Apologetics

I took a class once that devoted a third of a semester to Christian apologetics. I know of other schools that have multiple full-semester classes devoted to the subject. Yet when I have listened to most Christian apologetics it always seems that we are attempting to establish our faith using vague peripheral arguments of Modern science and thought. It's like the kid who starts wearing certain clothes just as they are going out of style, and speaking as if he was doing it from the start. In the class I took we spent a good deal of time arguing for the existence of God, yet I hear less and less about atheism in our day. Our society has moved past atheism on to a prevading agnosticism that leave all of our theistic arguments irrelevant. Today our society is critical not of Christian concepts, but instead Christian epistemology (how we know that what we believe is True). For postmodern culture, all people are equal, which means that the Hindu's idea of truth and the Christian's idea of truth are on equal ground. Equality is something that most Christians are greatly frustrated by. We are used to having our religion start out with an advantage, which made it easier for us to win religious debate. Today we have lost our position of religious privilage, and found that our apologetics are not so dominant when they lose the "one-up" position they had long enjoyed in the West.

Apologetics as it turns out was not always our attempt to dominate religious argument: the first apologists were attempting to simply make Christianity viable in a new paradigm. As Christianity shifted from being a minority Jewish religion to being a Greek/Roman religion, significant changes were necessary. Originally Christianity started out as a religion that fit perfectly into the Jewish context. It's theology was fresh and challenging to those who had followed the Torah their whole life, but when it was taken a few hundred miles away to people who had likely never even heard of the Torah, it did not immediately fit as well. Originally, Paul took the necessary first steps to give Christianity credibility to the Hellenistic (Greek/Roman) culture. In Paul, we have the beginning of a paradigm shift. The worldview of the Jews was vastly different than that of the Greeks and Romans. And, to take Christianity from one to the next we find Paul, and probably many others, making the necessary initial changes to see this happen. Yet, once these were made, there was a long way to go.

And, this was the legacy of the 'apologists'. The concept of 'apology' is closely related to that of 'reconciliation'. That is how the modern since of apologizing has gained the meaning of saying the necessary words to reconcile two people. Yet, before this became 'apology's' primary meaning, it was used in a more broad sense. That's how we get the idea of offering an apology for Christianity. The first 'apologists' were those who attempted to reconcile this Jewish religion to a Hellenistic context. They created theology (it might be better to say 'gave voice to theology') that was credible and viable in this new non-Jewish context. These apologists were men like Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, and Athenagoras. They all attempted to use Greek philosophy to justify Christianity, and in the process made it acceptable to the Greek mind. About 1700 years later we find that much of our dogma rests on their arguments. In actuality, most of Western Christianity has taken shape as a result of the apologetics of these men.

One key point though is, their arguments did not start out as dogma, but as attempts to reconcile this 'new, great faith' to a culture and context where it otherwise made no sense. What we in the West have gone to war over (literally), started out in an almost experimental attitude.

Here's the question: as more and more Eastern thought weaves into our postmodern (post-Western?) culture, how much can we continue to demand ascent to 1700 year old lines of thought? It seems that the questions that people ask today are different, so can we continue to force them on tangent answers that don't even speak to the uncertainties of their hearts?? People decreasingly require evidence for God's existence, but his nature and his presence are questioned and regarded as 'unknowable'. What is our response? "Well consider the world and think of it like a watch that needs a watchmaker . . . ." Who gives a crap??

We need new apologists. We need a new and radically different apology for Christian faith. I am increasingly convinced it will need to be more holistic and encompassing . . . and humble (which would be quite a change indeed). Thoughts?

communal revelations

Last night was pretty cool. My closest friends and I got together to hang out and take communion. I was only half coherent after finishing up 24 hours of clinicals in less than 48 . . . it's been brutal the past two weeks. Still, it was really cool. I feel that God revealed a few things too me in the midst of my community:

- 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. I've heard this verse countless times throughout my life. Typically it was being used in true "proof-text" fashion, isolating one paragraph from another. I would hear 23-26 used by themselves constantly apart from the rest of the chapter, to guilt people into a reverant state of mind before you took you stale flake and quater shot, and began your anticipation of post-service lunch. Last night it finally stuck out to me how horribly that rips this passage out of context. 23-26 are sandwiched between passages emphatically emploring the Corinthian church to wait on all members before beginning the meal. Therefore I don't think we can act as though Paul is just being scatter brained. The meaning of 23-26 is tied to the greater context of the section. The idea is: we are the Body of Christ. Each church constitutes the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Therefore when a few members begin the meal and consume most of it without waiting on all the members to arrive, they are not showing respect to the very Body that gives them life. They are taking the meal "in an unworthy manner" and it is sinful. Quite literally they are acting just like cancer, hording nutrients to themselves while other parts of the body starve, killing the body by their own selfishness. v. 29 "For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself." The body is the local gathering we are apart of. We are to recognize that our life is dependent of the whole body: we will die apart from the community that we exist in. We are to recognize each other, and the equality that we share. We are to show respect for all, and wait to begin our meal out of respect. As all share equally in the grace of Jesus, all should have equal opportunity to be sustained by his body and blood, and share their joy of being his disciple with the rest of the body. It is in this way that cliques are at least kept in check, that natural human dividing lines (race, social status, politics) are challenged, and the Body of Jesus becomes a place of reconciliation, forgiveness, and acceptance. It ties in perfectly with chapters 12-14 that follow.

- and that's what made it so cool to realize that last night. A friend brought the passage up out of the blue to think about, and on my own I don't know if I would ever have focused on the passage long enough to arrive at the thought. I'm also not sure that anyone else in our group would have taken that kind of initiative to focus our minds on Scripture. In other words, last night I started understanding the differing roles of various members of our group. I like leading, but not being a 'front man' so to speak. I hate getting things started, but once they are started I love to help channel them in new and different directions. Last night I got to see my gift of 'theology' be used in a community setting. I felt like I was discerning my place. It was also interesting that some things were said that I honestly had significant trouble accepting. My own experience felt in conflict with what others were claiming to have experienced. But, that was ok. I realized that in being open, even if doubtful, it is ok if I was not on the same page with others in my group. We're still a body, and the Spirit will guide me to truth. I am filling my role as God has placed me where I am purposefully, and he expects of me only to do what he has equipped me to do. It's relieving to know that I can be myself in the context of a community dedicated to him, and that is actually what pleases God most, because in that was I am being exactly what I was created for.

- I realized that I contribute depth to what might otherwise be shallow. I've found that I actually enjoy being the second man in line: I like supporting people who are leading the way. (though I have to respect them first) I also realize how I like working with people on the margins. I definitely enjoy people who are dealing (openly and honestly) with doubt and struggles, especially as that requires new solutions to old problems.

Words At War

It should strike us as ironic that Christianity is so thoroughly centered upon creeds and doctrine. Consider for a second how Christian conversion works these days:

- if you are church of Christ, then you stand before the congregation, give your stamp of approval to those magical words in the question "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" You passively receive the act of baptism and the deposit of the Spirit, and the deal is done. You are now a Christian . . . provided you regularly attend, and more importantly from the preacher's point of view, tithe.
- if you're a Baptist, you say the sinner's prayer. Fill out a registration card, and the church computer database declares your faith 'up and running'.
- if you're 'Spirit-filled', you receive the various baptisms, speak in tongues to prove it, and you should be good to go.

And, in all these instances, faith in some way is based on church membership, and more importantly verbal formulas. Do a little dance, say a certain prayer, get saved tonight . . . hooray for disco Christianity.

I read this today: "Certainly, all Christian confessions of faith - both old and new - must be held in honor, but something else is more important for being a Christian. Jesus nowhere said, 'Say after me', but rather 'Follow me'. That means that Jesus did not first require a confession of faith from his disciples, men or women, but rather called them to utterly practical discipleship. The important thing is not to say 'Lord, Lord' but to 'do the will of the Father who is in heaven'."

When I consider all the service I have seen in church, all of it shares that it was done in order to live out the doctrines and creeds that my congregations actually considered to be most important. In other words, we practiced faith to prove our creeds. Our doctine, not our love for God or our compassion for humanity, was the source and motivation for our service and life. It was also why we were conveniently, and obviously, right, and all other confessions were wrong. In this, I think we have missed the grace available through doctrine, and more tragically I think we have missed what it is to be a Christian.

Christianity is unquestionably a communal faith. It is not a faith that respects rugged individualism. It is a faith that seeks in every possible instance to integrate humanity as much as possible. The NT states plainly that prerequisite to being reconciled to God, one must be reconciled to his brother or sister. We cannot hate each other and love God. And this is where I think our idea of Christianity has been perverted. The last thing that the world needs is a another cause for division. Humanity on the whole was doing quite a good job at dividing itself before Christianity came on to the scene. If all Christianity offers is another cause for division, then the human race has little need for it. The market for sectarianism was, and still is, totally saturated without Christianity. Humans don't need help dividing. We're really, really good at it already.

Unity is a different story. We can't seem to unite around anything for very long. In America we declare "United we stand!" Yet it seems often that we're not very good at standing. In fact we stagger and stumble quite often. When we do stand it's very rare that we do so because we're united. We typically are divided into a thousand different factions, and we stand only because we are conditioned not to kill each other when we don't get our way. We stand because we grit our teeth, and we are united only in so far as minorities are willing to consent to the often mindless majority. This is the but one of many mediocre attempts humanity has made at unity, and any who would be honest in their evaluation of it, would admit that it appears far from stable. America stands purely by the grace of God, in the midst of screaming tensions that appear poised to take the country down at any given second. And, ironically this unity borrowed heavily (and is still heavily in debt to) the attempts of Christians to provide bases for unity to the sectioning process that has been ongoing in the Church for centuries. And here is where we have betrayed the grace present in creeds:

We have made creeds/doctrine the basis for unity, instead of letting them arise out of the unity that is already present in a given body of people. Instead of finding our common ground and together confessing it in a creative declaration, we approach our brothers and sisters with the common ground predetermined in advance. We put the potential for unity solely in the hands of our competing faith statements, and watch as our words go to war. The effect on Christianity has been devestating. Doctrine has been perverted from grace to cancer.

When we approach another believer of a different confession than our own, with our doctrine as the measuring stick to hold them to we are attempting to short-circuit their free will. I think we should realize this and take it seriously. Instead of viewing our creeds as warring statements, we should see them as declarations of praise, or as one person put it "doxilogical knowledge". They are not molds to fit into, but acclamations from the heart of God's people. In this difference of attitude we can see them transformed from constricting traditions, to proclamations given to God from the freedom he has provided us. If another believer does not share a certain confession with us, then we respect them with the understanding that it is God's Spirit that leads people to proclaim truth, and as they understand, they will confess what the Spirit has shown them.

Lastly, Jesus never intended for our unity to be based on verbal formulas. This is why he never wrote a book. This is why he spoke in parables. This is why he calls us to 'Follow', instead of to 'Say'. The mark of a Christian is to quite literally see what Jesus does, and go and do likewise. It is by the Spirit that we are enabled to see Jesus still today. We can discern his actions, and follow.

That is what God has been communicating to me the past couple months. A church I would be satisfied with is one that sees doctrine and creeds in a very secondary manner. One that is more focused on doing than saying. This is the biggest detriment to my own spiritual growth at the moment: my life is deficient in service, and I have received an over-abundance of words. I don't need Bible studies, classes, sermons, or guidance. I need to be amidst the struggles of the world, watching Jesus serve and doing the same. I haven't a clue where to start, and I'm reluctant and scared to actually do it. But, I know this is true. Christianity is not abstract. It is not a religion of debate. It is without question, a faith in action. But what are we doing . . . . ?

A True Humility

Moses is referred to in Numbers 12 as the most humble man on earth. Consider Exodus 4, though, how virtuous was this humility when he attempts to evade God's plan to make him liberator of Israel? In this instance his "humility" results in God's anger. It appears that being humble is not always a favorable condition. At least in this case God seems to perfer initiative over playing oneself down. Moses did have a lot to be humble about . . .

He occupied a key position to be a leader. He had access to Pharaoh's court. He easily could have worked to politically benefit Israel. He most likely should have been respected by his people for his power position. Yet in his early adulthood he becomes a murderer in the name of 'righteousness' and loses everything that could have made him effective for God. He was now forced to leave his country, and all his potential, to spend decades as a mere shepherd living isolated in the countryside. Imagine spending 20 or so years mulling over one enormous mistake that cost you everything . . . that set you at odds with God himself. When God finally calls Moses from the burning bush, he has to explain who he is. Apparantly their communication had been inconsistent enough to warrant God explaining to Moses whom it was that was speaking.

Moses, no doubt, should have been humble. Yet, his attempt at humility in this situation leads to God's frustration and anger. And, here is where I find something contradictory to our contemporary Christian attitude: excessive humility is actually of equal arrogance to those who have no humility at all. In other words:

The arrogant believe they can do it all and therefore have no need for God.

The humble arrogant believe they can't do anything whether God chooses to help or not.

Moses in the beginning is actually not humble at all! He is so enslaved to the belief that he is nothing that he projects his own insufficiency onto God. The result is that since he was rejected as Israel's leader in his early twenties, he and more importantly YHWH through him will be rejected as Israel's leader some twenty years later.

I think we would be in error to believe that we have come very far. The number of Christians who question their own salvation is astounding. We doubt the goodness of our own hearts, and arrogantly assume, in the name of humility, that the price God paid is at least a few dollars short to assuredly merit our salvation. We take matters into our own hands and lie low, spiritually speaking, living outside the places where God has given us the ability to benefit his Kingdom. We fear God's power will be insufficient to convince the folks back home! (said with self-incrimination in my voice)

Or, how many people truly fear an open, honest relationship with God. We sin, and then hide from him. As though on the cross he didn't experience the full depth of sin's consequences. We believe that our daily betrayals somehow hold a pain or evil that he has not yet experienced!! That is the cross: there is nothing new. No sin we could commit will fill God with pain even representing the smallest fraction of what he experienced at Calvary. Yet, we seek to save ourselves and him from facing what we have done . . . from who we are!! Is this a humility of virtue? The last thing that God fears is our sinfullness. The least respect we can pay him is to be honest concerning our sin, and ourselves.

Humility is a middle ground. For too long I think, I and most Christians I meet, have treated it as the opposite pole to pride, but in this case, we simply end up in the right ditch for fleeing the left. To be humble is to keep oneself focused on God. Only in knowing him do we find our identity and come to understand what humility is. To completely deny oneself is not humble, if in that denial, we reject the power of God. God can do amazing things through us, especially as we find a true humility.

Only later in his life does the book of Numbers step in and call Moses the most humble man on the earth. This is long after Moses quit letting his own limitations blind him to God's limitless ability. Moses had learned to walk in communion with God. He had seen God's power. He ceased his questions, and became the leader that God had declared him to be.

Subversion 2

Allow me to build a little on what I said in my last post. Again, try to imagine yourself as an exiled Jew, struggling in a culture very different and largely opposed to your own. As I said in the last post, Scripture emerges in this context as a theological means of subverting the dominant culture. I wanted to focus this post on the first 11 chapters of Genesis to show how truly subversive they are.

First, let's remember as Paul Heibert has pointed out, behavior is a result of the values a society holds, and values arise from their worldview. This is very important in understanding the purposes of the opening chapters of the Bible. Like I said in the last post, the biblical writers are not merely attempting a report of historical fact concerning the world's origins. It's more complex than that. The important thing to remember is that with all cultures 'origin stories' are indicative of their worldview.

Babylon's stories held a view that the gods had created the world and people, and in the end had decided that in doing so they had made a mistake. This is common to most ancient Near Eastern religions. The ultimate idea is that ultimately the gods were disappointed in one way or another with humankind. There were a few gods that loved, but not consistently. There were a few that helped, but demanded much in return. There were malicious gods who sought to inflict as much harm and suffering on humans as they could. Sometimes this lead to fatalism. Sometimes it lead to vain attempts at manipulating or bargaining with the gods to benefit oneself. And, deeper than that, imagine how this would effect ones attitude toward life. Ultimately, you as a human are a mistake. At best, you just know that the divine powers of the world are certainly not proud of your existence. The ultimate explanation for you is that you, as a race, are the bastard children of some gods who were too drunk or ignorant to really know what they were doing.

In this view the rest of creation, too, was not considered to be a success. The world on the whole, with humans included, served to divide the gods. Imagine being a child in the middle of divorce of cosmic proportions. How would that shape your identity? or the way you live? Babylon was a very immoral society. But, then again, why should they not have been? Ultimately they lived their lives attempting to appease gods who didn't really like them, and who were all trying to deny their own responsibility for the world they had created.

And now we find ourselves in a small gathering of exiled Jews. Everywhere you go you are reminded of this worldview so different to the one you have believed. In this setting you continue to meet together as you have done for as long as your people can remember. In this setting you here the elders speak. In this context you first here the declaration, "God said let there be light, and there was, and God saw it was good!" Still, there was more: God created the sky, and the sea; the land and all the plants on it, and this was good! It was God who created night and day, the stars and the seasons, and he saw it was good. God is the one who created the animals of the world, and he called them good. Then God made humankind for the purpose of ruling over all of creation. God was not disappointed in this. For only at the end with humans ruling over the rest of the earth, all of which God created and called good, does God see the whole of his work and said it was very good!

This is a statement made against what Babylon was proclaiming so loudly. This is the Jews' way, as a people, of saying, "We know what we are, and we are not a mistake. Nor is the God of Creation disappointed with us." God did not screw up. He created it all, and in all of it what he saw was good. Imagine reading this chapter out loud in front of an assembly of Jews. Each passage building up the created world and culminating with a declaration that what God saw was good. Each time it is said the congregation affirms with amens and hallelujahs that would fit in perfectly with the black congregations of our time. As an assembly they experience an emphatic alternative to the hostile claims of Babylon. And it gets better . . . .

The rest of the stories in Genesis 2-11 are not necessarily even intended to fit in with chapter 1. The Jews were not attempting a comprehensive account of the earth's origins. They were simply making contradictory statements to the Babylonian worldview that was being shoved down their throat. In the story of the Garden we see a proclamation of what life with the One God was intended to be. In the story of the Fall we see profound statements of what had gone wrong with the world, the consequences resulting, and most importantly we see God's first inclinations towards grace. With Cain and Abel we are given an observation of the conflict between the righteous and the wicked, and again reminded of God's grace to us, even in our wickedness. And then it gets really good . . .

While the stories of chapters 2-5 contain some paralells to Babylonian literature, chapters 6-11 can be considered direct rip-offs of Babylon. Especially the story of the Flood. One of the oldest works of literature in the world is the story of Gilgamesh: a Sumerian king who would be the ancient forefather of the Babylonians. No doubt, the Babylonians took considerable pride in that story. If you read Gilgamesh you will come to one part where the gods decided to flood the entire world so as to wipe it out, and king Gilgamesh escapes in a large box (which is what 'ark' means). Now I've heard it argued that the Babylonians/Sumerians stole the story from the Jews. Yet, all evidence seems to point to the Babylonian story being siginificantly older than the biblical. I think if we concede that it is, a really cool possibility opens up. Considering what the Jews were claiming in chapters 1-5, we can say that they were being quite bold in going against the Babylonian culture. Yet in chapters 6-11 they step it up a notch. They actually steal some of Bablylon's own stories and edit them according to their own Jewish, monotheistic worldview. They use Babylon's stories to boldly declare YHWH's purposes. God flooded the world not because of an arbitrary dislike for humankind, but because of humankind's wickedness. He saved Noah not because Noah was partially divine or just the 'teacher's pet' to the gods, but because Noah was righteous. The ark ends up being a means of salvation of Noah and all of the creation which God had declared good. From this God begins his history of covenants with the people he chooses. Noah marks the relational beginning of God's interaction with men.

Lastly in the story of the Tower of Babel we find many similarities to Babylonian stories, and a story that playfully criticizes the dominant culture. As a Jew in the world's largest commercial center for that time could not the story of the Tower represent the whole city of Babylon? A city representing human endevor to build a society, but building it out of the wrong material. Notice that the Tower is being built in Shinar which is another word for Babylonia. Notice also that the word Babel sound much like Babylon which many think comes from the Hebrew word for confused.

In all the opening chapters of the Judeo-Christian Bible are bold attempts at offering a monotheistic alternative to the dominant stories that helped compose the Babylonian worldview. The claims they make are just as valid today. We live in a world that is obnoxious in boasting its worldview. Whether eliminating all purpose, or telling us the impossibility of truly knowing God, our world has many hostile claims toward what Christian faith is called to be. We claim one God, who created purposefully, and did not screw up (ch.1). We believe that there is life with God, that is what he intended (ch.2). We understand that it is due to our breaking of relational vows (sin) that the world is messed up. We see in spite of this, that God always has and always will provide grace to fix these circumstances(ch.3). We see that the righteous will suffer from the selfishness of others. We know that in our own selfishness there are consequences as well as grace (ch. 4). And, whatever the claims the world makes against us, we know that the origin of humanity is God. He is central to every story whether people know it or not. His grace is also sufficient enough that he will never allow us as a race to achieve self-divinity. When we attempt it he will strike us so as to save us. (ch.6-11)

In all I have little doubt that most Jews believed these to be factual accounts. There was not competition with science, only with other mythological explanations for the world. The purpose of these stories though is deeper than mere explanation. They are intended to make profound theological claims that are unquestionably unique to the Jewish faith. They are claims that are never outdated or superceded. They are indeed at the core of our faith, but not as history. They are the beginning of God's self-revelation. God first reveals himself by contrasting his nature with Babylon. This is where our knowledge begins, and in the 66 books that follow, God never ceases to amaze us with the depth of his being.