Being Post Evangelical

I've been trying over the past few years to figure out how to describe my faith. It seems a lot of others are on that same journey through the "evangelical wilderness" not really feeling at home in the traditional molds, but not knowing exactly where they belong either. I'm not conservative, but I am equally not liberal, and in todays polarized culture where you are either one or the other, that puts me in the category of nowhere.

Many people have responded to this with a shift in terminology. They see that calling themselves evangelical and even Christian has a negative association that they want to distance themselves from and so they come up with new terms like "follower of Jesus" or even "follower in the way of Jesus" (that's FITWOJ for short, very catchy indeed). Others have left evangelicalism for the orthodox church, the mainline church, the catholic church, the emergent church, and so on. I never felt I could do that. As much as I struggled with it, I felt that this embarrassing family was, like it or not, my own family. It was my home, and I felt inauthentic anywhere else. Yet I did not feel at home in my dysfunctional evangelical family either, kind of like how many of us feel at our own biological families over the holidays when we cringe at the awful things uncle Larry says.

I have tried putting a good face on evangelicalism by my own witness, trying to broaden people's view of what it means to be evangelical, showing them that it can be thoughtful and compassionate. The basic line I took - and I think it is one an awful lot of people take - is that yes there are a few wackos out there that give us all a bad name, angry hurtful people with a pulpit and a TV camera, but the vast majority of us are really pretty loving people. "On the whole evangelicalism is good," I would argue, "it's just a few bad apples". I don't think I can get off that easy now. I think there are many things that are fundamentally wrong with my own evangelical faith, places where we have strayed from the Gospel and become idolatrous in adopting values of our country and culture that are diametrically opposed to the Gospel and what Jesus stood for. I could string out a laundry list of these, and I'm sure you could too. I don't want to defend that or even white wash it.

So I am post-evangelical. Not 'post' in the sense of being 'anti' evangelical or 'past' evangelical. I still very much affirm all the core beliefs of evangelicalism - I am an evangelical. But I think our faith needs to reform itself back into a faith that authentically arises directly out of the Gospel. A big part of that recovery of an authentic evangelicalism has been in looking at my own church heritage and history. Like most evangelicals my understanding of the last 2000 years of church history used to look something like this:

Book of Acts . . . . . . . . . Luther . . . . . . . . . now.

What I found though as I studied history is that my own evangelical faith has a rich tradition beginning with German pietism, continuing into Methodism and the First and Second Great Awakenings, and then into Pentecostalism - not only of stressing the importance of being transformed through a vibrant relationship with God, but also of a deep commitment to social justice and the poor. For hundreds of years loving Jesus and caring for the poor were inseparable. That's not to say that these 'golden years' of evangelicalism were without their own problems of course. I don't want to idealize the past. But I have found that understanding more about where we have come from can help us to figure out where we should be going now, and what authentically following Jesus might look like in our time.

For me being post-evangelical (or if you prefer new-evangelical) means that I affirm that I am an evangelical, and at the same time that my own evangelical faith has in many ways taken a major wrong turn and seriously needs to deeply seek out what radically loving and following Jesus might look like.

I remember when I first visited Germany we were at the Gedaechniskirche in the center of Berlin. This is a church that has been deliberately left as it was after the war - a huge gaping hole ripped into it by a bomb - as a remembrance of Germany's role in WWII. I remember speaking to the pastor of that church and him asking me to forgive him and his people for what they had done. I was taken aback at first since this pastor could not have been more than 4-years-old when it all happened. Yet there he was, taking responsibility for the deeds of his own people, and repenting in the midst of that war-torn cathedral. I hope I can be a bit like him now, because I am an evangelical, and I need to ask your forgiveness.

The Emerging Relational Theology #5

Emergents are often accused of being little more than repackaged liberal Christianity. One place where this comes up is in our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The typical evangelical pat answer here has to do with believing the right stuff, and having a conversion expereince. The flip side liberal answer has to do with doing the right stuff. Many emergents, unsatisfied with their own evangelical background which was focused on rigid orthodoxy now stress a focus on orthopraxy, and speak of being a "follower of Jesus". In this focus on following the moral teachings of Jesus over and against right belief they do seem very much to echo liberalism.

There is however a third relational way that goes beyond this liberal/conservative divide between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This way is one that is not so much new as it is a rediscovery of ancient faith (I realize that this is a claim nearly every group makes for itself, that they are the original and true version, so take it with a grain of salt). The term orthodoxy as it was originally used does not actually mean right belief or right doctrine, it means right worship ("dox" as in "doxology"). In this sense what we believe, value, embrace, and affirm is directly connected to how we live, and in fact how we live and love God is primary - that is, our expression and formulation about who God is and who we are come out of experiencing God in history transforming our own history. As a consequence being a Christian is not based on our moral performance, nor is it based on our ability to arrive at the right formulations (a kind of intellectual salvation by works). It is based on God entering into our lives and doing a work in us. This relational view assumes a real living God who can be known by us relationally and that being in this relationship is transforming. It is not simply following the teachings of a dead guy on our own, nor it is affirming the formulations of who God is that were written by some others dead guys, it is about being connected to the living and risen Christ - to the one who is life abundant itself, and having that new life form who we are, how we see, and how we live. Being a Christian is about being alive in Christ. It means having Christ abiding in our hearts, being transformed into his image through his present love in our lives changing us from the inside out.

Now all of this is pretty much a Wesleyan view of salvation as integrally connected to sanctification. It is the kind of intimate relationship with God that many evangelicals have been familiar with from day one. In may be more familiar within charismatic denominations than reformed ones, but it is not really anything "emergent". What is emergent is an additional "catholic" twist to this relational view. That's "catholic" with a small "c" as an adjective not a noun, meaning not the Roman Catholic church, but simply a focus on the church as a body rather than on individual personal salvation in isolation from the community of faith. Here church is not understood as an authoritarian institution that meets on the weekend to dispense correct teaching, but a living community of those who indwelt by God in Christ are being transformed into living out Christ-likeness together. Simply put: loving God cannot be separated from loving others. We learn God's love by seeing it modeled and lived out, and the vocation of the body is to be this salt - to reveal Christ. We can't really speak of a relationship with God if we divorce this from living in relationship with others in community. That's pretty much the point John makes over and over in his epistles.

This communal idea of living in relationship together as the body of Christ in the world is an idea that has been pretty neglected. For many of us we go to church in the sense of it being an event, close our eyes during worship and face forward to listen to the sermon. We sit next to others, but we might as well be alone. Afterwards we might small talk a bit over donuts before we drive off in our cars back to our own private lives. Not exactly the same as the vision of koinonia community in the book of Acts where they lived together sharing everything in common, living and dying together, living out agape love. We know from Paul's letters that this was not always rosy or without problems, but it seems that this kind of real relational living together in our world of commuter church events is not really even on our radar at all. Frankly I am uninterested in whether a church has cool moody candles and overhead beamers with interactive worship video, and would love instead to just have some people sharing their lives and being real - less postmodern glitz and more plain old unromantic friends hanging out and sharing their imperfect lives.

(thanks to emerging grace for the above poster)

The Emerging Relational Theology #4

Hans Frei's narrative theology focused on a hermeneutic through which to understand Scripture interfaces with the ethics based narrative theology of Stanley Hauerwas as we allow God's story - God's Heilsgeschichte - to become our story.

This ethical narrative theology of Stanley Hauerwas is heavily influenced by Alasdair MacIntyre's "Virtue Ethics". Virtue ethics is an ethics based on the development of character. In contrast to deontological and utilitarian ethics which following the Enlightenment attempt to form an objective and detached universal ethics based detached reason, and free from the biases of culture or tradition, an ethics based on character says that morality is formed in a person as they develop character in community. This differs from relativism because it is not my story, but our story, and for those who follow Christ, God's story that we are a part of. We are relative in the sense that we are God's children, connected to relationship - our story tied up in Christ's.

A big part of this shared narrative in a community forming character in a person has for Hauerwas to do with a counter-cultural understanding of the body of Christ as salt in the world. Coming from the United Methodist Church, Hauerwas speaks out against what he calls "Christiandom" in books like "Resident Aliens" and calls for us to model another way that is in the world but not of the world. Joining him in this is the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank. Like Hauerwas, Milbank is concerned about the church being co-opted by culture, specifically the spirit crushing values of modernism. Because of this Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy speaks in the context of a post-modern critique on modernism, but it would be a mistake to see it as postmodern theology, rather it is an attempt to return to the roots of Christianity focusing on the patristics (the early church fathers) applying this to the post modern context we live in today.

One person who has championed Radical Orthodoxy in an easy to understand way (Milbank and others have a habit of overloading their work with mind numbing histories of philosophy), and addressing this directly to the emerging church is James K.A. Smith. In his book "Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?" Smith argues that rather than promoting relativism, postmodernism as the death of modernism also heralds the death of secularism, which is indeed good news.

As you can see, the emerging relational theology that began with narrative theology has taken on many different bannersn(narrative theology, postmodern theology, radical orthodoxy, ancient-future faith, neo-evangelicals, the emergent church) and a host of names - Hans Frei, Gerorge Lindbeck, Stanley Grenz, John Milbank, James K.A. Smith, Robert Webber, Stanley Hauerwas, and Nancy Murphy just to name a few. What they all have in common is a shared understanding of a relational theology, of people as relational beings in community with each other and a social God.

These growing critiques reflect a move away from modernist assumptions from both the left and right, each respectively critiquing their own traditions. As a result Christians on both sides of the theological fence are finding commonality and space for conversation rooted in a new shared relational approach to theology. In contrast to a modernist tendency (found among both liberals and conservatives) to break from the past and tradition, this approach is characterized by (1) a deep appreciation for history, (2) a recognition that there is no neutral ground and that we all speak out of a cultural context, and that (3) faith is not an individual intellectual project, but rather is formed in a communal context: Spiritual formation comes through relationship and discipleship. It is always incarnational: a faith lived out in relationship that cannot be detached from this communal context. As social beings we cannot live in the general, but are always situated within a specific world and history that shapes us. Relational faith entails a specific faith contextually rooted in the unique narrative of Scripture and the Christian community that forms a person in Christ – an identity rooted in social context to God, community, and history.

Perhaps the clearest voice here has been that of Robert Webber and his "Younger Evangelicals", but that will have to wait until next time...

Being honest with doubt

One of my favorite podcasts is Internet Monk Michael Spencer. He defines himself as “post Evangelical”. Not “post” in terms of being “anti”, but in terms of challenging his own and our assumptions about that particular culture in order to try and find an authentic and grace filled way of following Jesus. Michael said something there recently that I thought was so good that I'd like to quote it at length here.

To those who - despite all their deep sincerity and honest efforts, try as they might - feel that Christianity is just not working he says:

“I don't have an answer for you guys, what I have is just a moment of saying that I know you are there, and I know some of the pain you are in... some of the frighting, doubting aspects of all this that hangs over your head when you wonder what's real, what's true. I know there are moments when you say 'man, have I made a complete fool of myself with the way I live my life!'.

You are not alone. There are lots of people like you. It's hard for us sometimes to reach out, and hear one another's stories, but those stories are there... Please don't be afraid to tell your story – on your website, or across a cup of coffee, or in whatever way you have. Don't be afraid to tell that story, because there are people listening to you - tell the truth - who know that you are like them, and they value the fact that you have validated their own experience. And they are closer to God, and God is more real to them. Because you were honest about the way that Christianity sometime doesn't work for you – you help their faith journey along by letting them know that they're not crazy. They may not walk up to you and say 'I appreciate what you said', but they are there.

Christianity is I think a lot different than the people who advertise what it is. Those of us – and I hope I can count myself in this group – who will from time to time tell the truth about some of what we go through, and some of what we feel, are breaking a code of silence that keeps all kinds of people prisoners. It keeps them prisoners in manipulative churches, and abusive religious situations. It keeps them prisoners in places where leaders have to be very unlike Jesus in order to accomplish the goals of the religious organization and institution

You are okay. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't be afraid to have your own experience. And don't think that the Great Shepherd has lost track of you. He hasn't. There are all different kinds of sheep in the flock. One of those kinds of sheep is the sheep that feels lost. Maybe you are lost, maybe you're not. Maybe you're just going through a difficult time. But however you find yourself: don't lose your integrity, don't lose your honesty. And don't lose that sense that there are thousands and thousands of other people just like you.”

The Emerging Relational Theology #3

I'd like to make a detour in our series here to talk about why narrative theology is important to the Emergent movement, or rather why it should be. I just finished listening to a podcast interview national Emergent Village coordinator Tony Jones did with author Phyllis Tickle about her latest book "The Words of Jesus" which takes the words of Jesus from the canonical Gospels and lays them out with some introductory commentary by Tickle, but with all the narrative removed. Now in itself I have no problem with this, after all many Evangelicals have done the same thing with our red letter editions of the New Testament where you read just the words of Jesus. We call it "reading the red". The problem I have is in a comment Tony Jones makes where he mentions a book he is writing on the Didache, and claims that

"in the Didache the gospel is not 'Jesus died on the cross for your sins', the Gospel is the teachings of Jesus"

First of all this is a highly debatable claim for the Didache. The Greek word translated as "Gospel" Tony is referring to is ευαγγελιω which is the word our "evangel" comes from. It simply means "message" or "teaching". The Didache says things like

"all your deeds so do, as you have it in the ευαγγελιω of our Lord"

and in a section before quoting from the Lord's Prayer they write,

"as the Lord commanded in His ευαγγελιω"

The word ευαγγελιω here which is translated as "Gospel" is simply a Greek word for "teaching" or "message" commonly used in other extra-biblical writings. For example in Homer's Odyssey where it means "good tidings"

"Odysseus shall return, so let me have a reward for bearing good tidings (ευαγγελιου), and as soon as he shall come and reach his home, clothe me in a cloak and tunic" (bk 14:152)

Our English term Gospel as it has come to be understood today as the Christian plan of salvation did not exist as a word at the time. So Tony's claim amounts to "in the Didache teaching refers to teaching" which kind of goes without saying. What the Didache does not say is that salvation comes through obeying teachings as opposed to by grace and the cross, which is what Tony implies here.

Now perhaps Tony did not think much before saying this, I realize it was just an ad lib in a podcast so I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but taken as it stands, his statement is one of classical liberal theology that strips away the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection and reduces the Gospel to the teachings of Jesus. With statements like these it is no wonder that people often see Emergent as Evangelicals turned liberal. On the flipside the classic conservative take on the Gospel has too often been to detach the cross from the teaching and life of Christ. People the Gospel is both the words and deeds of Christ. You can't separate them. His teachings on the kingdom are commentaries on his actions, both in his ministry of healing, forgiving, casting out demons, and of his way to the cross. In fact Christ's central teaching on the Sermon on the Mount (which is the focus of the Didache) is how we are to understand his death. As Paul says "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Ro 5:8). The cross is God loving us His enemies, overcoming our evil through unmerited grace.

A Gospel that does not take into account all of what Jesus did and said, the whole narrative of the story of God coming among us, is at best only half a Gospel. The Gospels of Matthew Mark, Luke, and John deliberately present to us this story in narrative form, and all of it - not just the acts, not just the teaching - is how it is presented. When we try to extract from that a collection of propositional truths ( as conservatives like to do) or compendium of teachings (as liberals have a penchant for) we do violence to the intent of the Apostles. Now let me stress again that as long as it is just an exercise, reading the red as Phyllis Tickle is having us do can be a deeply rewarding expereince, but when we start to think that this "red" is the whole Gospel, and we remove the story, the actions of God in history, then we are most certainly taking a detour off the "strait and narrow" road.

We as Emergents need to be post-conservative and post-liberal. That means that we need a constructive theology that allows us to go beyond these old ruts in the road, and I do see a tendency for Emergents to lean away from the right over into the left as evidenced in Tony's statements here which I do not think are atypical. That constructive theology is greatly helped by a narrative theology that unites the words and deeds of God incarnate into one Gospel that transforms our thinking (orthodoxy) our actions (orthopraxy).

The Emerging Relational Theology #2

In my previous post I began talking about a movement in recent theology towards a relational perspective. That movement, which now spans many "schools" of thought, begins with narrative theology.

Narrative theology has become quite a buzz word in theological circles lately. So the question arises: what exactly is it? There are many flavors of narrative theology out there, and indeed it seems that just about anyone can claim the moniker for whatever. So what I would like to do is be clear about the particular form of narrative theology I see as leading towards this emerging relational theology, looking at it from my own evangelical perspective.

One of the biggest names in narrative theology is Hans Frei. Frei (along with the likes of George Lindbeck and David Kelsey) belongs to a group in Yale that became known as "postliberal" (Lindbeck's term). That means that Frei's critiques are primarily directed towards his own liberal background. In many ways Frei's narrative theology can be said to be a furtherance of Karl Barth's "neo-orthodoxy" which was also a reaction against the liberal education and heritage that Barth had. Barth bases his entire theology in his Church Dogmatics on how the event of Jesus Christ changes human history. In that sense, though not explicitly stated, Barth can be seen as beginning narrative theology, and Frei cites him as a major influence.

Another big influence for Frei was Jewish literary scholar Erich Auerbach. Frei's narrative theology is neatly summed up in this wonderfully provocative quote from Auerbach's Mimesis:

"The Bible seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history... The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be historically true reality – it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it." (p. 15)

In other words, while liberal theology focuses on trying to make Scripture relevant for our modern world by reading it as myth, narrative theology comes at it the other way saying that we need to look at what it really says and fit ourselves into what the Bible says about who we are and what life is about rather than fitting the Bible into our world. The Bible's narrative does not only claim to be true, but to trump all other perspectives, to narrate God's world, the world (or if you prefer, the kingdom) that we are to fit our lives and self-understanding into.

Frei's focus was on biblical hermeneutics, which means his version of narrative theology focused on how we should read the Bible as a realistic narrative, similar to a novel, as opposed to reading to reading it as a myth à la Joseph Campbell. That means that the stories in the Bible are not written like mythical fables of super-human giants, but of real people with believable flaws and complex stories that feel like our own. Frei does not deny here the factuality of these stories. For example in a reply to Evangelical pillar Carl F. H. Henry's lecture at Trinity which expressed some Evangelical concerns with narrative theology, Frei stated that,

"If I am asked to speak in the language of factuality, then I would say, yes... I have to speak of an empty tomb. In those terms I have to speak of a literal resurrection" (Theology & Narrative p. 211)

But while he acknowledges the "factuality" of the Bible when forced to speak in those terms, he thinks that this focus on facts has caused both modernist liberals and conservatives to have the wring focus. On the one hand, liberals who reject the factuality of the biblical claims try to re-write it as myth detached from fact. The resurrection becomes a powerful story that did not actually happen and the "Christ of faith" is separated from the "Jesus of history". On the other hand, conservatives spend all their time with apologetics and finding "evidence that demands a verdict" rather than on proclaiming and embodying the actual message and consequence of the resurrection. What Frei wants us not to miss here is that narratives - even ones that are rooted in factual accounts - go deeper into what makes a person tick than an objective history does. The Bible expresses itself in terms of complex narratives (like the Gospels) and pastoral letters (like the Epistles) and in so doing gives a much more interactive and complex theology than any ordered systematic treatment ever could. It gives us the messy and complex picture of real life and shows us how God incarnate meets us there.

The bottom line here is to look at what the message of the Bible really is, even when that steps on our toes, and to allow God's story to become our story. That is where Frei's narrative theology of biblical interpretation meets Stanley Hauerwas' narrative theology of Christian virtue ethics. but I'll leave that for the next post....

The Emerging Relational Theology #1

Modernist liberal Christianity entailed a move towards expressing truth in generalized pluralistic empirical terms in order to relate Christianity to our modern lives. While this project has enjoyed prominence in liberal theology for a good part of the 20^th century (and is still advocated by such popular theologians as Marcus Borg), it has come under considerable criticism from many mainline theologians in the light of postmodern critique.

These growing critiques reflect a move away from modernist assumptions from both the left and right, each respectively critiquing their own traditions. As a result Christians on both sides of the theological fence are finding commonality and space for conversation rooted in a new shared relational approach to theology.

These “post-liberal” and “post-conservative” voices are found under many banners (narrative theology, postmodern theology, radical orthodoxy, ancient-future faith, neo-evangelicals, the emergent church) and a host of names - Hans Frei, Gerorge Lindbeck, Stanley Grenz, John Millbank, James K.A. Smith, Robert Webber, Stanley Hauerwas, and Nancy Murphy just to name a few.

What all of these names and movements have in common is a relational way of seeing themselves and their world. In contrast to a modernist tendency (found among both liberals and conservatives) to break from the past and tradition, this approach is characterized by(1) a deep appreciation for history, (2) a recognition that there is no neutral ground and that we all speak out of a cultural context, and that (3) faith is not an individual intellectual project, but rather is formed in a communal context: Spiritual formation comes through relationship and discipleship. It is always incarnational: a faith lived out in relationship that cannot be detached from this communal context. As social beings we cannot live in the general, but are always situated within a specific world and history that shapes us.

Relational faith entails a specific faith contextually rooted in the unique narrative of Scripture and the Christian community that forms a person in Christ – an identity rooted in social context to God, community, and history.

One can see in this emerging theology a positive and constructive proposal for the shape of a postmodern faith (or better said: faithfulness to the Gospel in our postmodern context), as opposed to the typical emergent penchant to simply be against everything but not really for anything (other than being ultra-hip and cynical, which tend to be synonymous). For that reason I am really excited to find people who are proposing some solutions - turning on the lights, rather than just grumbling about the darkness. Actually having some ideas about how to fix a problem instead of just complaining is a rare and wonderful thing. As one sage put it, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world"

With this post introducing the broad "20,000 foot perspective" of a relational faith emerging on several fronts, over the next few blog posts I will be reviewing these different voices and their proposals for the shape of our faith in the postmodern and post-secular world we inhabit. In the next post we will take a look at the beginnings of this movement in narrative theology.

Systems Theory #2 - Causality

I've come to see systems theory as offering a lot of practical insights in how to address human need in a post modern context and therefore having a lot to add to a relational theology. Systems theory is a huge term that spans many branches of science from biophysics to computer science (which is why it grew out of Silicon Valley). But here I am using it as it specifically applies to a social approach to psychology that Wikipedia calls systemic psycholgy (although the focus on homeostasis that Wiki uses to define it represents old school systemic psychology rather than current practice... hmmm, maybe I should update that page).

As opposed to the more bio-chemical approach to psychology common in the States, this social approach to psychology has become prevalent in Europe. rather than focusing on the individual, its sees people as connected to complex systems of relationships - families, societies, etc - and tries to understand their "problems" within that social context rather than inside of an individual one. Because most of the development going on in this field is coming out of Europe now, as a result my source here is from a great book called "Lehrbuch der Systemischen Therapie und Beratung" ("Textbook of Systemic therapy and Counseling") by Arist von Schlippe and Jochen Schweizer, which I don't think has been translated into English.

Systems theory works out of a postmodern context and basically says "OK, if these post modern assumptions are true, now what? How would that change our approach to counseling, and more importantly how would it deepen it?" If you have read any emergent stuff - say for example Stanley Grenz - you will be familiar with the philosophical foundations of this postmodern approach: Witgenstein and his linguistic construction of reality... the idea that absolute truth is unknowable to us and that we as humans can only operate from with our subjective blinders... systems therapy takes this and rather than being hamstrung by relativism into inaction, finds a way to gain deeper insights into the complexities of humans as social beings.

For example, if we are unable after postmodernism to speak objectively of "what is" outside of our own linguistic subjective perspective, what happens to causality? In a traditional model of therapy the therapist will diagnose what is wrong and prescribe a cure. The insight of systems therapy here is that while causal relationships are indispensable with things - I flick the switch and expect the light to go on (and this includes all the complexities of a power grid across a city and a system of commerce that allows me to buy a new light bulb at a store) they are less helpful when applied to people because people are vastly more complex. We as people are not simply labels (criminal, schizophrenic, spouse, etc) in the way that a light bulb is just a light bulb. These labels describe a host of relational interactions. This is not to say that systems theory rejects cause and effect, but that it recognizes a web of complex cause and effect. Because of this it speaks instead of patterns of relationships and interactions.

One of the main consequences here is that it avoids simplistic blame. In a linear causal model one looks for the single reason for a problem, (Ex: The shooter went bizerk because of violent video games, so we need to ban them to make our world safe again). Causality effects both blame and power to change. If we know the cause, we know whose fault it is, who is responsible. Systems therapy rejects this linear causal model because it puts people into a roll of helpless victim. Say for example that you have a bad relationship with your mother who has always hurt you by her coldness. As long as the cause is described in that way, she has the control, and as long as she remains aloof can determine not only your relationship with her, but even how you feel about yourself. But if you can find a way to break out of that - say by forgiving her - then you gain creative possibilities to not only change yourself but to change the very dynamic of the relationship. Because relational problems do not have a singular but multiple causes, this not only means shared responsibility, but also that you are not trapped. You have power to change the interactions and dynamics of your relationships.

What's more, because from this perspective it is not necessary for a therapist to determine and treat the "cause", you don't need to have some deep insight into what is going on so you can prescribe a solution. Instead, systems therapy gives relational systems (say a family) creative nudges that help them to develop new patterns of interaction that foster growth. This is the idea behind Derrida's deconstruction: It's not about tearing things down, but about breaking stagnant patterns of interaction by getting people to see things from another perspective, and thus bringing about the creative possibility for a shift in the power dynamic - empowering people towards creative possibility.

Relational Truth & Systems Theory

Here's a thought that shook my world that is derived from systemic theory:

Old school philosophical, scientific, and religious inquiry seeks to find objective truth by observing as a neutral party from the outside. Its goal is to discover an absolute truth. However science has been discovering that we cannot be neutral observers because our observation actually changes the results. This is all the more true in relationships: you cannot truly understand another unless you enter into their lives. It is not possible to truly know another without loving them. Truth then cannot be separated from love.

Beyond this, there is also a practical problem with the old school approach of seeking to find the objective impartial truth: in relationships this approach inevitably leads to conflict because it seeks to determine which party was more correct, and thus who “wins”. Theology that is focused on determining these kinds of absolute propositional truth claims (such as systematic theology) has often fallen into this trap. Systemic theory instead seeks a relational understanding of truth. Instead of asking what the absolute right answer is, it seeks to understand how each person in a relationship perceives what is happening. Because its focus is on seeking to understand people relationally rather than determining who is "right", it leads towards reconciliation and understanding instead of towards blame and conflict.

While this is an approach that is relational, it is not relativistic per se. That is, systemic theory does not claim that truth is relative, but simply that we are. We each perceive what we do, and if we care about others, if we care about relationship, we need to care about their perceptions and feelings - about them -more than we do about our being right. You might say its the difference between being right and being righteous. righteousness is not self-focused, but cares for the other.

We are relative because we are all inside of this world of ours, we are all connected to each other in relationship, for better or worse. We are all subjects of God's world. Reality is not subjective, we are. We perceive everything from our own perspective. God is the only one who is absolute and who can speak absolutely. All the rest of us are locked into our own relative perspectives, clouded by our own particular blinders. Yet even God, (who alone could have come making absolute truth claims), when he came among us in Christ did not seek to demonstrate that he was right, but instead focused on relating and reconciling us even though we were all wrong. (and again our wrongness biblically was fundamentally because we were estranged from relationship that was remedied through reconciliation). Without denying the reality of absolute truth, on a far deeper level we need to recognize that Truth is at its very core relational, and when the one who is Truth came among us it was in order to seek relationship. In other worlds, truth must be the servant of love. The goal of theology needs to be to foster loving relationships by seeking relational understanding rather than to make correct propositional statements. That does not mean we need to throw out all propositions, but that they are means towards love and relationship. Robert Webber in "The Younger Evangelicals" suggests that this relational understanding of truth is leading to a new approach to apologetics and evangelism: instead of using reason to present "evidence that demands a verdict," people are convinced of truth by seeing it embodied and lived out leading to them encountering that truth relationally themselves. Thus knowing truth takes on a biblical relational sense: knowing means loving.

To me, as someone who believes in absolute truth, this is profoundly challenging. It tells me that I need to care more about relating and understanding another than I do about what the "truth" is. That means that I need to re-think what truth means. But the more I think about this the more I see how biblical it is. Truth is not an abstract fact, it is a living Someone. Jesus said "I am the Truth". That means Truth is alive and relational. Truth is loving and life-giving. Truth is transformative and reconciling. Truth is love, and what is unloving and life-sucking simply is not truth.

Mysticism, Evangelism, and the Emergent Church

Mysticism is defined primarily as the experience of intimacy with God, and the life practices used to cultivate that relationship. Understood on these relational terms it is at the very heart of Christian faith and life. Mysticism in the form of the monastic tradition has always been the life blood, as well as a key renewal movement with Catholicism. Likewise, within Protestantism's major movements towards reform and vitality found in Pietism and revivalism have been strongly rooted in a mystical experiential connection with God. Indeed Evangelicalism's focus on the centrality of the new birth and the proclamation of the Gospel are at heart relational and mystical concerns. Liberal faith with its roots in Schleiermacher is at heart as well a faith rooted in mystical experience. Finally, Orthodoxy has always maintained that mysticism and theology must go hand in hand. In short, every major branch of Christianity – whether liberal or evangelical, from Catholic to Protestant to Orthodox – is deeply rooted in mystical relational experience of intimacy with God.

The question is where does the emergent church stand in relation to this mystical relational faith? There has been some emphasis on "praying the hours" and other contemplative exercises, but at the same time as Scot McKnight has charged, there is a hostility towards evangelism (the sharing of relationship) and a re-definition of the Gospel in terms of "following Jesus" and his kingdom as a "way" rather than being in an intimate relationship with Christ effecting all of life. The later emphasis on the "kingdom now" at the expense of the eternal is something people like Andrew Jones have criticized in the writings of Brian McClaren. So this is definitely a (critical) conversation that is taking place within the emergent ranks among those who love it rather than simply an outside critique. The meergent church deconstructing itself. That's a good.

Some of the questions that arise are these: Does the emergent church tend towards an understanding of mystical experience that is self-focused with its new found focus on mystic rituals? Does it have an understanding of the gospel as "kingdom way" that is ultimately impersonal and detached from a relational encounter with a transforming God? How can we care about social justice without falling into the trap of secularized liberal church? How can we develop a rich and compassionate understanding of evangelism without falling into the dogmatism of fundamentalism. I'm afraid much of the emergent movement tends towards completely jettisoning the idea of evangelism all together, and is thus in danger of becoming spiritually infertile? Coming from a Pentecostal background as I do, I like the idea evangelism being about a relational encounter with power rather than a rational proposition, and think we would so well to remember our roots in the Great Awakenings that focused on both personal and social transformation through the Spirit working in people's lives and world.

Learning from our past, contextualizing here in our present post modern situation, and looking forwards towards an emerging future, what should be our approach towards mystical relational faith be, both personally and socially?

How Not to Speak of God - loving the ineffable

I'm reading through Peter Rollins "How Not to Speak of God". He begins the book by talking about how all of our reflections and thoughts about God in themselves can never really capture who God is, and that while we can acknowledge the reality of God, we need to recognize that we ourselves are limited. God is bigger and more profoundly real than any of our attempts to express or understand. In this, Rollins draws upon the teachings of mystics and their idea that union with the God is found in entering into a "cloud of unknowing," finding God in the dark.

What concerns me here is that in some mystical writings there is a sense of dread, distance, and emptiness that strikes me as abusive and life-sucking. So I am led to ask: how can we approach God in humility and need, not as ones who are devalued and torn down, but in the wide open way that children trust with helpless abandon? The idea of being born again that Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John conveyed this kind of childlike dependent stance. The term "born again" was not original to Jesus, but one common at the time. It meant one who was brand new at something, unexperienced. Church historian Homersham Cox in his "First Century of Christianity" writes,

This phrase "born again" was very common, and was applied in a variety of circumstances to persons who commenced a new career in life. The bridegroom on his marriage, the chief of the academy on his promotion, the king on his enthronement were figuratively said to be newly born. Proselytes are constantly spoken of in the Talmud as new creatures. "If any one become a proselyte he is like a child new born." (p. 274)

In essence, the term "born again" here that Jesus uses is a parallel idea to his teaching that one must "become as a little child" before they can enter into the Kingdom. This was such an affront to Nicodemus because it meant that he would, as an established Jewish leader, need to strip himself of all knowledge, authority, and right and become as one who knew nothing, becoming helpless - a needy dependent child.

The thing that is liberating about this image of becoming a new born baby is that it implies along with dependency a beloved embrace of intimacy with God as Abba Father. It implies being able, in the foolishness of childhood to exclaim at the top of our lungs "I love you Daddy!" The picture the Gospels give us here is of children running to him, interrupting the important meeting of the grow-ups and jumping in his lap, and in that sloppy dirty embrace being welcomed and defended.

Of course as adults this should not mean that we act irresponsibly. We don't need to underplay our ability to make God look good. We should act as intelligently as we are able, using all of our ability, character, and resources. But in that we can find a way as adults to become like little children in how we love the ineffable God - in humility recognizing our limitations and need. That's the paradoxical challenge of learning how to be "as a new born child" while still being a responsible moral adult. How can we learn to speak with the bold trust of a child, while knowing that our feeble words an acts are always just that? Because ultimately it is not about us trying to express or capture truth, it is about loving and being loved by the one who is Truth. We know we cannot have a monopoly on truth, but through childlike loving dependency... maybe Truth can have a monopoly on us.

Rollins insists that transcendence is not a contradiction to immanence, and that in encountering God intimately we also encounter and are overcome by God's hugeness - like an overloaded circuit. I want to agree and underscore this point of his, and at the same time affirm that the converse is also true: not only can we in acknowledging God's transcendence still dare to speak in terms of intimacy with God, but in fact it is precisely in that place of helpless dependent intimacy that we encounter the transcendent God. Rollins is down on "fundamentalist certainty", which he understands as an idolatrous certainty in our own human formulations of who God is. I agree, but there is another kind of certainty: relational certainty. This is a certainty not based in ourselves, but in relationally being known by God. It says in devotion and trust "I know my redeemer lives". Rollins again speaks of the contrast between the Greek concept of knowing facts vis a vis the Hebrew idea of knowing in a relational sense. This Hebrew knowing is one of trust, a "knowing" synonymous with being loved - "known in a biblical sense" if you will.

All Theology is Mystical

Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky in his The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church writes that

"The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience... and the dogma affirmed by the church... we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth".

This lived faith, he says, involves a "profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically." While there has traditionally been conflict between the theological side of the church and its mystical side, one seeking to preserve orthodoxy and the other focused on renewing a vital relationship with God leading to inner and outer transformation, Lossky insists that the two in fact are inseparable. Theology needs to be focused on fostering a transformed church, on leading us into relationship with God.

Too often this has not been the focus of theology. Instead the focus has been on systematizing the mechanics of the universe, one deciphering out exact workings of the Trinity like a math problem, or precisely defining doctrinal statements that seem distant from life. Stanley Grenz criticizes just this tendency for theology to become focused on extracting propositional truth out of the narrative of Scripture and organizing it in systematic form like detached entries in a encyclopedia, because it becomes then removed from relationship. Reading through the history of theology one can get the impression that this has been the focus of theologians for centuries. Take for example Augustine. Augustine is credited with the doctrine of original sin and predestination, but taken out of his narrative context these can seem like detached and impersonal doctrines and one misses the vital relational faith that they spring from. Predestination becomes a question of determination, as if it were a kind of natural force rather than a relational concept of God's desire and intent to be in relationship with us, having purposed (pre-destined) us to be loved by him, chosing us the way a lover chooses their beloved. Original sin likewise is relationally motivated because it speaks of our deep need to be in relationship with God and how outside of that connection we cannot be our true selves. One gets this relational context reading Augustine directly because his writings ooze with the beautiful aching prose of the lover seeking God. Augustine's theology is written in the form of a prayer, a love letter to God.

"You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed, shined, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath, and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst for You. You touched me and I burned for your peace."

In “Silent Fire,” Walter Capps and Wendy Wright describe Augustine as “the father of the mystical tradition” They illustrate that Augustine's understanding of salvation was deeply relational, rooted in his idea of humilitas which expressed the soul's deep need and yearning for God. Humilitas is “the disposition of the human heart, bestowed and formed by the divine presence. Through it the image of God is reconstituted, and the presence of God is brought to interior consciousness.” (p 17) This experience of a relationship with God indwelling and transforming us, Augustine says, must be “born within the soul” in the same way Christ was born in humility in the manger. In other words: ye must be born again. We have here at the heart of Augustine's understanding of salvation, rooted in his own conversion experience, an expression of the new birth that could not be more clear – inner transformation by the indwelling Spirit experienced in a loving intimate relationship with God found in surrendering oneself to Christ as Lord and savior.

Here we have in Augustine, the father of the mystical tradition (meaning an experienced relational born again faith), who is at the same time, the father of western orthodoxy. Yet reading many surveys of theology focusing on the later, you would never guess that Augustine (and so many others) have this intimate relational faith. Instead one is left with the impression that their faith was focused on cold doctrinal formulations. But to miss this intimate experiential focus is to miss the very heart of theology, sucking out its life. In reaction to this, many people see Paul as opposed to Jesus – Paul being the poster boy for cold doctrinal formulations, and Jesus being loving and relational. But to read Paul this way, as with Augustine, is to completely misunderstand him. Paul is the “father” of the churches in Corthinth, Ephasus, Galatia, and so on, precisely because of his focus on mystical faith, because he encountered them with a transforming relationship with God. With the “power of God” rather than with intellectual arguments or doctrine. All the doctrines that are derived from Paul spring from this relational, experiential, mystical root of a vital lived encounter with God in Christ transforming his life from the inside out. As with Augustine, Paul who writes the bulk of biblical doctrine is at the same time profoundly mystical. One could say the same of John whose Gospel is the most theological and the again most mystical. There is no conflict between theology and mysticism, between religion and spirituality, between experience and revelation, between Biblical and experiential faith.

The root of this is not in experience but in God's self-disclosing personal revelation in Christ as witnessed in Scripture. We need theology to help us connect to that root. But the connection is one of experiencing that reality in our own lives, in entering into a relationship with God. Theology's job is in lead us to that loving transforming relationship. A history of theology that is not a history of vital relationship with God is a dead history that paints a false picture of the church. Theology is not primarily an academic intellectual exercise, but one that needs to be done on our knees.

The Bells, Smells, and Narrative of the Gospel

Many Emergents seem to be drawn to the "bells and smells" of traditional mainline churches. They have come to appreciate ritual and symbol. So they pray the Divine Hours, and go to Taize services. Coming from an Evangelical background of white washed walls and folding metal chairs they revel in the beauty of stained glass cathedrals and the echoing beauty of hymns like a Midwesterner raised on pork chops and mashed potatoes might eating their first Haute Cuisine meal in Paris.

My friend Suzanne once told me of how growing up in the Episcopal church she never really paid much attention to the service. Years later after having become a born again Christian, she had returned to an Episcopalian mass and suddenly the hymns were filled with meaning for her, and she could hardly believe that she had missed it all before. It had all just rolled off her back - stand up, sit down, sing a song, repeat some words - it had all just been a meaningless ritual to her. Pretty, but with no real connection to her life Monday through Saturday. Now she saw it exploding with meaning.

That's because art - all art - needs to be connected to a narrative in order to move, in order to be anything beyond aesthetics, beyond mere decoration. Suzanne connected to the bells and smells of the Episcopalian mass because she had a connection to the story that it pointed to - she had a first hand encounter with the living and risen Jesus and her story was now shaped by His story. The "art" in church was meaningful because of her narrative connection to it in the same way a certain song might capture all your feelings about something, or how a symbol like a Christmas tree might bring back all sorts of memories and feelings. In each case you are connecting that song and that symbol with your own narrative and therefore experiencing it as full of meaning.

But here's the rub: many Emergents who connect the aesthetics of traditional services to their own narratives of a relationship with God also suffer from an "allergy to evangelism". They have had so many bad experiences with hit-and-run evangelism that they have simply jettisoned the entire idea of sharing the Gospel. Instead they focus on the kingdom of God - on being involved in social justice, caring for the poor, fighting slavery and poverty and AIDS. These are all certainly vital things that we need to care deeply about and be involved in, but they do not change the fact that people also need God personally, that they need to be loved and touched and transformed by Jesus. My concern is that Emergents who have "deconstructed" evangelism and jettisoned it will go to "smells and bells" mainline churches that do not ever preach that one can have a first-hand life transforming intimate relationship with God, and that the next generation will grow up in that vacuum like my friend Suzanne and like so many others like her have - people who do not have a narrative and personal connection to the symbols and aesthetics and for whom it is therefore meaningless and empty rituals- mere Sunday decoration.

So what I am calling for with all the bells and smells surrounding you this Christmas, with all the symbols and songs, is for us Emergents to remember our narrative connection to the Gospel, to recall the story of our own encounter with Jesus, and to look for ways to invite others into that story, ways to encounter people with the living Jesus that are beautiful and creative and real. In short, the Emergent church needs to rediscover evangelism. Not an evangelism disconnected from the kingdom of God, but one that is about loving people and caring for all of who they are, one that ties personal faith together with social action.

Blogging thru Wikiklesia

The Wikiklesia book seems to be off to a good start. It's gotten some rave reviews like this one from Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired Magazine,

"The hive-mind of Christianity speaks! It brings news of the future. Uttered like a prayer retrieved from the year 2030, spoken in a new tongue, a new form. Listen!"

For those of you who would like to get a sample taste of the stuff in the book to whet your appetite, Paul Walker at Out of the Cocoon is blogging through every chapter of the book, including the one by yours truly on Theology As Art. So go check it out, and then buy the book. It's for a great cause since all the proceeds go to supporting the Not for Sale campaign to end modern slavery in our world. It's available now as a download (PDF) and as audio from Lulu, and within the next few weeks will also be available there in paperback. Here's a list of all the books author's with links to their sites:

Andrew Jones
Andrew Perriman
Bill Kinnon
Bob Hyatt
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Calvin Park
Cynthia La Grou
Cynthia Ware
David Hayward
Derek Flood
Drew Goodmanson
Ed Brenegar
Heidi Campbell
Jo Guldi
Joe Suh
John La Grou
John Sexton
Br. Karekin Yarian, BSG
Katharine Moody
Kester Brewin
Len Hjalmarson
Matt Reece
Michael Lissack
Mike Morrell
Mike Riddell
Peggy Brown
Rex Miller
Rick Meigs
Scot McKnight
Scott Andreas
Scott McClellan
Scott Ragan
Stephen Garner
Stephen Shields
Steve Scott
Steve Knight
Stuart Murray Williams
Thomas Hohstadt
Wild Grace

Wikiklesia: Voices of the Virtual World

The collaborative book I was asked to contribute a chapter to, Wikiklesia Vol 1: Voices of the Virtual World will release this Monday (July 23) as an online book on Lulu. A hard copy version is on the way too, as well as audio files of the chapters recorded by the authors. You can see a list of the chapter titles for the contributing authors (who include several well known names in the Emergent scene), and the press release for the book. All the books proceeds with go to the Not for Sale campaign to end world slavery. Here's a blurb from the press release.

Voices of the Virtual World explores the growing influence of technology on the global Christian church. In this premier volume, we hear from more than forty voices, including technologists and theologians, entrepreneurs and pastors… from a progressive Episcopalian techno-monk to a leading Mennonite professor… from a tech-savvy mobile missionary to a corporate anthropologist whom Worth Magazine calls "one of Wall Street's 25 Smartest Players." Voices is a far reaching exploration of spiritual journey contextualized within a culture of increasingly immersive technology.

Conceived and established in May 2007, the Wikiklesia Project is an experiment in on-line collaborative publishing. The format is virtual, self-organizing, participatory - from purpose to publication in just a few weeks. All proceeds from the Wikiklesia Project will be contributed to the Not For Sale campaign.

What is Emergent?

You might have noticed that I stuck a "friend of Emergent" banner on my blog. So thought I'd share a bit of what it means to be an emergent Christian. Here are:

Some sure signs that you are an Emergent Christian

1) You don't agree with everything Emergents believe or say.
One of the hallmarks of being emergent is to challenge ourselves and others to be more faithful to the Gospel. That's why they talk of a "conversation" instead of a statement of faith or creed. So if you think the emergent church is sometimes too relativistic, or does not focus enough on the Gospel, or is not being biblical, then you are being very emergent in disagreeing. If you just bought the whole party line, you would not really be emergent.

2) You could care less if you are Emergent
You don't have a special postmodern groovy service at your church, you are not trying to "relate to people today", you didn't just grow that goatee. You may agree with some of the values of the emergent church like caring about social justice, finding ways to communicate the Gospel in relevant ways today, daring to ask tough questions of faith, or being more concerned about being loving than about being "right", but you were concerned about these things way before anyone was even talking about being emergent.

3) Your focus is on being faithful to Christ, not on relating to the world.
It is not so much about what exactly you are as what you are not. It is post-secular, post-scientism, post-colonial, post-churchianity, post-fundamentalist, post-red/blue state, post-dogmatic. In other words it recognizes the limits of all of these and tries to go beyond them. So for instance, emergents think that theology can only really be right if it produces the fruit of people who are like Jesus. If we have all the right doctrine, but have not love, then we are just a clashing cymbal.

4) You're not theologically liberal (in a Marcus Borg kinda way).
Liberalism is the child of modernism, so being post-modern also makes Emergents post-liberal. Liberalism gets way too stuck in science. Emergents are much more open to awe, mystery, love, and all sorts of things that you can't dissect and control. Of course Emergents would have a lot to critique about conservatism too, and of course find good things in both.

5) You're not relativist (in a "there are no absolutes" kinda way).
Saying there are no absolutes makes truth individualistic. Emergent is communally focused. So we may be related to our bigger world and shaped by it, and we may be limited and unable to know absolutely. But this is a statement of humility rather than certainty. God is absolute, we are relative. So the way we "know" truth is relationally, through trust and humble dependency on God.

6) You're not universalist (in an "I'm ok you're ok" kinda way).
I'm sure we all hope that God will be able to save everyone, but that is quite different from saying that there is no radical evil and brokenness in us and our world. Emergents may also think that Jesus is a lot bigger than the little church boxes we try to squeeze him into and that people might be able to find Jesus without knowing his name. But this again is very different from saying "do/believe whatever you want".

So if you don't agree with everything Emergents believe or say, aren't sure you even want to be Emergent because you really care about focusing on Jesus, and are not a relativist, liberal, or a universalist. Then maybe you might be an emergent. Confused? Good. That's part of it too.

Anything you would want to add to the list?

relational theology

Christianity is about relationship not religion. It is a statement echoed in the writings of many a great theologian. Yet while a relationship with God is so central to Evangelical faith, as well as the focus of Scripture, there has been surprisingly little academic scholarship given to relationship as a serious theological methodology.

I've been working on a paper called "An Evangelical Relational Theology: A Personal Relationship with God As Theological Leitmotif". Where I begin to outline a theology based on the frame work of a personal relationship with God. I begin by outlining how relationship should be seen as the goal of Christian theology, and how it provides the foundations of that theology, and then sketch out how a relational paradigm should be applied as the leitmotif for interpreting Scripture and understanding doctrine.

Theology is something that should be done in community, and this is all the more true with a relational theology, so I invite your comments, contribution, and feedback on the article here.

Wikiklesia

I was invited by John Lagrou to contribute a chapter to the upcoming online collaborative book that will be available to download from Amazon.com very shortly. Other authors include Andrew Jones, Andrew Perriman, Doug Pagitt, and Scot McKnight. The basic theme of the book will be on the intersection of the interactive technology known as "web 2.0" - blogs, wiki boards, youtube, etc., and how this has effected how we think and live out faith and church.

I'll be talking in my chapter about faith, art, and technology. How faith and art intertwine, and the shape that this takes in a wired world, and the impact this has for independent artists. The proceeds from the book will be going to Not For Sale, a project that is working to end slavery and human trafficking. You can find out more about the book project here: Wikiklesia

Deconstructing Derrida

I just returned from the 2007 Emergent Theological Conversation with John Caputo and Richard Kearney speaking on the deconstructionism of Derrida. The basic idea of deconstructionism, (as Caputo and Kearney have interpreted it in a Christian context), is based on a "theology of the cross" that crucifies the flesh, crucifies pride, deconstructs what we think we know in order to open up the possibility of us getting closer to the absolute beneath all our biases and blinders. This is surely something crucial to do if we want to be faithful to Christ who calls us to die so that we might find life.

In the final session, Kearney was asked whether he thought that all religions lead to the same God. He responded:

"Yes, I think they do. I think that all religions are pointing to the indeconstructable source and end of life which is love... hence the need for constant deconstruction so as to preserve that kernel which remains unknowable and unpossessable by any one religion. That's not relativism, that's a respect for the absolute which no finite human being or institution can claim to possess."

Now I don't have a problem with what Kearney says above. Where I do have a problem is what he leaves out. He rightly says that Christianity is, to quote E Stanley Jones "the human system built up around Jesus, man-made and fallible". But Christianity is not the Gospel, Christ is. Christianity is not the truth, Christ is the truth. Both Caputo and Kearney speak of Christianity as it that was all there was - our fallible human religion, and do not seem to have a working understanding of Christ as beyond and above that, as God's speech to us. The Gospel is not about proclaiming religion. The Gospel is not even about proclaiming Christianity. The Gospel is the proclamation of God's personal self-revealing in Jesus Christ in order that we messed up humans can encounter the living God of the universe, that we can meet Truth with a big "T" relationally and salvicly.

Deconstruction is about us chipping away at the crust to get to the absolute core, but the Gospel is about the Absolute breaking through the crust to us. That is way bigger that any religion. It is in the thundering words of Job "Higher than heaven, what will you do? Deeper than hell, what can you know?" Indeed, what the Hell do we know? I know nothing. But the Gospel is not about what I say or know, it is about what God has said through the Incarnation. The Absolute has entered into our broken and blind world and revealed to us this "treasure in jars of clay". I can't claim to have a hold on truth, but I can let Truth get a hold of me, and I can do that because Truth has broken through the crust to me. That's not about knowing, it is about being known. It is about trust. In trust I proclaim that the one true God above all culture, religion, and thought has been revealed in Christ.

In an earlier session Caputo expressed disdain for the kind of evangelism characterized by a triumphant Christendom. Think we can all agree that we we can do without that "anti-gospel". Again the problem is not in what they say, but in what they leave out. No body wants that. But what I do want is - out of trust, in humility, in compassion, with fear and trembling - to boldly and unapologeticly proclaim that the Absolute Truth beneath the crust we chip away at has come to us in Jesus Christ, and that because of that act of the Absolute towards us, we can know the Truth in a personal intimate relationship and let that Truth set us free. That Gospel is the very deconstructive hammer that shatters every religion (including ours) and every philosophy (including Derrida's). It is, as E Stanley Jones says "an evangelism that evangelizes the evangelist because it sends us to our knees even as we proclaim it". Jesus is the indeconstuctable cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed. (Luke 20:18)