Back In The Saddle

Ah…a week away on a mission trip and another of vacation and I’m finally back in the office. This week our church is having VBS, but I ended up withdrawing from the class I was planning to take at Northern Seminary. My intent was to audit the class. One, it was much cheaper to audit, and two, there was a lot of weekly work to do, plus I was only taking it because of an interest in the subject, not the grade.

Nevertheless, I got the required reading and have actually finished one of the books - The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin Vanhoozer. Reading that one got me interested all over again in a book I’ve had on my reading list for a while, but have never gotten around to: Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context, by John Franke and Stanley Grenz, so I’m one chapter into that one now. I suspect what I’ve read so far will generate a few posts over the summer. In addition, I have The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader which is edited by Graham Ward and I’ve gotten through one chapter of Stanley Hauerwas’ book A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity.

While all of that should provide some food for fodder, I’ll try not to get too technical in the discussion of them. It’s pretty heavy philosophy/theology and while I enjoy that sort of thing, I’m aware that many don’t. Hopefully there will be some practical things that come to the front that can be discussed here without us all feeling like we’re in a college class room.

Here are some things that are on my mind right now, some related to my current reading and some not: Read more

The Church - Autonomous?

Those churches that are a part of the "free-church" tradition have, for several hundred years, advocated a principle called "local church autonomy."  I can hear those words ringing in my head all the way back to my childhood in the Baptist church.  But it isn’t unique to Baptists.  John Hammett notes that there are more than 50 Christian denominations in America that practice "local church autonomy" and/or some form of congregational rule - a form of government in which the local congregation has the final say in doctrinal and practical matters.

Interestingly, James K. A. Smith suggests that the language of "local church autonomy" didn’t appear until after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant gained notoriety.  Kant advocated the "autonomous self" as a foundation for human experience.  It is this Kantian idea of autonomy that provides a common foundation for both liberal and fundamentalist streams of the theological spectrum.  It’s true.  There isn’t a fundamental difference in the fountain from which sprang John R. Rice and John Shelby Spong.  It was the fountain of autonomy.

Hammett qualifies local church autonomy with the phrase "under the authority of Christ."  But he then goes on to explain that the foundation of this notion is rooted in a belief that every believer possesses the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit speaks through each one, not some privileged number out of the group.  Now, I’m very much inclined to agree with him, but what I wonder is why we stop at the local church?  Isn’t the Spirit present in believers outside of that one local church?  Does the Spirit not also speak to/through those believers?  Is there a good reason we limit the "authority" of the Spirit’s voice spoken to/through those other believers other than that our names are on different local church rolls?

Hammett stipulates that there is no external ecclesiastical body outside of the local church to which the local church is answerable in an authoritative way, but I’m not talking about ecclesiastical bodies.  I’m talking about individual, Spirit-filled believers.  Yes, the New Testament shows us examples of local churches choosing their own leaders, determining doctrinal matters and administering their own church discipline.  But what is often ignored (or glossed over) is that the writers of the New Testament (some apostles, others not) don’t appear to be writing nice suggestions to the churches they addressed.  On one occasion the apostle Paul writes about a "rule" of his that applies to "all the churches."  As mentioned in an earlier post, the apostle John indicates that Demetrius erred because he was not submitting to John’s authority (and possibly the authority of others) and that when John arrived on the scene he would take appropriate action (3 John 9-10).  Yes, these two are apostles, but in a striking admission even Hammett acknowledges that Titus (a non-apostle) had a similar authority (the authority to appoint church leadership in a church to which he did not personally belong) and notes that he had such an authority due to his close relationship to the apostle Paul.

Is it just me or did we just take a step toward something very much like "apostolic succession?"  I mean, what about Titus’s close relationships?  Is it that far removed to suggest that the authority conferred upon Titus via his relationship to Paul might be conferred upon others because of their close relationship to Titus who had a close relationship to Paul?

No.  My point is that I don’t believe the New Testament is nearly so clear on "local church autonomy" as it might appear to some of us free-churchers.  Hammett notes that early Baptists were drawn to "associational" ties with one another and that early on the association existed to help advise the church in matters of doctrine and practice.  That function of the association has all but disappeared these days in favor of even greater "autonomy."  The church culture of our present day is not even all that opposed to practically thumbing their nose at such connections.  But as I’ve noted previously, I believe this is unwise.  Alone we are much more prone to error in both belief and practice.  Alone we shut our ears off to a good bit of not only what the Spirit is saying to other believers in other churches, but what the Spirit has been saying to the church for centuries and millennia.

We need to figure out how to recover our ability to hear the Spirit speak through others.  This doesn’t require formal denominational ties as long as we can maintain our connection to the larger church without falling back into some sort of self-reliant place of autonomy when we hear something we might not like or may be difficult to hear.  It also doesn’t mean that every pronouncement of an ecumenical council is authoritative for the church today.  But it means that we recognize that we are organically connected even if we are not organizationally connected.  To thumb our nose at other believers because they are not of the same flavor or brand as us is to thumb our nose at another part of our own body - which is a really odd picture.  I don’t believe we can maintain a position that says we are both organically connected and at the same time autonomous from one another.  The body metaphor that the apostle Paul uses for the church seems to me to require an organic view of the church and renders "local church autonomy" as something that begins to make little Biblical sense.

Books, Books, Books

You know…I had a really long post written out about the relationship of emergent and postmodernism and after I went back and scanned it I realized that even I didn’t want to read all of that. I don’t figure you would either. So here’s one that’s shorter and hopefully sweeter.

If you have any interests in what postmodernism is saying and if it has anything of value for the contemporary church (and I would resoundingly say that it does), then go read James K A Smith’s book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism. It’s 160 short pages. He attempts to write in a way that is understandable to the average person. At times he succeeds fantastically. I enjoy how he introduces each chapter with a contemporary movie theme to illustrate what he’s going to say. There are several spots where I was left thinking that the “average person” I know would probably find some of the content difficult. I’m pretty average and I found it difficult. Nevertheless, it is more than worth the effort especially if you are engaged in ministry or for that matter if you are a follower of Jesus who is interested in engaging the broader culture around you.

There you have it. I guess that was just one book, wasn’t it?

The Myth of Objectivity

Posting has been a little sparse because I’ve been preoccupied - several funerals in the past two weeks, kids in soccer, cross country and basketball and, of course, the priority of taking in a few OU football games.

Thinking out loud: I believe there is such a thing as "objective" reality - or that there are things as they really are, not just as they are perceived.  I’ve even had friends tell me that they believe I’m one of the most objective people they know (don’t laugh!).  But the moment I say "I know…" doesn’t my knowing become subjective?  After all, I am a subject, not an object.  Thus, my knowing is the knowing of a subject - and thus subjective (by definition, it would seem).  I always have a context and my context will forever be shaped by certain contextual realities - my place of birth, my ethnic origin, my social/economic status, the particular family into which I was born, my educational background and a whole lot more.  My understanding of the world, how it works, who I am, what life is meant to be, are all heavily influenced by that context.

It should seem obvious that a white, middle-class, college educated, 21st Century American, son of a Baptist deacon and loving parents would think differently about the world and how it works than a poor, black, uneducated African, son of an abusive shaman father.  I think it is safe to say that even if the parents were Christian - say a middle-class Chinese laborer who’s mother works in a sweat shop making toys for Mattel.  Would we view the teachings of Scripture differently because of our context?  What makes the American context superior to all others when it comes to understanding something like Scripture?  Or am I wrong that we view it that way?  Because it sure seems to me, especially for Baptists in the south (and I’m broadly including Oklahoma here because of the strong Southern Baptist presence) that we view it that way.

These thoughts generated by a post from David Phillips.