I lifted this great quote from Per Crucem ad Lucem which is from Anthony Robinson here on why 'family' is not a great self-designation for a church.

‘Many of the congregations that claim “We’re a family,” lose sight of larger transformative purposes and settle, instead, for the comfort and satisfaction of their members. The core purpose of a congregation – growing people of faith and helping people and communities move from despair to hope – gives way to lesser and even contrary purposes like keeping people happy. While it may not be a necessary outcome of the use of the family image, many congregations that gravitate towards it seem to make member comfort and satisfaction their de facto purpose.

That may be because “family” suggests to people something like, “We’re all loving and nice here.” That in turn often means no hard questions are asked and no honest challenges are allowed. It wouldn’t be nice.

I can think of other reasons to be cautious about “family” as our image for church. Families sometimes keep secrets that shouldn’t be kept in order to keep from bringing shame on the family name. And families aren’t typically that easy to join. Two of our sons were married in recent years. Turns out that putting families together is a fairly complex dance.

One last issue. The use of the term “family,” may communicate to people who are not married or to the married without children that they don’t quite fit. “Our church is a family,” morphs into “our church is for families.”

Keeping the family members happy, having everyone know everyone else and get along like “a happy family,” isn’t really the point for Christian congregations. Their goal and purpose is both different and higher.

Perhaps other biblical images like “People of God,” “Creation of the Holy Spirit,” or “Body of Christ” are better ecclesiological images? It’s not that these images don’t also have potential pitfalls. It is the case, however, that unlike “family” they are uncommon enough that people seldom have their own set ideas about what they mean. In some congregations, I hear leaders address the congregation simply as “church.” That too seems promising, reminding the gathered community that they are the Church of Jesus Christ (and the building is not).

If we must use “family,” we should be aware of the way that Jesus, while using “family,” also subverts conventional understandings of family and challenges their usual boundaries with a thoroughly new vision of “family.”’

Real Love Waits (Quote)

Only real love waits while we journey through grief. That is the real trustworthiness between people. In all the epics, in all the stories that have lasted through many lifetimes, it is always the same truth: love must wait for wounds to heal. It is this waiting that we must do for each other, not with a sense of mercy, or in judgment, but as if forgiveness were a rendezvous. How many are willing to wait for another in this way? Very few. (Anne Michael)

The Problem With the Historical Critical Method

It is not uncommon for people who study the Bible at degree level to be overwhelmed by the 'scientific' method of biblical studies they meet in the university. Some lose their faith, not because their faith was shown to be utterly devoid of value or sense, but because they did not recognise the assumptions behind what they were being taught in their degree program, and place these assumptions under scrutiny. Some leave utterly bewildered and lost, others retreat into literalism. Still others embrace the scientific method, recognising the sheer rationality of the 'science'. (The historical-critical method is a very powerful tool.) However, they too might miss the assumptions behind what they are being taught, possibly because they already hold similar assumptions! I'm thinking here, for example, of the assumption that God does not enter into our history from, in some real sense, outside it, and that everything must have a 'natural' cause (and only a natural cause) to be considered anything but superstition.

The historical-critical method, as it is called, is a great tool for understanding Scripture, but its practice can be laden with philosophical-theological assumptions that cannot be justified from the method itself. However, follow the trajectory of the assumptions and a practical atheism awaits. It is quite an experience to wake up one day and realise that you have been duped into just such a practical atheism. Again, if you have this experience of realising that you have been duped, don't trudge off to the (so-called) literalists, and don't give up your faith because, on the one hand, you can see the nihilism of a theology devoid of God's action in the world, but, on the other hand, don't know how to get God back. It is the assumptions behind the method that are critical here, not the historical-critical method itself. The assumptions I am thinking of here are utterly alien to the biblical worldview. The solution is to scrutinize them and replace them with a global view of Scripture arising from the text of Scripture itself. You are free not to believe the biblical faith, but at least then it will be the biblical faith that you are rejecting!

Here are three assumptions I have flirted with and now reject:

1. The Hidden Jesus of History (vs the Christ of Faith of the Church)

There are many people who allege that the church distorted the 'real Jesus' into a divine figure, and that this distortion is a massive accretion placed on top of the real Jesus. If the novice biblical interpreter hasn't done some work on the Enlightenment legacy in biblical studies s/he might be easily convinced by purveyors of this assumption that one must pierce the layers of tradition to grasp the 'real Jesus'. At worst Jesus becomes a figure shrouded in mystery and beyond our reach because the church's distortion of him is opaque to critical-historical examination.

So it is alleged that the accretions are in the New Testament itself, and are not merely a later layer of church doctrine poured over the top of a pristine history contained in the New Testament. The historical-critical method is used to free the 'original Jesus' and his message from this faith distortion. So practitioners of this assumption attempt to sieve out the later accretions of doctrine, liturgy and creed from the text through a variety of methods. For example, the more complex the theology of a text, or the more exalted Jesus appears, the more likely the real Jesus is waiting to be liberated from church doctrine and faith. (A sort of evolutionary theory transposed into biblical studies - i.e. complexity comes at the end of a long process of evolution. In this case, however, complex theology is to be avoided and, where possible, pierced for its historical kernel. ) Or, again, rather than the object of biblical study being God and Jesus, and the special relationship with God enjoyed by Jesus (a ubiquitous affirmation contained within the New Testament), the object of study becomes the faith of the communities that produced the text. The text then becomes a witness to the faith of these communities, unrelated to the Scriptural and faith claim of Jesus' identity with God. This is paralleled in the debates that attempt to drive a wedge between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history, or between faith and reason, as if the two poles are utterly immiscible, leading to the priority of a certain kind of reason and a certain kind of history over a more unified view of faith, history and reason.

As an aside, I wonder if some of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Reformers. It is intriguing that the impetus in this movement splitting Jesus of History and Christ of Faith came from the Protestant Church, and makes one suspicious. The Protestant Reformers' reaction against the Roman Church of the day, formulated as an escape from ordinary religion to true faith through Sola Scriptura, is only a jump away (although a long jump admittedly) from seeing the need to make the same split in Scripture itself between faith and church dogma.

In summary, if it is assumed that God cannot be involved in history, or at least that we must limit ourselves to studying only that which is the result of natural causes alone, then the historical-critical method can be used to remove God from Scripture's presentation of the identity and work of Jesus. The result can be the 'Spongification' of Jesus, or talk only of the church's faith itself (not the Jesus and God attested in Scripture), or perhaps even Jesus' own experience of God, as a substitute for Scripture's affirmation of Jesus' special relationship with, indeed, his identity with, God.

2. History as a Solid State
The assumed homogeneity of history leads some interpreters of the Bible to discount anything that cannot be fitted into our current experience. (E.g. the resurrection of Jesus) But why can't God introduce the new and unique into history through history? The Bible says God can, and to interpret otherwise requires an alien assumption to be placed over the text. As Moltmann pointed out forty years ago, the theological conclusion to be drawn from the uniqueness of the resurrection of Jesus is not its dismissal, but making it the judge of our historical experience. I know that goes against Enlightenment assumptions, but that is the point. It is the Bible's way of ordering reality and it is different than a materialistic reading of history. The resurrection of Jesus is about the future made present, not its in/compatibility with the cul-de-sac of humanity's business as usual.

3. A Hellenized Christianity
While it is undoubtedly true that research into the Jewishness of Jesus and his culture (has and) will lead to many new insights, it is not clear that this should come from a divorce between the Jewish Jesus and the Graeco-Roman culture of his era. It has been popular to blame the Hellenization of Christianity for all the distortions of the simple Jew from Nazareth alleged to exist in the New Testament and later church liturgy and doctrine. De-Hellenization was all the rage for a century or more, directed both at Scripture and the early church period of the great councils of the church. It wasn't that long ago that students of the Bible might be taught that the 'Logos' mentioned in John's Gospel was a thoroughly Greek concept indebted to the Greek Philosophies of the age. Indeed, the alleged Hellenism of John's Gospel was evidence of its Gnostic character to many. Now it is recognised that Logos/Word has a thoroughly Hebraic history as well. In relation to the great councils of the early church and the creeds produced, the doctrine of the Trinity is anything but the Hellenization of Christianity. While the formal doctrine is couched in the philosophical language of Hellenism, it is not the end-product of the Hellenization of Christianity, but the defense and confirmation of the Gospel itself. The hierarchy of the gods of Hellenism was tipped on its side with the co-equality of the Eternal Father and Son, and later, Spirit. The eternal fatherhood of God safeguards the special relationship of Jesus with God witnessed to in Scripture.


All this is not to suggest that we should return to a pre-critical era. (The kind of scholarship represented in the work of N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Benedict XVI, Hans Urs von Balthasar or Karl Barth is not pre-critical.) Rather, as a thought experiment attend to the Scriptures with the full arsenal of techniques of the historical-critical method minus the above prejudices. What is required is to attend to the text with an openness to see the correspondences between history and faith and the priority of God in the critical distance between the acts of God and our usual experience. If it is not assumed that Scripture's presentation of the unique relationship of Jesus with God is an alien overlay on the real Jesus, it is surprising to discover what the historical-critical method reveals about Jesus that is supportive of the faith of the church and yet not an offense to reason and historical study. (I will shortly post on a book that provides some interesting thoughts on John's presentation of the identity of Jesus with God.)

Trust the Most Difficult (Quote)

And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

(Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet)

Repentance Vs Remorse

It is important not to confuse repentance with remorse. Repentance swirls around the triad of self, God and others. When we repent we look at ourselves and the human being we are (and in contrast, the human being we are called to be). We are cut to the heart with an awareness of what we are doing to others and therefore the whole human family. This is much more than sorrow for individual acts (but includes this). And in repentance we are struck by our disobedience to God, our 'stuckness' and therefore our need for God. The three - self, others, and God - are coordinated in repentance, and mutually present, for it is impossible to reflect on the human being I have made myself and not be aware, at least in the background, of our creation in God's image. Remorse, on the other hand, tends toward the severing of the ties that bind this triad together. Sorry that you were caught? That's remorse. The desire to be a better person without being led to reflecting on our relationship with others (and what we have done to them) and God (and not the god who is a tool in our hands to make us feel better about ourselves, but the real God who justifies us) is remorse, not repentance. Remorse is about us alone; repentance is about us being pulled into the orbit of others as real people, and into God on God's terms.

When repentance begins we can start at any one of the three mentioned above. But repentance will move us further than any one of them.

Determinism = Nihilism (Quote)

Here is a great quote from David Bentley Hart I copied from Theology Forum.

[...] there is a point at which an explanation becomes so comprehensive that it ceases to explain anything at all, because it has become a mere tautology. In the case of a pure determinism, this is always so. To assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things – without any deeper mystery of created freedom – is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is, for any meaningful distinction between the will of God and the simple totality of cosmic eventuality has collapsed. [...] Even if the purpose of such a world is to prepare creatures to know the majesty and justice of its God, that majesty and justice are, in a very real sense, fictions of his will, impressed upon creatures by means both good and evil, merciful and cruel, radiant and monstrous – some are created for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment, and all for the sake of the divine drama of perfect and irresistible might. Such a God, at the end of the day, is nothing but will, and so nothing but an infinite brute event; and the only adoration that such a God can evoke is an almost perfect coincidence of faith and nihilism. (Doors of the Sea, pp. 29-30)

Telepaganism Hinn Style

Far out. You have to listen to this.

All Things Necessary For Salvation

Following on from the last post about Sola Scriptura, I like the the way Anglican formularies speak of Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation. Of course the faith in Christ can be found in other writings, and should be used for our spiritual sustenance. The Church put Scripture together not as the sole repository of faith, but the canon or rule, the touchstone and norm for all doctrine and faith. While this doesn't solve the culture wars within the church by supplying the means for a legalistic solution to the variety within Christianity, it is not relativizing Scripture either. It is just being honest about the historical process that formed Scripture and the necessity for interpreting Scripture.

Sola Scriptura

If Sola Scriptura is taken to mean that only the Bible is used in theology and is the only authority in life, then it just doesn't make sense. As Ben Witherington III points out in a guest post at Theology Forum, the New Testament itself does not provide a full justification of the New Testament! So, for example, there is no list of the books of the New Testament in the New Testament; it was the church that decided which books would be included, and to which books Sola Scriptura would be applied. And another excellent example he cites is the Council of Nicea and the Creed it produced. The New Testament as we have it had not been set at this point in Christian history. However, those assembled felt perfectly able to set down the normative faith on the basis of the apostolic witness, which included the books of our New Testament, as well as other writings.

Joy and Peace, and More

The presence of Jesus brings joy and peace to those who experience it. But it never brings comfort without also bringing a gift that we cannot bear as it is so shattering to our pride, and without also bringing a costly demand upon our minds and actions. Jesus being with us where we are means our being with him where he is. If Jesus is with you, what is he demanding of you - urgently - in your actions about poverty, or peace, or race, or your neighbour? If Jesus is with you, he will not let you wear blinkers about your relations with your fellows. If Jesus is with you, your life may be turned inside out. (Michael Ramsay)