"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning."
C.S. Lewis
"The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly."
Charles Reznikoff
"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."
G.K. Chesterton
"Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail, nor reason."
Francis Quarles
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
C.S. Lewis
Resistance Thinking Faith
It is through the Jesus lense the Resistance Thinking seeks to explore truth about the world in which we live. In this faith section you will find articles, news and reivews that will help you explore the complexities of the Christian faith.
We will cover a broad range of topics, including: theology, church, leadership, devotions, classic Christian literature, prayer, everyday faith, apologetics, church history, Christian living, Old Testamnet, New Testament, creation, fresh expressions, epistomology...the list could go on and on!
If there is any topic you would like the Resistance Thinking team to go to work on please shoot us an email. If you have any work that could help us all to be more effective 'Resistance Thinkers' please send it in for our team to review.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." CS Lewis
As you read this article, ask yourself these questions. Why did Catherine go to Planetshakers - what motivated her? What would people come for if they came to your church - a rock concert, a fun time, Jesus? And, what worldview does she have - which should help you answer how she reached the conclusion that she came to - no Holy Spirit, but "just people".
Shaken but not stirred by stadium-rock spirituality
The Age Opinion, Catherine Deveny, July 29, 2009
THE promise of awesome worship. That’s what got me rocking up to a Planetshakers meeting. And I wasn’t disappointed. They said ‘‘awesome’’ 20 times.
Planetshakers is a megachurch...
The crowd left believing they had been moved by God and touched by Jesus. They hadn’t. They had been seduced by slick video packages and had their emotional desire for love, community and certainty met by manipulation. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit; it was just people.
Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) Reviewed by Bill Muehlenberg, Culture Watch, April 2008 (Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Moody, 2008)
These two young guys are sceptical about megachurches, how-to-sermons, legalism, the effects of modernity, marketing gimmicks, and overly aligning faith with politics. They know that Christianity is not just doctrine, and they are aware that the Bible has been misused. And they want their faith to be relevant and they seek to be conversant with their culture. Thus they are aptly qualified to be representatives of, or advocates for, the emerging church movement.
But they are not. Indeed, the more they learn about the emerging church, “the harder it is to swallow”. Thus this book. It is a detailed assessment and critique of the emerging church. The pair seek to be as fair as possible, and are clearly aware of the strengths of the movement. But unfortunately the many weaknesses must also be addressed. They affirm many of the emergent diagnoses, but find most of the prescribed remedies to be quite troubling.
Of course D.A. Carson offered a critique of this movement in 2005, as did R. Scott Smith, who also penned a volume that year. But this new book is really quite superb in giving us a balanced appraisal of, as well as a serious warning about, the emergent movement. So what in fact is it? Well, like postmodernism which it is so enamoured with, it is an amorphous and hard to identify movement. But simply put, it likes to make antitheses, favouring one polarity over the other. It favours relationships over rules, conversation over preaching, doubt over certainty, postmodernism over modernism, discussion over theology, orthopraxis over orthodoxy, action over theory, embodiment over rationalism, journey over destination, and so on. But as the authors note, why make such either/or scenarios? Why can’t it be a case of both/and? Why create such false dichotomies?
The genuine Christian church should be marked by both “grace and truth, logical precision and warmhearted compassion, careful thinking and compassionate feeling, strong theology and tender love,” and so on. Why cannot both be affirmed simultaneously, instead of demanding that we must choose one or the other, as so many emerging thinkers and writers demand?
Consistent with postmodernism, the emerging church folk have a strong dislike of rationality, theology, propositional truth - indeed, truth of any kind. They look down on dogma, rules, teaching, preaching, boundaries and doctrine. While they reject some things we should reject – legalism, unloving judgmentalism, head over heart, and so on – they have a tendency of throwing the baby out with the bath water. In reacting to one extreme, they go way over to another extreme. What is needed is biblical balance, not wild pendulum swings.
Consider the issue of our knowledge of God. The emergent crowd generally argues that we should be content with mystery, wonder and questions. We cannot pin down God and he is too big to be put in a theological box. That all may be true, but they go to unnecessary extremes here. Emergent leaders “are allowing the immensity of God to swallow up His knowability. In good postmodern fashion, they are questioning whether we can have any real knowledge about God in the first place.”
But God is a God who reveals himself, who speaks, who acts, and discloses truths about himself to finite mankind. If God does not have a problem with this, why do the emergent leaders? Sure, we only have partial knowledge of God, but as Francis Schaeffer used to say, we can still have true truth, although not exhaustive truth, about God and his world.
As one of many unnecessary and unhelpful antitheses, many emergent leaders argue that we can know God personally, but we cannot know him propositionally. We can have a relationship with God, but we cannot really know too much about him. But this is just plain silly, as well as unbiblical. How can a man love his wife, for example, while knowing little about her? Knowledge about others is necessary in order for us to have a relationship with them.
Similarly, the emergent crowd makes much of relationship over against rules and regulations. Do’s and don’ts and laws just don’t cut it anymore. Instead, Christianity is all about love and relationship. But as the authors rightly remind us, relationships must be guarded and preserved by rules: “Try telling your wife after you’ve had an affair, ‘Come on, I thought our marriage was about the relationship, not all these do’s and don’ts’.”
Take also the common emergent charge that evangelicals worship the Bible, are guilty of bibliolatry, and are more concerned about dissecting Scripture than being transformed by it. Sure, that can often be the case. But once again, the emerging church leaders throw the baby out with the bathwater. They end up taking a very low view of Scripture instead.
Christ himself had a very high regard for Scripture, so we should as well. As the authors note, “For every fundamentalist who loves the Bible more than Christ … there are several emergent Christians who honor the Bible less than Christ did.”
Related to this is the whole postmodern idea that we are only left with interpretation. The emphasis of the deconstructionists is that we can never really know what the author intended. All we are left with is our own subjective understandings.
The emergent infatuation with deconstructionism is dangerous business indeed. By abandoning any sure word, by saying we are only left with interpretation - not final truth - the emergent crowd is leaving us all in a sea of relativism and uncertainty. But God is quite able to communicate to us and to use words in such a way that are understandable and meaningful.
Of course we all misinterpret things, because we are fallen and finite. But Scripture throughout insists that there is real meaning in the text, that is can be communicated to us, and that we can have some genuine understanding of it, albeit in a limited and not exhaustive fashion. But if we can never be sure about anything, why do the emerging leaders seem so certain about what they are trying to tell us? The authors remind us that the emergent leaders want to tell us that our traditional understandings (for example, about hell, exclusivism, the nature of the atonement, etc.) are faulty, yet they somehow seem certain about this, and that their alternative understandings are the ones to adopt. They say traditional evangelicals have been misinterpreting the Bible, all the while saying we can never really know that any interpretation is true. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. If anything goes in interpretation, then why should we heed the emergent leaders any more than, say, Paris Hilton?
The authors point out that the emergent writers confuse humility with uncertainty. They think it is a good thing that we are not dogmatic, but instead live with ambiguity, mystery, doubt and questions. Indeed, many of them equate faith with doubt. They dislike hard and fast theological systems, and they dislike those who claim to have some solid handle on the truth, equating that with pride and intolerance. But that does not square with the Biblical writers, especially the early apostles. They claimed to have the truth, to know the truth, and to proclaim the truth. They proclaimed the gospel as certain truth, and were willing to die for their strong convictions. But the emergent crowd wants us to hold onto things so loosely and so tentatively that one must ask, what gospel are they in fact offering to people?
“The apostles never preached with the double-talk and ambiguity you find in so many emergent books” the authors state. And the idea of a non-doctrinal Christianity – the no-creed-but-Jesus mentality – is simply the stuff of old-fashioned theological liberalism. It is weak and wishy washy, and converts no one.
This Jesus-versus-theology foolishness is typical of theological liberalism, and is the sort of thing H. Richard Niebuhr once denounced in these terms: “The liberal gospel consists of a God without wrath bringing people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”
Indeed, the emergent gospel leaves a lot to be desired. Many in the movement have real trouble with saying Jesus is the only way to salvation; are squeamish about propitiation; dislike talk of hell; and have a very low view of Scripture. As the authors stress, on so many levels, the emerging church advocates are really quite identical to the old theological liberals. “The only difference is that the old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernism.”
And although the emergent movement prides itself in challenging the old ways and being a trailblazer, it is quickly becoming a new rigid orthodoxy. The emerging church may have its roots in rebellion against more traditional forms of church, and seek to be always new and innovative, yet as the authors demonstrate, in many ways it too has become another type of traditionalism. It has its own books, authors, conferences, websites, and devoted followers. It has become establishment, in other words, although seeking to be anti-establishment. It may, in fact, be just another passing fad. It is certainly trendy, and it remains to be seen if it will have anything of real value to offer the body of Christ. Certainly in some of its less extreme forms it may well have helpful contributions to make. But in some of its more radical forms, it may in fact simply be destructive, even heretical.
The books of McLaren, Bell, Pagitt, Kimball, Jones and others will undoubtedly continue to sell well, and their conferences will probably still be sell-outs. But it is a movement that is in urgent need of balance. And this book is an excellent resource in helping to bring about that balance. It is hoped that this very important book sells as well as do the books of the emergent church. It has a message that desperately needs to be heard.
Review found at culture watch (Used with permission)
Isn't it interesting that secular media calls a Biblical church performing the crucifixion a 'sect' but freely declares one by Francis McNab - who actual denies a physical resurrection - a 'church'! People said of this performance that it is "offensive" and "horrific" and should be kept in the church: Are they right or are they hypocrites, or, what did your church do? Debate this on the forum
Sects and the city of Geelong
Geelong Advertiser, April 13th, 2009
GEELONG shoppers witnessed a confronting religious performance at one of the city's busiest pedestrian intersections when Jesus was nailed to the cross on Saturday.
Members of Geelong's HEAL Ministries (part of the Assemblies of God church) nailed Jesus to the cross at the Malop St crossing between Westfield Geelong and Market Square.
The performance had an air of authenticity with Roman guards and wailing women surrounding the bloodied figure on the cross.
Bill Muehlenberg reports on Anglican vicar, Robert Harrison's attempts to deconstruct popular bible stories in his new book 'Must Know Stories'. Bill points out the dangers and problems of the postmodernist creation of deconstructionism and reminds us that while it is perfectly acceptable to try and market bible stories to newer audiences, we have to remember that they were delivered in a historical context and that the meaning the author intended is paramount to understanding the truths within. For other great articles and reviews by Bill check out culture watch.
Deconstructing the Bible, Again Culture Watch, Bill Muehlenberg, April 2008 Good intentions are seldom sufficient in and of themselves. Often a person can mean well, but still end up doing a lot of mischief. Consider the attempt by an Anglican vicar in the UK to make bibles stories more “accessible” to modern readers. His new book, Must Know Stories, which appears tomorrow, takes ten popular bible stories and updates them for the contemporary reader.
One press account gives us an inkling of what this will be like: “In the nativity story, Jesus is born in an overcrowded house instead of a stable, amid family conflict as Joseph’s aunt deals with the fact that he and Mary are not even married.” Harrison says that it’s “better to tell the story controversially than not at all.” Thus, as the press report continues, “Goliath is a celebrity binge drinker, Eve is a sex-obsessed man-eater and Noah’s wife wants to kill him . . . welcome to the updated Bible.”
Said Harrison, “There are some stories which, in every culture, people need to know. These wonderful ancient stories are not known by a huge proportion of our society, and they need to be told.” So far so good. Nothing wrong with taking biblical stories and seeking to get them out to newer and wider audiences.
And nothing wrong with a bit of contextualisation and modernising of certain things, such as language, and maybe even to an extent, more contemporary settings for these old stories. But of course we already have both modern language translations and paraphrases of Scripture, and well as various culturally-sensitive renderings of the Bible.
But what is really worrying is when Harrison makes this remark: “”I wanted to write a book that tells the most important Bible stories in a way that relishes them rather than tries to make any particular religious point. After all, who knows what the point is?”
Uh oh. This is where we get into deep trouble. Just what is the good vicar implying here? He seems to be suggesting that these are simply stories, maybe even myths, just like any other story, and they have no real meaning or purpose, or at least we cannot know that meaning. So let’s just enjoy them, like we might enjoy the Odyssey, or Peter Rabbit. Whatever meaning I might derive from them is as good as anyone else’s meaning or understanding.
Now if that sounds vaguely familiar, it should be. It is all the rage on Western university campuses these days. It is known as deconstructionism, part of the bigger postmodernist project. The idea is that we can never really know what an author (or artist, or song writer, or the creator of any other cultural artifact) intended by his or her work. Authorial intention cannot be known, and all we can do is bring our own meaning into the text (or play, or song, or work of art, and so on).
Harrison seems to have fallen hook, line and sinker for this deconstructionist demolition job. As Kevin Vanhoozer put it, deconstructionism is “not so much a method of interpretation as a strategy for undoing interpretations”. This is something all students of Scripture should avoid like the plague.
Thus Harrison is actually helping no one here, certainly not the person who really wants to know what the Bible says and teaches. For these stories are not just feel-good myths or fun things to read to children at bedtime, but in fact are part of God’s inspired word, and appear there for a purpose.
Most of these stories are about actual historical events, which the biblical writers intended to use to convey actual theological truths. The stories are written for a purpose in mind, and it is not up to us to just read into them anything we like.
Indeed, any first year theology student will learn that the basic rule of good hermeneutics is exegesis over eisegesis. That is, as we approach the biblical text, we must be careful to exegete the passage, to seek to dig out of the text the author’s intended meaning. But we should never engage in eisegesis, that is, read into the text something that is not there.
And since most of these stories deal with real historical situations, such historical context is vital in understanding the author’s intended meaning. Thus classes in biblical interpretation will teach students how to learn about the historical, cultural and linguistic background of a given biblical story or teaching.
Since this book does not go on sale until tomorrow, I of course have not read it yet. But given what the press reports have said about this book, I don’t think I will be rushing out anytime soon to grab a copy. And I certainly will not be recommending it to any spiritual seeker or new Christian to help them better understand the Bible and it message.
Ripping a Bible story out of its historical and cultural context, and implying that no one can know what it really means, is not the way to help those who want to become acquainted with God’s word and get the full benefit out of it. It will simply lead one into epistemological relativism, and to a deconstructed – and therefore useless – Bible.
