PART TWO
Hyper-Inductivism in the Home
Many people are unaware of the fact that the verse numbers contained in modern translations of the Bible were added during the Middle Ages and were not part of the inspired text in the autographa. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they are in there. They make Scripture location and memorization much more efficient. But coupled with the decline in systematic thinking in the West, the elevation of the ideals of political liberalism to the status of theological virtue, and the invention of the printing press (again, happy), the versification of Scripture became pandemic. Have you been to a small group Bible study anywhere in America lately? Personally, I would rather just call it a day and watch Oprah. At least then I would be exposed to people who know that they're coming from a New Age perspective. We sit around and talk about what this verse "means to me...or you!" Sorry--got a little too fascist on you there. A garden variety example should help illustrate:
The most recent example of this I have heard regards 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which of course is the famous rapture passage. Full Preterism (the position that all of the prophetic events including the second coming of Christ, judgment of the earth, and resurrection all occured in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) teaches that this text is a first-and-only-resurrection passage, and that the resurrection of the righteous is purely spiritual, including the "spiritual body" refered to in 1 Corinthians 15. The way they explain our meeting the Lord "in the air" is that the Greek word for "air" is aer, which often has the connotation of spiritual presence as opposed to spatial. Of course the bare fact that words such as aeroplane and aerodynamic comes from this word need not concern us, much less that the English word "air" is simply a modification of the Greek. Moreover, no other context is allowed to speak on the matter, unless of course we begin with the assumption that everything had to have happened prior to 70 AD, including the writing of the book of Revelation (which, while possible, also does not settle the matter). The point is not that the hyper-inductivist is not allowed to have his assumptions. We all have ours. But because he sees his exegesis as pure induction, he is blissfully unaware of his storehouse of presuppositions. He is all the more suspect to impose them than the one who is working with a systematic-exegetical peripheral vision.
Hyper-Inductivism at the Seminary
Two more elaborate positions have emerged in recent generations and are guilty of this same sort of folly. Open Theism and The New Perspectives on Paul both utilize a more snobbish sort of hair-splitting at the leaf level, and ommit all more systematic-deductive checking as the imposition of dogma onto the text. But the important thing to see is that both of these systems of exegesis are systems! They both assume things about the whole of the textual material that inform their handling of this or that piece.
The fundamental assumption of the Open Theist's system is that narrative and prophetic portions of Scripture about the activity of God must be held as normative as any didactic proposition concerning one or many of the divine attributes. They must assume this, or else, they would not use the texts that they do to demonstrate that God's knowledge of the future is shaped by the action of free moral agents. When the more classical theist points out that these texts are instances of anthropomorphisms (divine activity communicated by analogy to man--anthropos--thus making it easier for the reader to grasp), the classical theist is accused of being arbitrary or dismissive for the sake of his system. The Open Theist should not be suspected of the same. He is merely dealing with the text. And after all, there are passages in the Bible which have "the Lord God walking in the garden" [Gen. 3:8], or that He "came down to see the city and the tower" [Gen. 11:5], or saying to Abraham: "now I know that you fear God" [Gen. 22:12], or dealing prophetically with Israel, the Lord says: "If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it" [Jer. 18:7-8]. Now passages like this do seem to suggest that God either relates to the creature in such a way that His perspective is shaped by them, or, at least that the future events that these particular creatures cause are not things that are known by God.
But three obvious (hopefully) things must be said in reply--1. Didactic propositions in Scripture do hold sway over narrative or prophetic portions because the didactic genre, in any form of literature, is meant to convey straightforward information about the essence of a thing, while historical narrative is concerned with phenomenological record and the prophetic genre is shoruded in highly poetic and symbolic import. This does not make these two genres less literal; much less does it make them less real or determinative on our doctrine. It simply means that they will be determinative in a less immediate way; 2. The didactic teachings in Scripture--both in completely didactic genres (i.e. the epistles) and in collected propositions in the other genres (It must be understood that narrative, prophecy, and poetry can all contain strict propositions)--do in fact teach that God knows all things [Jn. 21:17, Job 36:4, 37:16, Ps. 139:16-18, Heb. 4:13, 1 Jn. 3:10] and ordains all minute details from beginning to end [Mat. 10:29-30, Eph. 1:11, Col. 1:16-20], and that this is indistinguishable from the meaning of His divine identity [Is. 46:9-10]; and 3. If the handful of isolated, supposedly ignorance-teaching, texts really do communicate what the Open Theist thinks, then either these other texts do not teach that God knows all things, or, the Bible holds to both of these two mutually exclusive propositions, in which case, the Bible is in error. Hence, the Christian worldview collapses. But we are not to think such things, as nothing of what I just said could possibly arise out of a concern for biblical texts, but is purely a case of we knuckle-dragging "fundamentalists" imposing our domga and systems upon the text!
Now to this other little high-browed fad, courtesy of our favorite high-browed ancestors, the Brits--and specifically, the Anglican bishop, N. T. Wright. The work of Dunn and Sanders doesn't concern me here, both because I consider their work to be openly skeptical and materialistic, and secondly, because another weapon of choice for the NPP is to distract us with the intelligensia version of a Chinese fire drill--"You can't really pin down a 'New Perspective' school or voice or model. They all come from such different angles and have different conclusions about different aspects of Pauline literature." Don't fall for it! Here's one thing they all have in common: They have given us the most brilliantly conceived system (you'll live) yet of avoiding the most obvious central meaning of Paul in order to do what all humans--simple and smart--always want to do, to represent themselves before God on the ground of their own inherent worth. I do not find this very new or particularly brave. Kudos, though, on making it painstakingly nuanced enough so that we cavedwelling doctrine-mongers at the local hut can't alert our indifferent brothers and sisters to it without looking like a short-bus full of conspiracy theorists from the Reformed Trekky convention.
Now what is the NPP and in what way does it employ the heresy-hugging hermeneutic? At its core, Wright claims two things that he and his groupies feel that the Reformed tradition has either missed or distorted: 1. Paul's usage of the word and concept of justification refers not to one's getting made right with God via a legal declaration by free grace; and 2. the historic doctrine of forensic justification via the imputation of Christ's righteousness is not intended anywhere in the New Testament. Indeed, the word "impute" is not mentioned. For a detailed argument against the first idea, read Guy Prentiss Waters' book Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul, and against the second idea, John Piper's smaller book Counted Righteous in Christ is a must read. I hear that Piper is currently writing a refutation of Wright on the larger scope of justification. That will be enjoyable to read. Hyper-Inductivism comes into play in three main ways: the examination process of the dikaioo (justify) word group, the argument against the "imputation" language via its relative absence, and the introduction into the Second Temple Judaism context--which, while one would think would be seen as a deductive category, seems to be held in high esteem because the Qumran/Midrashic texts that are drawn from are still contemporary texts that lend credence to the idea that these guys are simply engaging in cool-headed, indifferent scholarship.
Instructing people in this hermeneutic is a bit like training monkeys to fetch land mines or fly in space shuttles. Very impressive, but not the real thing. Dress them up if you like, but they are still not learning to be rational in a comprehesive sense. As is the case with the professor at the university, we aim for a very narrow specialization that may wow, intimidate, and the like, but at the end of the day, it is a paper-thin garnish in lieu of the more difficult and necessary task of allowing Scripture to interpret itself. And in order to do that, you have to allow for more and more context; and that takes time, sweat, skill, deductions, and, yes, maybe even the help of a couple of dead white guys who spoke a little Latin. It turns out that doing theology systematically (if one's deduction is consistently arising from what the Bible is actually saying) is to do it humbly. A humble theology just will be a systematic theology--always asking: "But what does the whole Bible have to say about this immediate inference?"
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Hyper-Inductivism: The Heresy-Hugging Hermeneutic
PART ONE
One of the real silent killers in American Evangelicalism's penchant for hating doctrine in specific and despising the mind in general, is an insidious, yet unformulated, interpretive tendency that I call "hyper-inductivism." The name is taken from one of the two main forms of reasoning--induction (thinking from specific data to more general conclusions) as opposed to deduction (thinking from more abstract categories to more specific conclusions). Let me give an example of both, and then proceed to discuss how various systems and academic disciplines seek to balance this out.
An example of inductive reasoning would be: Observation 1- "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on my stove." Observation 2 - "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on your stove." Observation 3 - "Water does not boil at X degrees in Y minutes in the Himalayas." Conclusion- "Altitude effects the rate of water boiling." An example of deductive reasoning would be: Premise 1- "Socrates is a man." Premise 2- "All men are mortal." Conclusion: "Therefore, Socrates is a mortal." Both forms of reasoning are perfectly valid. And, here's the kicker--There is not a single thing that we think or a single action that we perform that does not depend upon a seemingly infinite matrix of inductively and deductively arrived at assumptions. Many of the truly stupid rabbit trails in the history of Western thought emerged because one of these kinds of reasoning was overemphasized at the expense of the other. The initial split between Plato and Aristotle, the Medieval dispute between Nominalist and Realist, and the Enlightenment divide over Rationalist and Empiricist schools all arose because of a naive attempt to crown one or the other of these forms of reasoning as the epistemological king in all intellectual inquiry. But this is a fool's errand.
Now, out of the late Enlightenment arose a reaction to the inevitable skepticism of Hume that came to be known as Common Sense Realism. It was propounded by the Scot, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), as a means of simply moving on with both ethics and science. It was common sense that mediated between the mind and the external world, and that the self had direct access to the objects of the world "out there." Long story short, this became the dominant reactionary thought form among the American revivalists of the Second Great Awakening in the 1830's, a historical event already mired in anti-intellectualism. Cults and slightly more orthodox movements alike had a new hermeneutic to justify their contempt of, and embarassment at, the first eighteen centuries of the church. During the next fifty years, the vast majority of what is now present day American religion was born--Restorationist, Nazarene, Pentecostal, and, the more cultic extremes--all firmly rooted in the soil of the naive Realist assumption that to go directly to the text with a kind of Lockean tabula rasa (blank slate) was within the reasonable ability of the reader of Scripture. Even the Princeton theologians fell for this in some small measure. Charles Hodge, for example, refered to the Bible as the theologian's "storehouse of facts" in the same way that nature was for the scientist. Now this is not altogether ironic. The fact is that the scientific community in the twentieth century was exposed as opperating under this same presuppositional naivete; and, though the scientific method burns on the fuel of induction, still, inductivism was dealt a swift death by philosophers of science, such as Popper, Kuhn, and Polyani.
Yet no Evangelical thinker has really pulled the lid off of an even more rabid inductivism within the church--a hyper-inductivism. Its main feature is an all-out assault on understanding Scripture systematically. It puts the most minute detail of the leaf under the microscope of the latest layman's reference tool, yet forgets that this leaf belongs to a tree, and the tree in turn to a forrest. One of the more popular examples of this is Precepts Ministries and its celebrated Inductive Bible Study Method. Now I want to make it crystal clear that induction is good; and many of the tricks of the trade suggested by Kay Arthur's ministry can be of immense help. The trouble is that in a church culture that has cherished a suspicion of systematic theology and which has the attention span of a goldfish, to introduce the Bible via this intentionally "grid-free" grid becomes problematic. Is it at all possible that this approach is not the best starting point for the layperson? But let me turn elsewhere, since this is not a critique of Precepts per se.
It would probably be more helpful to see the tendency in action. We will look at the problem first on a popular level, and then in its more systematic (yes, I know: irony) form. In a more formal study of logic, the more simple application of the hyper-inductivist approach would probably better be called the fallacy of immediate inference--or the assumption that because two propositions are logically equivalent, that therefore the one in question is sound about the world. One word or phrase or concept either frequently used in x way or generally assumed in y fashion amounts to cracking the code to the Rosetta Stone. The chief offense in contemporary Bible study is to look up the Greek meaning of a word and behave as if that has settled the matter. I say this is the simple, popular version, but serious theologians such as C. H. Dodd have built entire cases on this meaningless drivel, such as when he dug up the whole corpus of the Bible's usage of hilaskomai (to propitiate) to prove that God's wrath did not need to be appeased in the atonement, and that the phrase "wrath of God" was frequently used "in the sphere of cause and effect: sin is the cause, disaster is the effect." There are clear naturalistic assumptions in Dodd. Orthodox theologians such as Leon Morris, Roger Nicole, and John Stott have all thoroughly refuted him on these points. But this scholar was doing with some degree of sophistication what so many churchgoers today do by means of what has been called "the versification of Scripture."
One of the real silent killers in American Evangelicalism's penchant for hating doctrine in specific and despising the mind in general, is an insidious, yet unformulated, interpretive tendency that I call "hyper-inductivism." The name is taken from one of the two main forms of reasoning--induction (thinking from specific data to more general conclusions) as opposed to deduction (thinking from more abstract categories to more specific conclusions). Let me give an example of both, and then proceed to discuss how various systems and academic disciplines seek to balance this out.
An example of inductive reasoning would be: Observation 1- "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on my stove." Observation 2 - "Water boils at X degrees in Y minutes on your stove." Observation 3 - "Water does not boil at X degrees in Y minutes in the Himalayas." Conclusion- "Altitude effects the rate of water boiling." An example of deductive reasoning would be: Premise 1- "Socrates is a man." Premise 2- "All men are mortal." Conclusion: "Therefore, Socrates is a mortal." Both forms of reasoning are perfectly valid. And, here's the kicker--There is not a single thing that we think or a single action that we perform that does not depend upon a seemingly infinite matrix of inductively and deductively arrived at assumptions. Many of the truly stupid rabbit trails in the history of Western thought emerged because one of these kinds of reasoning was overemphasized at the expense of the other. The initial split between Plato and Aristotle, the Medieval dispute between Nominalist and Realist, and the Enlightenment divide over Rationalist and Empiricist schools all arose because of a naive attempt to crown one or the other of these forms of reasoning as the epistemological king in all intellectual inquiry. But this is a fool's errand.
Now, out of the late Enlightenment arose a reaction to the inevitable skepticism of Hume that came to be known as Common Sense Realism. It was propounded by the Scot, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), as a means of simply moving on with both ethics and science. It was common sense that mediated between the mind and the external world, and that the self had direct access to the objects of the world "out there." Long story short, this became the dominant reactionary thought form among the American revivalists of the Second Great Awakening in the 1830's, a historical event already mired in anti-intellectualism. Cults and slightly more orthodox movements alike had a new hermeneutic to justify their contempt of, and embarassment at, the first eighteen centuries of the church. During the next fifty years, the vast majority of what is now present day American religion was born--Restorationist, Nazarene, Pentecostal, and, the more cultic extremes--all firmly rooted in the soil of the naive Realist assumption that to go directly to the text with a kind of Lockean tabula rasa (blank slate) was within the reasonable ability of the reader of Scripture. Even the Princeton theologians fell for this in some small measure. Charles Hodge, for example, refered to the Bible as the theologian's "storehouse of facts" in the same way that nature was for the scientist. Now this is not altogether ironic. The fact is that the scientific community in the twentieth century was exposed as opperating under this same presuppositional naivete; and, though the scientific method burns on the fuel of induction, still, inductivism was dealt a swift death by philosophers of science, such as Popper, Kuhn, and Polyani.
Yet no Evangelical thinker has really pulled the lid off of an even more rabid inductivism within the church--a hyper-inductivism. Its main feature is an all-out assault on understanding Scripture systematically. It puts the most minute detail of the leaf under the microscope of the latest layman's reference tool, yet forgets that this leaf belongs to a tree, and the tree in turn to a forrest. One of the more popular examples of this is Precepts Ministries and its celebrated Inductive Bible Study Method. Now I want to make it crystal clear that induction is good; and many of the tricks of the trade suggested by Kay Arthur's ministry can be of immense help. The trouble is that in a church culture that has cherished a suspicion of systematic theology and which has the attention span of a goldfish, to introduce the Bible via this intentionally "grid-free" grid becomes problematic. Is it at all possible that this approach is not the best starting point for the layperson? But let me turn elsewhere, since this is not a critique of Precepts per se.
It would probably be more helpful to see the tendency in action. We will look at the problem first on a popular level, and then in its more systematic (yes, I know: irony) form. In a more formal study of logic, the more simple application of the hyper-inductivist approach would probably better be called the fallacy of immediate inference--or the assumption that because two propositions are logically equivalent, that therefore the one in question is sound about the world. One word or phrase or concept either frequently used in x way or generally assumed in y fashion amounts to cracking the code to the Rosetta Stone. The chief offense in contemporary Bible study is to look up the Greek meaning of a word and behave as if that has settled the matter. I say this is the simple, popular version, but serious theologians such as C. H. Dodd have built entire cases on this meaningless drivel, such as when he dug up the whole corpus of the Bible's usage of hilaskomai (to propitiate) to prove that God's wrath did not need to be appeased in the atonement, and that the phrase "wrath of God" was frequently used "in the sphere of cause and effect: sin is the cause, disaster is the effect." There are clear naturalistic assumptions in Dodd. Orthodox theologians such as Leon Morris, Roger Nicole, and John Stott have all thoroughly refuted him on these points. But this scholar was doing with some degree of sophistication what so many churchgoers today do by means of what has been called "the versification of Scripture."
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Neo-Puritanism
Labels are both unnecessary stumbling blocks as well as tremendous time and ambiguity savers. I use them for function B. If anyone asks what I "am" at the end of the day, then I am a Christian [1 Cor. 1:10-13]. So don't get carried away. I only want to lay out the distinctives of our vision of what the church ought to be and what our church, by God's grace alone, will be. Therefore, what I am calling Neo-Puritanism is a combination of all six points below:
1) Christian Hedonism - The chief end of man is to glorify God and (by) enjoy (ing) Him forever. This is true, as it turns out, because God's chief end is to glorify Himself and enjoy Himself forever. This reflects the Greatest Commandment [Mk. 12:29-30] where God's one singular Trinitarian passion spills over into our passion for His glory with our whole being. And this two part singular Commandment, Jesus defines as the essence of Christianity. We are more like God (personal) when we more perfectly reflect His passion for His own glory--Hence, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. This is inseperable from Calvinism, which teaches us that God demands of us what we cannot produce on our own; and what He demands of us is nothing short of our whole soul's approbation of His worth. This sets the gospel at warp speed, both in the church and to the unbeliever.
2) Reformed Theology - This includes both the Covenantal/Federal overarching schema of scriptural interpretation as well as the vaunted Five Points of Calvinism. Christian Hedonism is the matador's red flag for which Calvinism is the bull. When we are liberated to discover that God's central concern for His glory and His design for me to tend toward happiness are the object/subject aspects of the same chief end, then we see God as the gospel and ultimate satisfaction as our life's pursuit. But then, at once we are crushed by the bare fact that we do not in fact pursue our satisfaction in God as He demands. The bar and the stakes of both sin and conversion are raised by infinity, and the Five Points are seen in 3D and color, where once they were merely a creed that one could not intellectually discard. Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and the Perserverance of the Saints are bigger facts about reality for people who do not desire God as they ought than anything else in creation, indeed, bigger than creation itself, since to "get behind" the doctrines of grace to a "superior" missional-creational context is to be guilty of the arrogance of what Luther called the Theology of Glory, when everything must be seen dimly through a Theology of the Cross.
3) Gospel Shepherding - the Puritans understood that the gospel is not simply a marketing slogan to attract people to a building, but it is an infinite well of life that saves the believing/perservering ones [Rom. 1:16, 1 Cor. 15:1-2]. Because the gospel alone has this power, then we not only evangelize with it, but we counsel with it, we relate to each other with it, and we discipline with it. Thus, the more practical-counseling material of Bridges, Tripp, Welch, Powlison, Mahaney, etc. present answers to life's more day-to-day questions by advising us to "preach the gospel to ourselves every day," which amounts to transfering the root of our assurance and answers to our guilt not in our performace but in Christ's finished work. Every mundane problem is seen through cross-shaped lenses. This is one of the main reasons I call this entire approach "Neo-Puritan," because these guys seem to understand the gospel the way that the Puritans did, and apply it to all of life's various problems the same way that those old saints applied it from the pulpit. The gospel is a shepherding thing, and so its content is indispensible if the believer is to...well, believe, and keep on believing.
4) Classical Apologetics / Worldview - I couple the words apologetics and worldview here because I am not as concerned with apologetic method (in a local church context) per se as I am with the freedom and ability of leadership to put first things first in all things, in other words, to take Colossians 1:16-20 seriously in both Bible study and church vision. When the clear and distinct ideas presented in general revelation and in Scripture, concerning the Being and Attributes of God, are compromised or moved to the periphery by those with undisciplined minds, then the whole mission of the church is endangered. As a case in point, Open Theism exists because we are not permitted by the new orthodoxy to set the didactic statements of God's classically defined attributes as determinative over narrative portions where God appears to be taking on human characteristics (anthropomorphisms)--that is, we are not to allow syllogisms (or anything like them with more steps) to be a part of "biblical theology." But this is to nueter the Word's ability to speak for itself from itself. It is to deny the coherency of revelation. Like it or not, the one who graps the four classical non-negotiatbles as proven and invincible (cf. Sproul's Classical Apologetics or Defending Your Faith) will be set to grasp everything else that we are talking about here, and the one who does not (including those who gravitate toward the ill-conceived Reformed model of Presuppositionalism) will have more difficulty. There may be exceptions (i.e. Frame's arguments against Open Theism and charity toward contemporary church practices have been helpful), but thus far I have not found many.
5) Missional Ecclesiology - In spite of going through Acts29 as The Well is, we would place our missional plank down at fifth for the reasons we have just set forth. It is just as indispensible, since the mission of the church flows forth from the missio Dei [Jn. 20:21-22]. However, if we attempt to see the mission of God apart from those cross-shaped lenses I mentioned above, we will distort it into this or that creational/pro-creational/re-creational program that assumes a posture more indicative of a pre-fall Adam then a sin-ridden church and culture. Reformed Theology precedes Missiology, not because God is more God-centered than He is about His mission. Rather, it precedes because God's God-centerdness is His mission, and sinful human beings (including Christians) are not fond of this. Having said that, however, it remains true that as the Father has sent the Son, so He sends us. The church is sent. The whole church (every Christian in it) is on mission, or else, they lack evidence of their conversion--which is to be converted not only to Jesus, but to His mission as well. The Western church has reduced missiology to the compartment of the one brave soul that we ship off to Zimbabwe more to assuage the guilt of our affluence and lukewarm faith than to reproduce God-centered worshipers. For our church to be a missionary in our culture, we must exegete that culture, each Christian identifying his "tribe," and bringing the first-century gospel to the twenty-first century context.
6) Modified Charismatic Practice - None of these things could be possible if in fact the only thing the Holy Spirit does to us or in us is to convict of sin at the outset and illuminate the mose base level meaning of the text of Scripture. That level of Cessationism is a practical atheism. Moreover, Cessationism is hung by its own noose. It argues that a) the baptism of the Holy Spirit refers to every Christian's inclusion into the body of Christ (which I agree with); b) the endument of power aspect of the Spirit, manifested by "sign-gifts" was only for the apostles; c) Jesus connects that baptism with that endument [cf. Acts 1:4-5]. Conclusion: Every Christian is an apostle! How inconvenient! Believe me, no one wanted to believe Cessationism more than I did when I fled the AG as an early Christian because of their rampant anti-intellectualism. The case just cannot be seriously supported by the standard 1 Corinthians 13 and Hebrews 2:4 "sign gifts" routine, even though I wanted it to be true so I could just get on with my bookish fight of faith. I found that having begun by the Spirit, I could not be perfected by the flesh [cf. Gal. 3:3], and that to attempt it was sheer arrogance. We need the empowering ministry of the Spirit to be His flaming witnesses, though it will not look like the modern Charismatic movement, where experiences are sought after as an end in themselves. We believe in the continuation of the gifts, though we do not pretend to know exactly how and why they are to be used in all cases. We can see that they are for the edification of the body and the glorifcation of Christ. The word must be kept central in Christian worship (not experience), but the true word will produce an experience that will not be able to lay dormant and live with no expectancy for revival!
http://www.thewellboise.com/
1) Christian Hedonism - The chief end of man is to glorify God and (by) enjoy (ing) Him forever. This is true, as it turns out, because God's chief end is to glorify Himself and enjoy Himself forever. This reflects the Greatest Commandment [Mk. 12:29-30] where God's one singular Trinitarian passion spills over into our passion for His glory with our whole being. And this two part singular Commandment, Jesus defines as the essence of Christianity. We are more like God (personal) when we more perfectly reflect His passion for His own glory--Hence, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. This is inseperable from Calvinism, which teaches us that God demands of us what we cannot produce on our own; and what He demands of us is nothing short of our whole soul's approbation of His worth. This sets the gospel at warp speed, both in the church and to the unbeliever.
2) Reformed Theology - This includes both the Covenantal/Federal overarching schema of scriptural interpretation as well as the vaunted Five Points of Calvinism. Christian Hedonism is the matador's red flag for which Calvinism is the bull. When we are liberated to discover that God's central concern for His glory and His design for me to tend toward happiness are the object/subject aspects of the same chief end, then we see God as the gospel and ultimate satisfaction as our life's pursuit. But then, at once we are crushed by the bare fact that we do not in fact pursue our satisfaction in God as He demands. The bar and the stakes of both sin and conversion are raised by infinity, and the Five Points are seen in 3D and color, where once they were merely a creed that one could not intellectually discard. Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and the Perserverance of the Saints are bigger facts about reality for people who do not desire God as they ought than anything else in creation, indeed, bigger than creation itself, since to "get behind" the doctrines of grace to a "superior" missional-creational context is to be guilty of the arrogance of what Luther called the Theology of Glory, when everything must be seen dimly through a Theology of the Cross.
3) Gospel Shepherding - the Puritans understood that the gospel is not simply a marketing slogan to attract people to a building, but it is an infinite well of life that saves the believing/perservering ones [Rom. 1:16, 1 Cor. 15:1-2]. Because the gospel alone has this power, then we not only evangelize with it, but we counsel with it, we relate to each other with it, and we discipline with it. Thus, the more practical-counseling material of Bridges, Tripp, Welch, Powlison, Mahaney, etc. present answers to life's more day-to-day questions by advising us to "preach the gospel to ourselves every day," which amounts to transfering the root of our assurance and answers to our guilt not in our performace but in Christ's finished work. Every mundane problem is seen through cross-shaped lenses. This is one of the main reasons I call this entire approach "Neo-Puritan," because these guys seem to understand the gospel the way that the Puritans did, and apply it to all of life's various problems the same way that those old saints applied it from the pulpit. The gospel is a shepherding thing, and so its content is indispensible if the believer is to...well, believe, and keep on believing.
4) Classical Apologetics / Worldview - I couple the words apologetics and worldview here because I am not as concerned with apologetic method (in a local church context) per se as I am with the freedom and ability of leadership to put first things first in all things, in other words, to take Colossians 1:16-20 seriously in both Bible study and church vision. When the clear and distinct ideas presented in general revelation and in Scripture, concerning the Being and Attributes of God, are compromised or moved to the periphery by those with undisciplined minds, then the whole mission of the church is endangered. As a case in point, Open Theism exists because we are not permitted by the new orthodoxy to set the didactic statements of God's classically defined attributes as determinative over narrative portions where God appears to be taking on human characteristics (anthropomorphisms)--that is, we are not to allow syllogisms (or anything like them with more steps) to be a part of "biblical theology." But this is to nueter the Word's ability to speak for itself from itself. It is to deny the coherency of revelation. Like it or not, the one who graps the four classical non-negotiatbles as proven and invincible (cf. Sproul's Classical Apologetics or Defending Your Faith) will be set to grasp everything else that we are talking about here, and the one who does not (including those who gravitate toward the ill-conceived Reformed model of Presuppositionalism) will have more difficulty. There may be exceptions (i.e. Frame's arguments against Open Theism and charity toward contemporary church practices have been helpful), but thus far I have not found many.
5) Missional Ecclesiology - In spite of going through Acts29 as The Well is, we would place our missional plank down at fifth for the reasons we have just set forth. It is just as indispensible, since the mission of the church flows forth from the missio Dei [Jn. 20:21-22]. However, if we attempt to see the mission of God apart from those cross-shaped lenses I mentioned above, we will distort it into this or that creational/pro-creational/re-creational program that assumes a posture more indicative of a pre-fall Adam then a sin-ridden church and culture. Reformed Theology precedes Missiology, not because God is more God-centered than He is about His mission. Rather, it precedes because God's God-centerdness is His mission, and sinful human beings (including Christians) are not fond of this. Having said that, however, it remains true that as the Father has sent the Son, so He sends us. The church is sent. The whole church (every Christian in it) is on mission, or else, they lack evidence of their conversion--which is to be converted not only to Jesus, but to His mission as well. The Western church has reduced missiology to the compartment of the one brave soul that we ship off to Zimbabwe more to assuage the guilt of our affluence and lukewarm faith than to reproduce God-centered worshipers. For our church to be a missionary in our culture, we must exegete that culture, each Christian identifying his "tribe," and bringing the first-century gospel to the twenty-first century context.
6) Modified Charismatic Practice - None of these things could be possible if in fact the only thing the Holy Spirit does to us or in us is to convict of sin at the outset and illuminate the mose base level meaning of the text of Scripture. That level of Cessationism is a practical atheism. Moreover, Cessationism is hung by its own noose. It argues that a) the baptism of the Holy Spirit refers to every Christian's inclusion into the body of Christ (which I agree with); b) the endument of power aspect of the Spirit, manifested by "sign-gifts" was only for the apostles; c) Jesus connects that baptism with that endument [cf. Acts 1:4-5]. Conclusion: Every Christian is an apostle! How inconvenient! Believe me, no one wanted to believe Cessationism more than I did when I fled the AG as an early Christian because of their rampant anti-intellectualism. The case just cannot be seriously supported by the standard 1 Corinthians 13 and Hebrews 2:4 "sign gifts" routine, even though I wanted it to be true so I could just get on with my bookish fight of faith. I found that having begun by the Spirit, I could not be perfected by the flesh [cf. Gal. 3:3], and that to attempt it was sheer arrogance. We need the empowering ministry of the Spirit to be His flaming witnesses, though it will not look like the modern Charismatic movement, where experiences are sought after as an end in themselves. We believe in the continuation of the gifts, though we do not pretend to know exactly how and why they are to be used in all cases. We can see that they are for the edification of the body and the glorifcation of Christ. The word must be kept central in Christian worship (not experience), but the true word will produce an experience that will not be able to lay dormant and live with no expectancy for revival!
http://www.thewellboise.com/
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Greetings from The Well
Hello blogosphere. My name is Matt. I'm a 31-year old pastor/church-planter in Boise, Idaho. I have a wife and two kids (a third on the way). About 30 of us started a church called The Well a few months ago and we are, for lack of a better phrase, a pack of Christian Hedonists (Why reinvent the wheel?). It's late, so I'm not going to blog, but just thought I'd throw an intro out there.
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