[,] fear of death and dying should never enter the mind of the Christian.”[8]  Whether the problem lies more in Ms. Hansen’s interpretation of the literature or in the works themselves, I remain concerned about a tendency toward a unidirectional progressive sanctification in this life and a corresponding tendency toward a sense of security beyond the weals and woes of this life in the exuberant belief that we can radically change our identity in a manner that comes close to the full embodiment of the Spirit and mind of Christ in this life.  These concerns, notwithstanding, I have been most edified by this literature.  I encourage that it be read with a strong dose of Puritan realism.

---

[1] Terri L. Hansen, “A Fundamental Truth: I have Been Raised by Christ (Colossians 3:1-4).” The Baptist Pietist Clarion (March 2014, Vol. XII, No. 2, 5-7).

[2] Ibid., 5.

[3] Ibid., 6

[4] Ibid.

[5] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart. (NavPress, 2002, 14),

[6] Ibid., 15.

[7] A Fundamental Truth,” 7.

[8] Ibid., 6

Edification

Edification is a central theme in sections 5 and 6 of Part Three (pp. 103-122) of Philip Spener’s, Pia Desidera.  Edification is a major focal point in the training of seminarians, in which the professors serve as the primary role model for aspiring students.  As an essential part—more radically put, as the most essential aspect of their seminary training—“students should have it impressed upon them that holy life is no less of consequence than diligence and study” (p. 104). Without due attention to the formation of a character based on the primacy of holiness, engraved on the heart and soul early on in one’s training, there is the very likely prospect that the desired character formation will not be readily available in one’s formal ministry.  Spener warns against self-deception in any assumption that it will be easy for the ministry student to change stripes once assuming official duties in the pulpit, “as if a deeply ingrained love of the world [does] not generally cling to people throughout their lives” (p. 107). 

Spener identifies a number of focal points, including that of carrying on “edifying conversations” (104) by both students and professors in formal areas of studies and more informal communicative settings.  He also emphasizes the importance of discernment in dealing with controversial issues; to engage in such (when necessary) in a manner that builds up rather than tears down the life of holiness and faith.  Neither polemics nor doctrinal erudition are as important as the formation of holy character.  Attention to such requires that “great care … be exercised to keep controversy within bounds,” in which the entirety of one’s “theology ought to be brought back to apostolic simplicity” (p. 110).  In contemporary terms, theologians would do well to be more irenic in constructing theological frameworks that, consistent with orthodoxy, build bridges with others rather than drawing sharp lines of demarcation, especially where they do not need to be drawn. To cite a well-known aphorism: “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity” (Cited in Olson & Winn, p. 104).

Spener also identifies, along with a sacramental approach to Bible reading, the study of devotional books as another edifying way of instilling right moral character based on the formation and ongoing exercise of holy aspirations and habits.  In addition to Arndt’s True Christianity, he identifies other similar texts such as the various works of John Tauler, the anonymous, 14^th century Theologica Germania, Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, Luther’s Small Catechism, various works by Augustine (pp. 110-111), and other similarly inspired and inspirational texts.  Spener advocates multiple readings of such inspired texts, sifted through a devotionally-prompted heart to complement a similar reading of Scripture.  With foundations thus lain, the appropriately trained seminarians will be optimally poised to assume the pulpit and the duties of the pastorate with a sense of inner integrity and corresponding sense of assurance to nurture their congregation in the quest to live out a holy and devout faith for personal edification and missions as related to all the spheres of life.

There is enough in Pia Desidera to persuade me that Spener assumes a holistic approach to Christian character formation that takes into consideration the importance of the great doctrines of the faith (the sovereignty of God, the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, the mandate to spread the gospel throughout the world, and the importance of the historical church).  The quest to exude a holy and devout Christ-based character formation has been a central aspiration of mine, notwithstanding the persisting chasm between the reach and the grasp, which can seem, at times, rather pronounced.  I can also attest, on personal experience, to the importance of both systematic and devotional Bible reading and to the study of both the devotional and more formal theological literature of the saints of God throughout the ages as mutually contributing to my faith formation.  This balanced and comprehensive approach to faith formation is echoed in Pia Desidera.

My only concern with the pietistic impulse is that of making the formation of the devout heart the (or even a) central litmus test of one’s allegiance to the Christian faith.  One concern is that the persisting gap between the quest and the attainment of the desired edification of heart, soul, strength, and mind can leave one with (a) a sense of futility, given that the quest is beyond our capacity to attain; (b) a sense of illusion that one may be “closer” to Christ than one actually may be, or (c) a sense of certainty that can override the ambiguity or complexity that one may actually experience, or (d) a sense that other critical faith-based matters, such as systematic and critically-informed Bible study, theological acuity, 2000 years of church history, and the truths that are incorporated into other religions or world-views (secular and religious) are of little or no account in the complexity of seeking to live out a consistent, well-formed Christian life in the mist of our post-Christendom, pluralistic, global area. 

While much of my early Christian formation was through a distinctively born-again Pentecostal prism where pietistic experience was central—and there’s much about this formation to which I am still attracted—I place more emphasis on faith itself, which may or may not exhibit itself in specific emotional experiences. That is, I may or may not feel pietistic in any given context. This includes that of participating in the most devout worship service, in which I do not base my faith on the attainment of a given experience, however holy or devotional my experience within the worship service may seem.   Rather, I adhere to “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3); that is the historical faith of the Christian revelation, as embodied within and throughout the New Testament and embodied within the best theological, spiritual, and ecclesiastic texts of our faith tradition.

I believe Spener and Francke would say something similar. Where I may differ is that I am not working out of a similar historical context as were they, where the pietistic impulse is, subtly or not, pitted in opposition to formal doctrine or dogma. More radically stated, I do no define the pietistic impulse as the defining litmus test of faith, however important and central it may be—a phenomenon that is more defining and central to some serious, committed Christians than others; so I believe.

Devotional Reflections

I've cut back this year on my morning devotional readings in order to concentrate with more intensity on the anchoring texts that I have selected.  The challenge for me is not so much to read more and more, but to make sure that I am truly connecting to the biblical passages and accompanying texts in a manner that enhances my appreciation of and awareness of the presence of God both in the immediacy of the reading moment and in a way that connects with the course of my daily life at work, at home, at church, in my studies and in my viewing of media.  A strength in my spiritual walk with Christ is that I almost always feel connected at some level.  A weakness is that the connection does not always feel vital, as exhibited, in part, in the difficulty I have with formal prayer, whether in solitude or in a small group setting.  One challenge this year is to strengthen my prayer life in both venues--in the interior regions of my soul and spirit and in small group settings at church.  Another is that in living out my faith with more intensity and intentionality in my daily work with homeless adults in San Diego.

Lord, I know that you are real. I know what your real presence feels like.  I know that you seek to be at the center of my life and there is much within me that seeks to place and keep you there.  I  also know there are forces within me seeking yo keep you at a distance; yet I also know that I seek almost the entirety of my existence in search of your perpetual presence in which Christ being formed and reformed within me is the purpose of my existence.  Teach me to appreciate and honor your presence. Remove thoughts and feelings which lead me to take you for granted, that lead me to not being awed by your presence.  I want to be awed.  I want to be inspired by your presence.  I want to be moved by your presence; I want to be empowered in my relationship with you.

Holy God, father, Christ, Holy Spirit, make your presence more vitally known to me and through me in a way that I can meaningfully share your presence with others, both among those within your household and among those who have not yet heard your name in a sufficiently persuasive manner for them to embrace.

Questions and Responses on Central Aspects of the Faith Once for all Delivered to the Saints

The following is part of an ongoing dialogue I have had with one of my friends.

George (original): “As a Christian working out of a broad-based orthodox tradition grounded in the core doctrines of the faith…”

Dave: What constitutes a “broad-based” as opposed to a narrow-based orthodox tradition?

George (response): The capacity to draw freely and comprehensively from the full range of the orthodox tradition (past and present), including its Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox expressions, as well as a range of perspectives with Protestantism—Reformed, pietistic, Wesleyan, evangelical, and mainline Protestant.  Bob La Rochelle has explained this in his work on ecumenism which he posted few weeks back. http://day1.org/4004-dr_robert_larochelle_what_protestants_and_catholics_share_in_common

George (original): “A simple difference between us is that I draw extensively on these two sources as the basis for my spiritual epistemology while you draw on other resources.”

 Dave: Yes, that is true, however, I believe a more significant difference between our points of views is the different interpretation we give to our common source, the Bible. I see the stories in the Bible in metaphorical, symbolic, mythological terms whereas I will venture to say that you see them more in literal, actual, historical terms. Also, while I view the letters of Paul, Psalms, Job, etc. as being human in origin, I will venture to say that for you these words have what we would call a divine origin, and are therefore far more significant than the words of Emerson, Tolstoy, etc. I put the words of Thoreau, Blake, etc. on an equal footing with Paul, not so much in terms of their relative influence on civilization, but in terms of the source from which they come.

George (response):  Not quite.  I accept all your terms as having some relevance, but do not limit my understanding of the Bible (let’s stay with that for now—the single source) to them.  The Bible also includes history, which is not the same as saying that the biblical narrative is synonymous with the way things actually happened in real time.  Rather, historical experience is refracted through the text and interpreted within the prism and conventions of an ancient world view.  This is not the same as saying that the Bible does not contain any accurate historical information, but that its truth and relevance for Christian theology and spiritual practices (i.e., its revelatory significance) does not depend on its historical veracity.  The same goes in spades for any literal interpretation, which is more of a modern rather than an ancient construction.  As I used to say when I first came to Christ in the 1970s, I view the Bible as significant; replete of revelatory power (2 Timothy 3:16), but not necessarily literal; certainly not so in all of its varied genres.  This is not the same as denying the importance of biblical statements; what is commonly interpreted as biblical “propositions;” what one finds in much of the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, one of the most important texts in the entire canon, in my view.

On the divine origin of the Bible as given to the human writers; I accept this well established faith-based presupposition, with the notation that there is a great deal of diversity within a broad-based common understanding of faith. Those operating out of the orthodox theological tradition across the board accept this assumption of divine origin, even while acknowledging (a) that the Bible is not without problems, (b) that there are questions that remain unresolved, and  (c) that there is a range of meanings and applications of given biblical text that defy any simplistic consensus.  This diversity of interpretation is pervasive even in evangelical biblical studies and theology, to say nothing of the broader Protestant perspective.  A book I picked up at the Evangelical Theology Society Annual Meeting titled The Future of Biblical Interpretation: Responsible Plurality in Biblical Interpretation lays out in a broad way some of the diversity within an orthodox tradition within the contemporary evangelical tradition. http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Biblical-Interpretation-Hermeneutics/dp/0830840419

You are correct to assume that I place the Bible, read canonically through the arc of the narrative from creation to consummation, as a primary source of revelation over and beyond anything beyond what Thoreau, Emerson, or Whitman have said or could have said.  Moreover, I place it in a higher realm than what theological or ecclesial expositors have said, though I draw on both in the quest to ever deepen my understanding and application of the faith.  To the extent that they are useful I will also draw on range of secular authors or sources of knowledge, but only ultimately so to the extent that such resources amplify my understanding of the Christian faith.  My epistemological approach starts from a faith-based stance in search of greater knowledge.  In one sense I believe before I know while seeking greater knowledge to further my understanding the faith.  A primary trust of the Bible, sifted through a common, critical, and canonical sense interpretation, while being apprised of and, at least in part, accounting for secular experience,e is the way that I approach the faith.  I discuss some of this more in my book In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center:  An Ecumenical Evangelical Approach.  https://wipfandstock.com/in-quest-of-a-vital-protestant-center.html

George (original): “In addition to the Bible as the basis of my-faith-based epistemology, I also draw extensively on the almost 2000 year tradition of the mighty cloud of witnesses.”

Dave: Yes, but in that cloud are a great many voices that I could cite in support of my way of seeing religion, faith, belief, etc. And of course so could you for your way of seeing these things. Mine is a minority view compared to yours in terms of the historical understanding of the nature of what is called the divine and its connection with humanity, but not so much that there aren’t significant resources for both of us to call upon.

 George (response): In the case I am making the cloud beyond the biblical writers provides essential secondary support that buttresses and sometimes illuminates the primary source of evidence.  This includes my personal understanding, which I view as a secondary rather than a primary source of evidence.  That is, my personal testimony is an existential/ phenomenological source of understanding of the faith as it has opened up to me, though the surer ground upon which such faith stands is the promise of God in Christ revealed in the Bible.  See Hebrews 6: 17-20: 17:

“Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

I’m not going to find this source in Emerson, however edifying his writing may be.

George (original): “In terms of the original proclamation, ‘Then God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good;’ that stands, but there is another side of the coin, namely, the Fall, however metaphorically or literally one might interpret it.”

Dave: I think it is important to point out that you are taking two very different stories and combining them together as one. The first creation story sees God as sovereign, the second in more relational terms. Another way of saying this is the first story is the priestly account of creation presenting God as the universal Elohim and the second story is the non-Priestly account presenting God as the tribal Yahweh. We can talk more about this if you wish but I don’t want to get too detailed in any one message.

George (response): Yes.  However, I am not reading the text historically, nor am I seeking to deconstruct or dissect the narrative.  My reading is a canonical one in which the creation story is a critical linchpin in the biblical story.  Depending on what one is trying to accomplish, an analysis of the two creation stories can be instructive and relevant and there are (may be) reasons to engage in such interpretations.  In not overly concerned about this.  Rather, I am following the precepts of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann who argues that, in terms of faith stance, we cannot really go behind the text, but have to deal with the text itself as a primary source of faith.  There is a lot of current work on narrative theology, which, with different emphases makes this point, but I cannot get into that here.

George (original): “However one might interpret this, this claim is a core precept of biblical Christianity.”

 Dave: I submit that it is more accurate to say that this claim is a core precept of Pauline theology, which was to become synonymous with Biblical Christianity, not as a foregone conclusion, but as a result of historical and psychological realities rather than divine fiat.

 George (response): I believe Paul needs to be seen as a very early Christian interpreter, in which it is likely that his conversion experience took place in the mid-to late 30s and that his accounting of the faith was likely to be a good summation of what the earliest followers believed; certainly about the resurrection of Christ and the impartation of the Holy Spirit to the early church.  Moreover, he had close contact with Peter early on and kept apprised of the Jerusalem church throughout his ministry.  Clearly his ministry to the Gentiles was an overflowing of the Abrahamic promise; one to which the Jerusalem church leaders signed onto (Acts 10-11, 15) even though some members had difficulty with the extent that Paul moved beyond the law and Jewish temple traditions.  What Paul wrote is amplified and extended in the Gospel of John, and in a somewhat different way in the letter to the Hebrews, with echoes in Ephesians and Colossians.  Clearly the synoptic gospels had more of a concrete depiction of the earthly ministry of Christ, but these also were constructed texts designed to amplify the early church’s vision of Christ as resurrected savior.  Even Mark, the first gospel, opens its text by proclaiming “the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.”  What followed, it might be said, was commentary on this core proclamation.   Moreover, both Mark and Luke were at least sometimes followers of Paul and were intimately knowledgeable about his ministry years before constructing their gospels.

In short what Paul wrote in his various letters is broadly consonant with the entirety of the New Testament even as he formalized some of the early doctrine that without his work may not have been put in the forms that his work opened up.

  George (original): “According to the story line, "God created mankind in his own image" (Gen 1:27) and therefore as part of the good creation, though as the thinking, willing creature, with the capacity of obedience and disobedience to the directives of God.”

 Dave: Again I note the combining of two stories written from two traditions as if they are one, but overlooking that for now for the sake of argument, it is inaccurate, it seems to me, to state that Adam and Eve had the capacity for obedience and disobedience before eating the apple. It wasn’t until after they ate of the apple that their eyes were opened. Before that, they had no capacity to choose to be obedient or disobedient. That’s the point of the story isn’t it? They became human after the apple. Before that, they had no more of idea of the moral consequences of choices than a shark feeding on a school of fish or a surfer. The shark will eat whatever is close to the shark’s mouth, just as did Adam and Eve before the “felix culpa” that was the birth of human consciousness. 

George (response):  Their eyes were opened up in that they experienced the impact of their choice.  Before sin entered in they were innocent of guile against God.  Obviously they had the capacity to choose; otherwise they would not have been able to take the path they did.  Once they did choose, they did not have the capacity of escaping the consequences of their sin and in that sense were less free than they had been, in which, in paradise, their humanness was reflected in their congruence with the desires and will of God.  I think this issue of what humanity would have been like if sin had not entered into human experience was addressed by CS Lewis in one of his novels.  I never read it, but I’m aware of such a book. In any event I think there is a distinction between innocence and guilt before God, which is not synonymous with whether or not one is authentically human.  The difference, rather, is with the type of humanity one experiences.  While we live in a post-Fall reality we cannot get back to that condition, though in faith, in relation to the atoning sacrifice of Christ, we have a foretaste of what such innocence is like, in which its full expression is promised in the Eschaton.  Moreover, it is that state of innocence regained and amplified beyond what we can now imagine through New Adam that will characterize our state in eternity, when mortality puts on immortality.  CS Lewis would refer to this description as mere Christianity, which encompasses a variety of specific denominational and theological traditions.

 George (original): “Stated in other terms, the Pauline longing is an expression of our state of biblical reality between Paradise lost and Paradise gained.”

Dave: As opposed to the message of Jesus that the kingdom was to be established on earth Paul’s message and the message of Jesus are fundamentally different from each other, a reality that can be seen both in the difference of words attributed to them and in the contempt Paul felt for the Judaizers who were actually the disciples who walked and talked with Jesus.

George (response):  I addressed this in part above.  Let me simply say that it is a false polarity to establish a radical dichotomy between Paul and the synoptic gospels.  I say synoptic, because you would need to eliminate the Gospel of John, in which Jesus declared “Before Abraham was born I am” (John 8:58).  The most comprehensive understanding we have of Jesus is that embodied in the New Testament, the entirety of it, whatever primary resources can also be teased out of the evidence.  Given the depiction of Jesus in the gospels as a construction of the early church on a mission of world conversion, I believe it is a false dichotomy to pit Paul and the synoptic gospel writers in dichotomous oppositional terms.

  George (original): “Other ways of understanding reality may be of interest, but to me only ultimately so to the extent that such understanding amplifies the faith tradition of the orthodox Christian tradition, generously defined.”

 Dave: What constitutes a “generous” definition of orthodox Christian tradition?

 George (response): The original terms comes from Hans Frei, an early proponent of narrative theology, in a discussion with the evangelical theological Carl Henry.  In response to Henry’s insistence of an inerrant interpretation of Scripture, Frei argued that a complex test like the Bible was open to a variety of interpretive frameworks and should not be circumscribed by a limited view of language which was pervasive in 20th century fundamentalism in its war against modernism.  A good description can be found in George Hunsinger’s essay, “What can Evangelicals and Post-Liberals Learn from Each Other: The Carl Henry-Hans Frei Exchange Reconsidered.”

Brian McLaren has popularized the phrase, in his book, A Generous Orthodoxy http://www.amazon.com/Generous-Orthodoxy-evangelical-conservative-contemplative/dp/0310258030.  I link this interpretation, leaning more towards Frei, with CS Lewis’ objective as articulated in his classic text Mere Christianity.  It is an approach to the Christian orthodox tradition that has scope for a range of theological and biblical perspective within an overarching structure as detailed throughout the biblical narrative and developed in more formal terms through the basic dogmatic proclamations of the early church.  These two resources (the Bible and the early church dogmatic proclamations) have served as the basis for the ongoing development of the orthodox Christian tradition, which continues as an unfolding process that includes scope for new light for many new insights to emerge with new insights in response to fresh challenges.  This growth remains embedded within the boundaries of the core precepts of the grand tradition based on the biblical narrative from creation to consummation and the founding doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity.  Within this orbit there is, and has been, much room for development.