Archive - June, 2011

Suffering: The Price to Be Paid for Living Distinctively

June 29, 2011 in Christian Living with 0 Comments

Pluralism is the accepted relationship between church and state in the contemporary West. Such an approach has been manageable while the competing religions have shared ethical norms. But what happens when perceptions of right and wrong sharply diverge.

Howard Chua-Eoan wites on Time.com in qualified praise of the legalization of homosexual “marriages” in New York:

But in one very important way, gay marriage will not quite be marriage even in New York, even 30 days from now when the law goes into effect. . . . Marriage without a church or temple wedding isn’t the real thing. Why can some people have all the bells and whistles in the church of their choice but not me? Of course, there have been and will be congregations and churches that allow gay men and lesbians to be married in their midst and to bless those unions, recognizing that God loves them just as much as Governor Andrew Cuomo does. But some rich and influential religious institutions are not only free to continue to reject gay men and women as equal beneficiaries of all aspects of faith but will now also rally their congregants to reject politicians who are willing to abide with this extension of secular civil rights — no matter how much acceptance there is of same-sex marriage elsewhere, no matter how many wedding announcements appear in the New York Times.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079861,00.html

In Chua-Eoan’s system of ethics rejection of homosexuality is a sin. Thus the offenders’ liberty must be curtailed so the righteous can freely enjoy theirs. Is pluralism workable in such a situation?

Michael Goheen, drawing on Newbigin, notes:

“No human societies cohere except on the basis of some kind of common beliefs and customs. No society can permit these beliefs and practices to be threatened beyond a certain point without reacting in self-defense.” . . . When ultimate believes clash, the dominant worldview strives to become the exclusive worldview, exerting tremendous pressure on dissenting communities to abandon their uniqueness and conform to the dominant community. Dissenters must opt either for accommodation or to live out the comprehensive call of the gospel faithfully and pay the price for their dissent with suffering.

Micahel Goheen, A Light to the Nations 95.

The Universal Blessing of the Abrahamic Covenant Fulfilled through the Davidic Covenant

June 24, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

The Davidic covenant "also reestablishes the universal horizon of [Israel’s] calling: a king in David’s line becomes the object of future hope. God makes a covenant with David, promising that one day one of David’s descendants will rule over a universal and everlasting kingdom (2 Sam. 7:11-17). This is more than a promise of political success: it anticipates the goal of God’s redemptive work through Israel—the incorporation of the nations into God’s covenant people. Thus the psalmists celebrate the promise of God’s universal rule through Israel’s king (e.g., Pss. 2:7-9; 72:11-17)." Note, esp., the echo of the Abrahamic covenant in Ps. 72:17. See also the prophets: Isa. 11; 55:3-5; Jer. 33:14-22.

Goheen, A Light to the Nations (Baker, 2011), 55-56.

Does Mission Define the Essence of the Church?

June 23, 2011 in Dogmatics, Ecclesiology with 0 Comments

Michael Goheen’s book, A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story insightfully relates the theme of missions to both Israel and the church. Yet at a few points it may be asked if mission ends up overriding other necessary aspects of the church.

For instance: “At its best, ‘missional’ describes not a specific activity of the church but the very essence and identity of the church as it takes up its role in God’s story in the context of its culture and participates in God’s mission to the world” (p. 4).

John Bolt and Richard Muller question the legitimacy of defining the church’s essence in terms of mission:

“In simple language, what we are determines how we can act and what the result of our activity will be. The marks of the church indicate her fundamental identity, and her identity is the basis for the performance of her task. The opposite model, where the doing of a task is posited prior to careful statement of identity, or where identity is defined in terms of a task, can lead and historically has led to disastrous consequences. A redefinition and revision of the church’s task, framed primarily by numerical growth for example, threatens the very essence of the church. After having led converts to a new and different place, we may well discover that this is not a place where the Word is truly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. We have then arrived if not at utopia, at ucclesia, a nonchurch. The point here is that the expression a ‘mission-shaped church’ is vacuous. A church cannot remain church unless it is shaped by a mission that is itself shaped by the church’s essential identity.”

John Bolt and Richard A. Muller, “Does the Church Today Need a New ‘Mission Paradigm’,” Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (April 1, 1996): 204-205.

Church Conformed to Culture

June 18, 2011 in Christian Living, Dogmatics, Ecclesiology with 0 Comments

Michael Goheen lists and describes a variety of images of the church that are shaped more by the current culture than by Scripture:

  • Church as mall or food court: Malls offer a variety of consumer goods, and similarly food courts offer a number of choices. Likewise the church provides a variety of programs to meet the religious needs of the congregation.
  • Church as community center: Various institutions . . . exist to meet social needs and organize themselves around the hobbies and special interests of their members. In this model the church becomes a hub for its members to meet social needs as the organize around a shared set of beliefs and a shared religious interest. Various programs are conceived for youth, singles, young married couples, and other groups to meet their various social needs.
  • Church as a corporation: Corporations are rationally organized for growth, profit, and the efficient marketing of their product. Often church leadership and organization are oriented toward efficiency rather than pastoral care and missional leadership. They are organized to market the religious goods they can offer.
  • Church as theater: Theaters are places where people are invited to sit back and passively enjoy various kinds of entertainment. Often the way we structure our worship spaces and liturgies makes our ‘worship’ look more like occasions for entertainment.
  • Church as classroom: Educational institutions continue to dominate Western culture. Within a consumer framework, they offer teaching and insight for living. This may well reflect one of the consumer items the church has to offer its constituents through Bible study and teaching.
  • Church as hospital or spa: A hospital is a place of healing, and a spa offers an opportunity for rejuvenation in a stressful world. The church is a place of spiritual healing and rejuvenation.
  • Church as a motivational seminar: In our self-help-oriented world there is no shortage of motivational seminars to help improve various dimensions of our lives. The church can offer these too, from tips on better parenting to ways to improve your marriage.
  • Church as social-service office: The social-services arm of the government exists to take care of the weak, the needy, and the poor. The compassionate church concerned for diaconal mercy in its neighborhood may come to resemble this kind of institution in its care for those in need.
  • Church as campaign headquarters or social advocacy group: A social-advocacy group or political party promotes its particular brand of political economic, or ecological justice. In this mode, the church assumes this role, organizing pressure for a more Christian society.

Goheen recognizes that some, though not all, of these items contain aspects of church ministry that are essential (e.g., teaching). He identifies the problem: “The problem arises when the biblical story and the nature of the church are forgotten; then these activities are shaped by a different story and lose their authentic ecclesial form.”

Michael Goheen, Light to the Nations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 15-16 (bulleted items quoted verbatim).

Distinct Living within a Particular Cultural Context

June 17, 2011 in Ecclesiology, Missions with 0 Comments

The early church saw itself in light of the concept of "resident aliens" (παροικοι). "The primary sense of paroikoi* is that of a redemptive tension between the church and its cultural context. These early Christians understood themselves to be different from others in their culture, and lived together as an alternative community nourished by an alternative story—the story of the Bible—that was impressed on catechumens in the process of catechism. The entire catechetical process had this pastoral purpose: to empower a distinctive people shaped by the story of the Bible."

*Note 10: "Paroikoi is the Greek world found in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:11) and often early church literature. It carries the sense of both being at home in a place and being a foreigner."

Micahel W. Goheen, A Light to the Nations(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 7.

Allegory and the Church Fathers

June 16, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

"There is a general failure in antiquity to make a clear distinction between allegorical expression and allegorical interpretation. What we call ‘allegorical interpretation’ in this context normally takes the form of a claim that an author has expressed himself ‘allegorically’ in a given passage. . . . There is never any suggestion that the goal of the commentator is anything but the elucidation of the intention or meaning (διάνοια) of the author. Neither does the interpreter normally feel compelled to justify his claim that the text under consideration ‘says other things than the obvious. His goal is to find the hidden meanings, the correspondence that carry the thrust of the text beyond the explicit. Once he has asserted their existence, he rarely feels the need to provide a theoretical substructure for his claims. If such a substructure is implied, it is often no more than the idea that a prestigious author is incapable of an incoherent or otherwise unacceptable statement, and that an offensive surface is thus a hint that a secondary meaning lurks behind."

Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, 20.