Correspondance with a Student about Truth, Part 2

 X replied:

Thanks for the handout i think i was thinking reason not truth, however i still have heard that truth is not important and some of these arguements i have heard are from bible professors on our campus!

To which I responded:

Dear X;

Sigh. What do these professors do with all the scripture about truth? Are they all postmodernists who deconstruct scripture into shreds? You must be very confused, listening to them and then listening to me. It is very important to evaluate people's worldviews, (including mine!) because what we say and do comes (in a large part) from what we think. My guess is that these professors want you to accept their ideas. Why do you suppose they do? If it's not because those ideas are true, then what is the reason they teach them? Is it because those ideas give them some sort of power over you? Is it because they wish, for some reason, to make their students able to overpower others? Because postmodernists do not see the world in terms of truth, beauty and goodness, they are left with power plays: oppressors and victims. That's a rather sad way of looking at things.

Postmodernism has been called "hyper-modernism;" modernism taken to its logical conclusion. Like a laxative, postmodernism can be very useful; however, if one makes a diet of it, the result is spiritual and intellectual anorexia. I am fond of fellow premodern C.S. Lewis' observation:

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-

turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest

is the most progressive.-- C. S. Lewis

In my opinion, modernism is the wrong road, and postmodernism is taking a further wrong road off the original wrong road. I would be happy to explain further, but that would involve telling you the history of philosophy/ ; )

Blessings,

Beth

Correspondance with a Student about Truth, Part 1

Grading more Ethics papers....and tonight I get this from X, a Christian student:

"The relationship between god and truth is a very interesting one to me. In christianity and jewish belief some people will tell us that there is no room for truth and that we just have to believe. This is because christianity has a lot of unknown things that if we used truth we wouldnt be able to proov and it would creat loop holes in our religion."

Here is my response:

Finally, X, I'm fascinated by your comment that you have heard some people say that there is no room for truth in Christianity and Judaism. Do you think perhaps you have this confused with "reason?" How could a Christian reject "truth" when Jesus himself claims to BE the Way, the TRUTH and the life? What are we believing if it isn't the truth? Go look in a concordance or do a keyword search for "truth" on Bible Gateway and see how important truth is to Jews and Christians!

That is why I think what you might really mean here is "reason," rather than "truth." Typically, the way these discussions go is for people who have swallowed the Modernist "either-or" way of thinking to insist we must choose: EITHER faith OR reason, EITHER religion OR science. Thus, one hand, we get Enlightenment rational humanists, who are suspicious of anything they can't empirically verify (taste, touch, smell, see, or hear). For them, science is the only way to truth. On the other hand, we get Christian "fideists" who are afraid of the mind, and whose anti-intellectualism makes them totally forget Scriptures that demand we put not only our hearts but also our minds in Christ's service.

In this course, I've tried to suggest that we can think outside the modernist/postmodernist box, and be "both-and" people, for whom faith and reason are God-given and avenues to His Truth.

So, here's a "handout" I give my students when I teach Introduction to Philosophy. I hope this will help you see that those who are telling you to fear truth and reason are on thin ice.
__________________________________________________________________
CHRISTIANS AND PHILOSOPHY
Select Scripture on Minds, Reason, Philosophy, Wisdom, Truth, Knowledge

Premodern philosophy has always been about the love of wisdom, and the pursuit of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Traditionally, Christianity has not feared this pursuit, because Christians know that it ultimately lead seekers to God.

It shouldn't be surprising that this infuriates Satan, who is a great counterfeiter. Everything that God has created good, he mocks by presenting an infernal alternate. It should not surprise us that he has done he same thing when it comes to intellectual endeavors, and so he has snared many away for himself. That is why, among many Christians, philosophy and the life of the mind have gotten such a bad reputation. Satan has succeeded, not only in presenting philosophy as a worldly, human activity, but in getting Christians to believe that that is all philosophy is.

However, we can counter Satan’s lies with God’s truth: Jesus Christ wants to capture our minds, and that when He does, the result is Christian philosophy-- a way of thinking that eschews intellectual vice, and which understands Him to be the Way, the Truth and the Life.

A. Is it possible to be a Christian and a philosopher?

Luke 10:27
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

2 Corinthians 10:55
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Colossians 2:8-10
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy,
which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather
than on Christ. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ… (implying that there is a philosophy which does not depend on human tradition and worldly principles, but on God’s revelation—both natural and special—and on Christ Himself.)

1 Corinthians 1:20
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (implying there is a perennial l philosophy, and one seeking the wisdom of God)

B. Why should a Christian be a philosopher?

Isaiah 1:18
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord.

Acts 17:11
Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they
received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: ”‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind.’

Matthew 22:4 (Jesus poses a dilemma for the Pharisees) “Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Christ?”

1 Peter 3:15
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

Romans 12:1-2 1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Philippians 1:7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.

Acts 17:22 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

Colossians 1:9-13 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

Colossians 1:28 We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.

Colossians 3:1-21 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

2 Corinthians10:4-5The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians11:1-6 I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5 But I do not think I am in the least
inferior to those “super-apostles.” 6 I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.

Ephesians 1:17-18  I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

Ephesians 4:14- 24 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men int heir deceitful scheming. 15 Instead,speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ…17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. 20 You,however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Philippians 1:9-11 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 4:88 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

1 John 3:18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 4:5-6  They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

2 John 1-4 To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth— 2 because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever: 3 Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love. 4 It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us 

3 John 3-4 It gave me great joy to have some brothers come and tell about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in the truth. 4 I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

(continued) 

Correcting an Increasingly Common Misconception

Here are my comments on Chad Estes' review of Rachel Held Evan's Evolving in Monkeytown:

Thanks for your review...but I'd like to address one part of it. I know it's popular nowadays to see postmodernism as the "synthesis" of premodern mysticism and modernist reason, but this reveals a shallow understanding of history and philosophy.

Chad, where did you get your information about the Middle Ages? Unless you take the Middle Ages to be a 300 year period from 500-800 AD, it wasn't "all mysticism, all the time." Among other scholars, Charlemagne brought Alcuin of York to start his Palace School and other schools (particularly in the Frankish empire), develop a standard curriculum, edit corrupt manuscripts, standardize Latin, introduce the Carolingian miniscule (that later inspired Renaissance Italic). These folks weren't just praying and doing Gregorian chants all day!

Scholasticism was huge throughout the Middle Ages,and it was a LEFT brain enterprise that focused on analysis, definition and verbal clarity. Every educated person had to study dialectic as part of the Trivium. Only then could they move on to the Quadrivium, which included the hardly-mystical study of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

We can thank the Middle Ages for the invention of the university, and the dialectic practiced in places like the Universities of Paris, Bologna and Oxford was a method of thinking that proceeded as follows:

1. The Question to be determined
2. The principal objections to the question
3. An argument in favor of the Question, traditionally a single argument ("On the contrary..")
4. The determination of the Question after weighing the evidence. ("I answer that...")
5. The replies to each objection

This is exactly how the greatest philosopher/theologian of the Middle Ages-- Thomas Aquinas-- structured his magisterial Summa Theologiae. And I haven't even begun to discuss science...for that I refer you to Edward Grant's The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages.

I hope I've made a case that as well as being an age of faith, the middle ages were also an age of reason. In fact, it was the only time in Western Civilization when the two were in such equilibrium. Nothing would please me more than for Postmodernists to rediscover that equilibrium...and admit that they weren't the first to achieve it. ; )

Losing and Finding Yourself

"T he purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself." --David Brooks, in a recent New York Times op-ed piece. But Someone already told us that, long ago:

• Matthew 10:39, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
• Matthew 16:25, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
• Mark 8:35, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it."
• Luke 9:24, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."
• John 12:25, "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

Jesus' challenge must have made quite an impression on his disciples. All four evangelists noted it. I wonder what people would think of Him today, if he were to give this as a commencement address:

 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have done. Matthew 16:25-27

While  I do not agree with everything Brooks says (no, I don't want to be 22 again, and not all college graduates are narcissistic)  he does nail "the litany of expressive individualism" that is our culture's constant chant.  However, he fails to understand the most important thing, the purpose of life.  Life may indeed "come to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task," but it comes to fulfillment only when the self is in relationship to a Person. Actually, Three Persons.

It’s Not About You

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 30, 2011

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

QUOTE: My name is Kevin and I'm a Kataphatic

There are spiritual personalities, just like there are psychological personalities. Barbara Mujica of Georgetown University writes, "Apophatic or 'negative' spirituality stresses interiority, 'imageless-ness,' and 'wordlessness.' Kataphatic, or 'postive' spirituality is image-driven and uses analogies to speak of God."  Postmodernists tend to be apophatic; stressing difference, how God is "not like" things. This has caused great alarm from Reformed quarters. I think there is a place for both: it's not an either/or.  However,  my natural temperment is kataphatic. Kevin, I think you've got a point there!

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes; we do see through a glass dimly; we do not fully understand; we don't know God as God knows Himself; our words can't capture the essence of God. God is greater than we can conceive- but what about the 1,189 chapters in the Bible? Don't they tell us lots of things about God that we are supposed to do more with than doubt and not understand? Aren't the Scriptures written so that we might believe and be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see and even proclaim this faith to others?"


 -- Kevin DeYoung,  Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be  (p. 123-124)

 

The Adventures of Flannelgraph Jesus

Stumbled on this over at Call Me Ishmael's blog. Great satire!

Big Box 2: Definitions

One final detail remains before we can address Donn's post. How shall we understand "big box?" Using MacIntyre's template, I take this term to be able to refer to different things:

1) A Modern understanding: "Big Box" refers to the collection of discrete, independently existing individuals who happen to be engaged in a similar set of beliefs and/or practices, at generally the same time and place. However, their unity is not "authentic," only assumed or imposed. That is, they do not participate in some universal greater than themselves, so that they are a particular instance of that universal, but instead, having rejected the idea of universals they constitute themselves as a "unity."

This is why they need to "brand" and "market" themselves: branding and marketing are "external" ways of establishing identity, unity, and "relationship." (For Modern churches, they are perhaps the only ways.) Modern "big box" churches are "plants" in the sense of factories. They offer a product, and if one can assemble the necessary "parts" and master the necessary techniques, more of the product can be delivered.

Thus, the Modern "big box" church is located at a specific space-time coordinate composed of a certain quantity of members located at that coordinate, as opposed to the postmodern "no-box" church, which resists definition even in terms of specific space-time coordinates. In general, postmoderns react strongly against quantification, calculation and prediction--and so reject the "programs" approach of modern Big Box churches, while still maintaining the modernist metaphysical commitment to discrete individuals

2) A premodern understanding of "big box" might refer to the particular instance of the universal. That is, the particular thing participates in or images the greater thing, so that its existence is dependent upon the reality of the universal. It does not constitute itself as a collection of individuals, but rather receives its existence as a result of its relationship to the universal, and is one of many possibile instances of the universal thing. Its definition is therefore impossible apart from the universal.

The premodern church is a "box" insofar as it incarnates the universal: it is a concrete, physical instance of the Body of Christ. It has a nature which is given to us to understand, enjoy and instantiate. It may be big or small, but it has a specific location in time and space, and most importantly, it has a history. From a postmodern perspective, boxes are seen as confining: they limit the individual's freedom. Hence, the more the premodern church recognizes a history and honors a tradition, the bigger the box it appears to be.

Big Box 1: Why is it dying?

In "The Death of the Big Box," Donn Johnson notes how increasing social decentralization is fragmenting education, and wonders what the effect this will have on the Faith:

Is the same process at work in spiritual formation? Is there a decline in the "big box" method of spiritual formation? The big box of a church building at a set time and place with assigned teachers and preachers? Are all the alternative offerings basically good things? Or do they risk creating truncated Christians who gravitate to places and pastor that validate their opinions and make them feel good? The cultural dominance of the church in the culture is long-dead, and that's probably a pretty good thing because we in the clergy and institutional denominations have not done that good of a job stewarding our affluence. George Barna's recent post illustrates how American Christians are living a far more ala carte style of theology and belief than ever before. Where churches and denominations used to cohesively define and clarify belief, we have become a nation of belief-grazers who assemble a mash-mash of beliefs and preferences that are not always coherent or consistent, and we know that and don't really care.

Before we consider the practical implications of this phenomenon, we should consider its causes. What roads lies before us depends on what road we are on, and what road we are on depends on what road we have taken. Elsewhere, I have written about the theoretical underpinnings of decentralization/fragmentation. See

Refusing to let the Culture Dictate our Lives",

"Institution or Body?",

"Square Circles and Nominalist Christians",

"Is Denominational Leadership no longer Important?",

"Understanding Nominalism Part I,

"Understanding Nominalism 2,

"Barna on Designer Faith" and

Understanding Nominalism 3.

Others have written with far more depth and eloquence: for example, S. Joel Garver, "Nominalism and the 'Modern.'" Of course the great-grandaddy of them all is Alasdair MacIntyre. If you haven't read his classic description of decay and bricolage in After Virtue, here it is:

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally, a Know-Knothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all they possess are fragments; a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiement; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books; single pages from articles, not always fully legible because torn and carred. None the less all these fragments are reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived name of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory, and phlogiston theory, although they possess only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorms of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realises that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which would be needed to understand what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrivably....

...in the actual world which we inhabit, the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the world which I described. What we possess, if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely, if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. (MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 1-2)

If MacIntyre is right, the increasing fragmentation in education that Donn has identified is a result of the larger fragmentation of a conceptural scheme. MacIntyre gives a geneological account of this fragmentation in his great work, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.

One final detail remains before we can address Donn's post. How shall we understand "big box?" This will be the subject of my next post.

Thought Experiment: First Person Plural vs. First Person Singular

Brad makes two excellent suggestions for how we can improve our worship here. His first suggestion is that we

1. Change the "I" to "we" in 90% of the music and spoken language

Personally I think this is an idea whose time has come. But in a culture of narcissism, it will seem totally off base, perhaps even missionally counterproductive. At the very least, it will feel foreign.

So, to demonstrate the power of first person plural vs. first person singular, let's run the experiment in reverse, and try editing some familiar scripture and lyrics that are currently in the plural to the singular:
------------------------------------------------------

My Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give me this day my daily bread,
And forgive me my debts, as I forgive my debtors.
And lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.
-----------------------------------------------------------

A mighty fortress is my God, a bulwark never failing;
My helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still my ancient foe doth seek to work me woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did I in my own strength confide, my striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on my side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo me,
I will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through me:
The Prince of Darkness grim, I tremble not for him;
His rage I can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are mine through Him Who with me sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

--------------------------------------

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of Him
Who brings good news, good news;
Announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness:
My God reigns, my God reigns!

My God reigns!
My God reigns!
My God reigns!
My God reigns!

He had no stately form, He had no majesty
That I should be drawn to Him.
He was despised and we took no account of Him.
My God reigns, my God reigns!

Refrain

It was my sin and guilt that bruised and wounded Him.
It was my sin that brought Him down.
When I like (a) sheep had gone astray my Shepherd came
And on His shoulders bore my shame.

Refrain

Meek as a lamb that’s led out to the slaughterhouse,
Dumb as a sheep before its shearer,
His life ran down upon the ground like pouring rain
That I might be born again.

Refrain

Out from the tomb He came with grace and majesty;
He is alive, He is alive.
God loves me so, see here His hands, His feet, His side
Yes I know, He is alive.

Refrain
_________________________________________

This is "me and Jesus" theology at it's finest, but doesn't it become immediately obvious that something big is missing?

Perhaps Robbiemuffin's graphics can make the point even better. (If there's such a thing as juridical parables, perhaps there can be juridical illustrations!) Which picture is more like the kingdom of God which we have been taught to pray for and to incarnate? First person singular...

or first person plural?

The Shack so far

So I'm on the bandwagon, too.

I've been reading The Shack, and am up to the part where he discusses freedom with Papa. Whew! Way to skate through the Big Questions. A regular Reader's Digest version of Intro to Philosophy of Religion. I suppose that's all a lot of people want, or need, but I for one am left gasping and growling, and furthermore, am feeling guilty and wrong for wanting more.

Some parts are great, like Papa's explanation why God is appearing to him as a motherly woman. But overall, I feel like I'm eating fast philosophical and theological food. I may feel full after dining, but I haven't gnawed on any bones or savored any nectar.

(νέκταρ = nek- "death" and -tar "overcoming". )

Overall, it's difficult for me to separate the author from his main character. Perhaps I'm not supposed to? Young himself keeps a safe distance from Mack, telling the story "for him" in third person, which suggests to me that he, as an author, wishes to be "free" and "outside" the narrative. But that's ironic, since the story is about the reestablishment of intimacy and relationship! Maybe that's postmodern irony for you.

Speaking of which, Mack/Young seems to have really bought into postmodernism, with all its suspicions about authority, institutions and intellect, and its contradictory desire for simultaneous autonomy and community. Lots of passive aggression. For me, reading The Shack is like reading a text in a foreign language. I speak a different philosophical and theological tongue. I can do it, but it takes a lot of energy to constantly keep translating.

We all react to our past, and what goes around comes around. So far The Shack has deposited me back into my late teens, among Christians who told me good Christians don't wonder about Big Questions. Furthermore, they certainly DON'T study Vain Philosophy. (And good Christian women don't ask questions, period!)

The carousel of time now has gyrated so that now not only women but men are told, "don't bother your pretty little heads asking questions...the only answer is the Complete and Certain answer...anything less is no answer at all...and since you are a mere human, you can NEVER understand the Complete and Certain answer...God is too big for you...so just relax....flow with the mystery..."

(musterion --"But whereas ‘mystery’ may mean, and in contemporary usage often does mean, a secret for which no answer can be found, this is not the connotation of the term mysteµrion in classical and biblical Gk. In the NT mysteµrion signifies a secret which is being, or even has been, revealed, which is also divine in scope, and needs to be made known by God to men through his Spirit...mysteµrion is a temporary secret, which once revealed is known and understood—a secret no longer.. "--Harpers Bible Dictionary )

Many are finding The Shack to be a means of deepening their relationship with the Trinity, and for that we should all be greatful. So far it isn't doing much for me. I still return to Eleanore Stump's article, "Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job" when I am troubled by the Big Question of suffering and evil.
"...Everything depends on what you take to be dream and what you take to be reality," she concludes. Now that is something William Young, Eleanore Stump and I can all agree on.

Preface to Contrariness's entry

Contrariness nails it in his blog entry entitled "Coming of Age:"

The Age of Enlightenment: "I think, therefore I am."

The Age of Entitlement: "I do because I can."

This got me wondering: what should be the motto of the Age of the Eucharist? How about this:

"God was, and is, and ever shall be,
therefore we live and move and have our being in Him.

Metaphysics made Visual

1. Which picture best illustrates what it means to be a human being?

a)

b)















c)













Answers:

a) Premodern Model (realism)

b) Modern Model (nominalism)

c) Postmodern model (anti-realism)

2) Which model is closest to what Scripture says it means to be a human being?

The Importance of Godly Analysis: making distinctions to preserve real unity

Scot McKnight has a post discussing whether "emerging" should be distinguished from "emergent." In it, he refers to an article in the June, 2008 issue of Missional Journal, by David Dunbar of Biblical Seminary.

Dunbar writes,

In the previous Missional Journal I began sorting though some of the distinctions between the missional, emerging, and emergent groups. While these categories are not sharp-edged, they definitely have different flavors. In this article I will try to tease apart emerging and emergent.

Some would question whether this distinction is even appropriate. Tony Jones, national coordinator of Emergent Village, has recently blogged his objection:

“. . . people are making a huge mistake, methinks, because they are perpetuating the very modern mistake of separation and fragmentation. . . . Drawing lines and defending borders never ends well for the line-drawers because before you know it, someone has drawn a line right behind your heels and, guess what, you’re suddenly on the other side of the line with me.” Well, yes, but map-makers do draw lines and not always with sinister intent. The question is whether there are discernible differences; I believe there are.

I agree with Dunbar. Satan is always happy whenever we "miss the mark," that mean between extremes of excess or deficiency.
Elsewhere, I have written about those my friend Carrie has labeled "water samplers," people who stand on the edge of the Water of Life and refuse to drink it, or dive in, but instead are content merely to analyze it. That is one extreme. And yes, sadly it is all too often the case that analyzers tend to be pharasaical.

But it seems to me that Tony Jones represents another extreme: the refusal to engage in the authentically human activity of analysis, period. He perpetuates the very postmodern mistake of conflating discernment with judgementalism. There's a baby out there crying because she got thrown out with the bathwater. If modernism emphasized "distinguer," postmodernism emphasizes its opposite, "unir"

Dunbar does us a service to point out that not all distinctions are made out of sinister, ulterior motives. Wisdom, understanding, and life pleasing to the Lord depend upon our ability to analyze arguments and situations, in order to make distinctions. Otherwise, what do we do with the following scriptures? Conveniently ignore them? Sweep them under a postmodern rug of artificial unity? Consign them to a premodern worldview that is passe?

Leviticus 10:10

You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean

1 Kings 3:9

[Solomon's prayer] So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"

Proverbs 3:20-22

My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment, do not let them out of your sight; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck.

Proverbs 10:13

Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment.

Judges 24:15

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

Ezekiel 22:26

Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

1 Cor. 2:11-13

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words

1 Cor. 12:9-11

...to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

Hebrews 5:13-14

Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Both-and thinking

It's finally happening. Protestants are beginning to acknowledge that the "either/or" thinking of the solas is insufficient for faithfully following Jesus Christ. I encountered it again today, reading Scot McKnight's review of Anthony Thisleton's The Hermeneutics of Doctrine:

This dense summary of Thiselton's argument implies that both Paul and James got it right, and that confessing a creed is an affirmation that we not only speak, but one we perform. Thus, belief in evangelical statements of faith today involves our entire being as we join others to look after not only what we confess, but also how we perform our confession. In fact, one of the more fascinating elements of seeing belief as disposition is that the one who believes is also one who defends a doctrine when denied. A disposition of belief involves defending one's beliefs. Some don't need to be told this today; many do. Belief involves "taking a stand" for someone and something and doing so with others as we, the people of God, take a stand for the gospel in a world that doesn't embrace that gospel. But our defense is not just words; it is dispositional in that it too is performed.

Louis Bouyer was affirming this over fifty years ago...and Thomas Aquinas was affirming it nearly a thousand years ago, and before them, Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Intellectual virtue without moral virtue is lame;
moral virtue without intellectual virtue is blind.

Today, "Emergents" are on to something big. If only they would realize that they don't have to reinvent the wheel! Intellectual virtue, the foundation for both-and thinking, depends on hitting the mean between the extremes of ratio and intellectus. As I have written before, modernists idolize ratio; postmodernists idolize intellectus. By claiming their intellectual and moral heritage, emergents have a chance to save time and energy, and display a disposition for authentic moral and intellectual humility. Will they do so? Or will they become so preoccupied with their journeys that they forget there is a Jerusalem?

Simone Weil put it succinctly:

"To always be relevant, you must say things that are eternal."

And not just say them. We must be and do them.

Creedal Christianity

Is there any place for "creedal Christianity in the post-Christendom, late modern world of the West?" This is a question our adult Sunday school will be entertaining in another week, as we study what happened "after Acts." It is also the question Jaroslav Pelikan entertained in the eighth decade of his life. Krista Tippett writes, "Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006, was a scholar who devoted his life to exploring the vitality of ancient theology and creeds. He insisted that even modern pluralists need strong statements of belief."

This is a controversial position. Much of postmodern theology, with its re-discovery of "intellectus," an immediate, non-discursive way of knowing, is apt to dismiss creedal Christianity as "stiff" if not "dead." Indeed, the biggest criticisms might be summarized this way:

1) Creeds are power plays, which marginalize minority opinion.

2) Creeds, as unchanging, are no longer suitable to match the diversity and change of life in the 21st century.

2) Creeds, as propositional, violate the mystery of God and Christian experience.

Brad has an important link here, to help deal with those criticisms.

"Jaroslav Pelikan understood what a difficult thing unchanging creeds can be for modern people. He knew as well as anyone that historically creeds were employed in part to consolidate power — both of church authority and of Christian empire. But he insisted on capturing a sense of the profound and positive reasons Christianity, alone among the major traditions, seemed to require creeds. The global spread of Christianity and of the translation of the Bible into now more than 2000 languages, as Pelikan described it, "is the history of how one sought in a new setting not to speak the same thing but to say the same thing."

"And creeds, he believed, also meet a deep human need — one that is not diminished but intensified by pluralism. Pluralism, he reiterates during this conversation, is not the same as relativism; the singing of a creed, in fact, is a way of indicating a universality of the faith across space and time. Pelikan's own generous sense of space and time, I think, helped him internalize the original impulse of creeds and communicate their meaning to the rest of us. Every time he recited or sang the creeds, he tangibly experienced the fact that these same words were sung in the Philippines that same morning and recited by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th and intoned by his own grandfather in the 20th century. I have been struck by the number and diversity of people who have told me over the years that this program touched them in a special way. Among them have been more than a few Unitarians, whose faith tradition was formed in part in reaction against the very idea of creeds.

"Attempts to make creeds modern and contemporary often seem to sacrifice something in depth and grace. Jaroslav Pelikan compared this, interestingly, to the language of love. We can try to be creative and unconventional but there aren't terribly many ways to say "I love you." Again and again most of us fall back on well-worn words and find that they more than suffice.

"Having noted that, in one of the most poignant moments of this program, Jaroslav Pelikan recites one of the newest creeds he discovered — a creed written by the Maasai people of Africa. In 1960, they took the bare-bones summaries the great creeds represent, and enlivened them with the vocabulary of their lives. Pelikan reads this Maasai creed, which includes mention of hyenas and safari, with reverent passion and an almost child-like delight.

"And isn't religion at heart about mystery, I had to ask Jaroslav Pelikan, that can never be captured in words? Can creeds ever be sufficient as a statement of faith? He left me with a wonderful statement of St. Augustine, who apparently struggled with this same question in his own theologizing as well. We resolve to speak of these things nevertheless, Augustine concluded — inspiring Jaroslav Pelikan centuries later — not in order to say something, but in order not to remain altogether silent.

I am not Augustinian enough to fully agree that we are not saying anything while not remaining silent. Neither am I Reformed enough to affirm that all we ever can (and must ) do is speak. For Christians, religion is not at heart about mystery. Neither is it at heart about complete comprehnsion. It is about knowing and loving the God Who is Three in One, who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ, and invites us into His infinite, endless life of love, truth and beauty.

But I think Pelikan is on to something here. Creeds are not sufficient, but they are necessary. Belief matters. "For as (a person) thinks within himself, so he is." (Proverbs 23:7)

:

Redefining Postmodernism and The Truth of All Things

Ken Schneck has a brief and helpful discussion entitled "Redefining Postmodernism" here.

Ken writes: "The truth of the term 'pre-modern' is the sense that most human cultures have tended to be unreflective toward the reasons underlying what they believe to be true."

There's one little clarification I would make:

It is accurate to say that premoderns take metaphysics to be "first philosophy" rather than epistemology. However, we must be careful not to think that this makes premoderns "unreflective." It's just that the first questions they asked were ones about what is real, rather than how we know what is real.

Ultimately, by middle ages, it was not unusual to speak of "the truth of all things," insofar as all things image God to some degree. Things are both real and true. But by the time we get to Kant, it is an either or: things are either real (noumenal) or they are true (phenomenal). Once again, then, I find the difference between premodern and modern thought to be able to be expressed in terms of both/and and either/or.

Wisdom from Josef Pieper:

"If you study any philosophical treatise of our present era you will with almost absolute certainty not encounter the concept, and much less the expression, "the truth of all things." This is no mere accident. The generally prevailing philsophical thinking of our time has no room at all for this concept; it is, as it were, "not provided for." It makes sense to speak of truth with regard to thoughts, ideas, statements, opinions--but not with regard to things. Our judgements regarding reality may be true (or false); but to label as "true" reality itself, the "things," appears rather meaningless, mere nonsense. Things are real, not "true."

Looking at the historical development of this situation, we find that there is much more to it than the simple fact of a certain concept or expression not being used: we find not merely the "neutral absence, as it were, of a certain way of thinking. No , the nonuse and absence of the concept, "the truth of all things" is rather the result ofa long process of biased discrimination and suspression or, to use a less aggressive term, of elimination."
--Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989).

The Future lies in the Past

Deuteronomy 32:7,29
Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. ...They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them.

If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!

Romans 15:4
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

2 Peter 3:2
I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many timeas and therefore is in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

--C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, "Learning in War-time," p. 28-29.

"By studying the past we can learn not only historical but metaphysical or transcendental truth."

--C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p. 174.

A couple of weeks ago Ted showed me this article in CT: Chris Armstrong's "The Future lies in the Past."

Yesterday, my colleague Bonnie at EBC told me about hearing Leonard Sweet speak recently about the need to rediscover the past. (Wow. Has he ever done a 180 since Soul Tsunami. Forgive me, but my skepticism is surfacing here. Why is it that I am having such a hard time not believing that he hasn't sniffed where the publishing and speaking winds are about to blow, and so is poised for profit? )

Phyllis Tickle is blogging about the ancient future church.

The Spirit is on the move! Among a postmodern people who idolize their present experience, He comes to remind us that "that history is a story with a divine plot." You can't have a Story without a beginning, a middle and an end.

And if Hauerwas is right in his damning criticism of postmodernism,"Who told you the story there is no Story?" then the only way to make sense of our present experience is to re-discover the metaphysical and transcendent truth inherent in the past, and see how it relates to the Divine Plot.

I hope Louis Bouyer is able to see all this.

I hope I live long enough to see it develop and flourish.

Happy Birthday, "Otello!"

Today marks the 121st anniversary of the debut of Verdi's Otello: Feb. 5, 1887, at La Scala in Milan.

To my mind it is Verdi's greatest opera, the work of his mature genius. His librettist, Arrigio Boito, distilled Shakespeare's tragedy into its purest form. Boito provided Iago with a devilish "Credo" which Shakespeare never wrote, but which telegraphs Iago's nihilism. Watch a chilling Justino Diaz sing it here. This is what he is singing, in translation:

I believe in a cruel God who created me
Similar to Himself, and whom I name in my wrath.
From the baseness of a germ or an atom,
Basely I was born.
I am wicked
Because I am a man;
And I feel the mud of my origin in me.
Yes! This is my creed!
I believe with a firm heart, just as
The little widow in church believes,
That the evil I think, the evil that comes from me,
Is wrought by my destiny.
I believe the honest man is a mocking actor
In his face and in his heart,
That everything in him is falsehood:
His tears, kiss, gaze,
Sacrifice, and honor.
And I believe that man is the plaything of
unjust fate
From the germ of the cradle
To the worrn of the grave.
After so much derision comes Death.
And then?
And then? (long pause)
(whispering) Death is Nothingness
(shouting) And heaven an old wives' tale.
(laughter)

Currently, Placido Domingo owns the title role, and can be heard on various excellent recordings. He appears on DVD in Franco Zefirelli's lush production. It is a visual delight, but for many his idiosyncratic cutting of Desdemona's Willow song is a musical travesty. My favorite recording is conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, and features James McCracken as Otello, Gwyneth Jones as Desdemona, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Iago.

Martina Elicker has written a fascinating postmodern analysis of Shakespeare's theatrical Othello, Verdi's musical Otello, and Zeferrelli's video Otello. She observes:

This paper focuses on a critical comparison of the theme of Ot(h)ello's "otherness" as depicted in Shakespeare's play, the opera adaptation by Verdi/Boito, and the 1986 movie version by Franco Zeffirelli. The main aim of the analysis is to point out the different types of mechanisms at play in creating "otherness" in the three media: with the help of language, music, visual signs, etc. Ot(h)ello's character is clearly outlined and his life - past and present -, attitudes, religious beliefs, and cultural background are juxtaposed with those of the other characters firmly embedded in Western, Christian societies and traditions. For obvious reasons, Zeffirelli makes use of visual signs and symbols the most, at the same time drawing on (con-)textual elements of the play and the musical texture of the opera, and thus further emphasizes Ot(h)ello's outsider status among the Venetians and Cypriots. In the context of "The Unifying Aspects of Culture," it is particularly interesting to note Zeffirelli's own Italian Catholic background when discussing his selection of musical, textual, and visual signs which stress "difference", "otherness" - rather than "unity", "unification."

See. I told you it was a postmodern analysis. ; )

Understanding Nominalism, Part 3: A Primer in Metaphysics

What you do depends on your vision of what is real.

At some point, the emergent/missional church needs to reconsider its metaphysical foundations, if it is going to move forward.

Philosophical metaphysics wonders about being; about what is real. Some of the questions metaphysicians ask are,

"what kinds of things are there? Only material things, or are there immaterial things as well?" (aka, ontology)

"does everything reduce into one thing, or are there many things? And if the latter, what relations do they have with one another?" (aka, the problem of the One and the Many; or the problem of Universals and Particulars")

Sometimes people use different words besides metaphysics to refer to the effort to answer these questions. You'll hear words like "narrative," or "worldview" or "presuppositions" or "story" or "hermeneutic." There are some slight variations in meaning between these words, but ultimately they all attempt, at some point, to deal with metaphysical questions.

I. A Primer in Metaphysics, Digest version

A. Premodernism:

1. The "building blocks" of reality are relationships. Being doesn't "reduce" down any further.

Matter and form. Substance and accident. Essence and existence. Potential and actual. Universals and particulars. Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

2. Premodernism uses "both-and" lenses to see the world.

Things are both able to be understood in their unity and in their diversity. What is real can be said to be both one and many. We understand what there is by using both left brain and right brain, both ratio/discursive reason and intellectus/intuition.

Everything that exists exists in a community, in a deep and real (not socially created, or individually imposed) relationship with other things. Christian premodernists believe that human sin has damaged all our relationships, with God, with each other, and with creation. Presently, apart from the Godhead, there is no perfect community, but there is hope, because Jesus Christ has come and is in the process of restoring it.

B. Modernism

1. The building block of reality is the discrete individual.

Modernists who are scientists almost always wind up being materialists, reducing everything to bits of matter in motion. Other modernists are more politically inclined, and reduce society to a contract between independently existing individuals. But whatever way you go, for modernism there is something more fundamental, more independent than the relationship.

2. Modernism uses "either/or" lenses to see the world. What is real are "many."

Modernism rejects the right brain in favor of the left. Thus, one must choose: either feeling or logic; either religion or science, either Kant's "practical reason " or his "pure reason."

Modernism tries to overcome the either/or dichotomy by desperately trying to find some unity for independently existing things. Hence, the 19th century emphasis on "the brotherhood of man," and the 20th century search for a "unified field theory."

C. Postmodernism (aka hypermodernism)

1. The building blocks of reality are...wait a minute: What reality? Yours? Mine? His? Theirs?

2. Postmodernism uses the "either/or" lens ground its ultimate power.

It sees the dead end of modernism, and struggles to avoid it by rejecting the oppression of the left brain and favoring the marginalized right brain. But in so doing, it is still a captive of either-or thinking. Either be a subject or an object; either be an "I" or an "it"; either freedom or opression, either master or slave.

What is real are the "many," but Postmodernism is skeptical of ever finding any unity for them. It rejects Modernism's attempts to overcome the either/or dichotomy, and so tries going the opposite direction, emphasizing the diversity of all independently existing things. Hence, "multiculturalism" and "diversity training."

Nietzsche, the Prophet of Postmodernism, understood that the chaos of diversity could only be overcome by the dominating will of the "Ubermensch." When God-- who is Himself a perfect community, and who has created a world to be in perfect community with Him--is dead, so is all hope of authentic relationship. The Ubermensch is the epitome of the either/or: either his will, or none.

II. Why this is important for Emergents/missionals:

The very notion of mission is relational. Mission means showing and telling others about how Christ is able to truly unify us with the Lord, with each other, and with creation.

We can't fulfill that mission if within our own understanding of self, world and God we are operating with a metaphysic/hermeneutic/narrative that contradicts and subverts that mission. Integrity of mind and heart and soul and strength are critical.

Mission without a coherent metaphysic is like trying to read and write with only part of the alphabet. The modernist understanding of mission only used the consonants; the posmodernist understanding is only using the vowels. To tell a story completely and coherently, you have to use all 26 letters. It's not an either or. It's a both-and.

So why hamstring ourselves by limiting ourselves to either vowels or consonants? We will not be able to carry out the mission of showing and telling Jesus very well, for what we do depends on our vision of what is real, and the reality of mission is that we need to be able to use both.

By extension, then, a missional church needs to experience both the journey and the destination. We need to be able to recognize both that which is universal and that which is particular; we need to know both truth as intelligible and truth as mystery; we need to both Jesus as human, and Jesus as divine.

Modern and postmodern narratives cannot support both-and thought and action, but a premodern narrative can.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (Rev. 21:3)

There's nothing more both-and than that!

(Gary, Brian, Donald, and Leonard...are you listening?) (grin!)