chris cobb

Post-modernism (PM, pomo) is the child of the failure of modernity. As Francis Schaeffer points out in one of his many books (pardon, the title has escaped me), when modernists came to recognize that reason unaided by revelation was insufficient to construct a unified account of reality, they made a tragic decision.

They had two paths ahead of them. They could (1) try harder using principles of modernity to account for life as it is. Or, (2) they could step back and re-evaluate their rejection of the notion of revelation. That step, of course, necessitates a Revealer. They were not willing to go there.

So, of the two forks in the philosophical road, they took the third. They basically decided that meaning can only be located in irrationality, and despaired of reason itself. (If anyone recalls in which of Schaeffer's works this argument appears, please remind me. Schaeffer presented his case very tightly.)

The Emergent Church (EC) movement in some respects has taken this third of two possible paths. But the handle applied to the idea is not "irrationality" but "mystery."  The practical application of this third fork lies in EC's insistance that Scripture is ambiguous, that the Scripture itself, and truth itself, are suffused with mystery. For evidence, they point to the wide range of competing interpretations of the Bible.

Interpretation is always a task fraught with the possibility of error. We bring our cultural and personal biases into it. We bring our personal life history into it. We bring our own philosophical starting points into it (our "first principles"). We can bring an agenda into it (we can desire certain conclusions). We also apply specific methodologies to interpretation. With respect to the Bible, we have entire systems that define our interpretive schemes (think Covenental versus Dispensational) and methodologies.

But to say that Christianity should be characterized by uncertainty about what the Bible actually says goes way too far. It exalts the inability of the creature over the ability of the Creator. It neglects to account for the Creator's obvious intention to communicate clearly to His creation; an intention that persists despite the Fall. It fails to account for one of the most precious titles of Christ, the "Word of God". To interpret Logos here as the concept of the Divine Reason instead of the substance of Divine Communication is to fail to account for Hebrews 1:1-2. And it overlooks the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the interpretive process.

 The Scripture can be known with clarity in its principle teachings, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We may dispute over the mode of baptism; but that is a far cry from disputing over, say, whether homosexuality is a sinful behavior. By the way - this is not intended as an affront to homosexuals - their sin is no worse than that of the adulterer, or the gossip, or the racist, etc. No one, not me or anyone else, approaches God through Christ in any other condition other than as an abject sinner in desperate need of cleansing and forgiveness. I am using the sin of homosexuality simply because it is one of the signal points of uncertainty in the EC movement. 

There are not any basic hermeneutical methodologies that will sanitize the biblical data on homosexuality, short of governing all of interpretation with the idea of "cultural conditioning." But once you do so, you have lost the whole ball of wax. Christianity is no more.

For example, the entire concept of the blood atonement falls under the governing technique of cultural conditioning, as the number of cultures that practiced some form of animal sacrifice in the first century are legion. Paul's entire understanding of the atonement could be written off as "culturally conditioned."

No, the Scripture contains internal evidence that it possess clarity and we are expected to understand it. Jesus rhetorical comments to the Pharisees, "Have you not heard, have you not read..." indicate that He expected his hearers to be able to interact with the Old Testament. The entire concept of Covenant is predicated on remembering and understanding the original terms: when God proclaims His faithfulness He is claiming faithfulness to what He has promised in earlier times. Covenant requires clarity.

There is however, mystery aplenty in Christianity. But it is not located in an ambiguous Word. It is located in the very nature of God. For instance, trying with finite minds to grasp an Infinite Being is, to a great degree, an exercise in inadequacy. Our minds learn by analogy, we construct bridges from the known to the unknown. No can do with the Trinity, for instance, because there is nothing in all the Cosmos that even vaguely approaches the nature of the Trinity. It is a "one-of", and so our principle means of learning, analogy, is useless to us. There is simply no example of Trinity in the Cosmos that provides the footing on this side, on which we may build the bridge of understanding to the other side. Sure, there are Scriptures that describe and display the Trinity, but that should not be confused with understanding the Trinity.

 Our God is a God of mystery in the essence of His nature, but not in His communication to us.

Posted by chcobb at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My first child was born at the Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg, Virginia. We did not pick the hospital because of the name, "Baptist," but because it was available. I never did see any particular sectarian displays of medical procedure there. I was not asked what I believe, nor was care predicated upon my faith or lack thereof. As a matter of coincidence, I was a baptist at that time and remain to this day baptistic in the distinctives of my beliefs about God. I do recall that the shuttle-bus driver in the large parking-lot, after picking up my very-pregnant-and-in-labor wife and me, tailed cars around the parking lot, muttering, "lite, fly, lite." I suppose he must have been a baptist, as he was trying to cram just one more customer into his bus.

Here some twenty-odd years later (my wife did make it into the delivery room, and it is my eldest who is at present the web master of this site), I am now in Greenville, Ohio. A large feature of the landscape in Greenville is the beautiful and well-run senior-citizen's retirement community called the "Brethren Retirement Community." No, I do not live there. Not yet, anyway. But I would have you note that it is the "Brethren" Retirement Community. It is associated with the Church of the Brethren. There are members of our church there. We are not Brethren. We are independents, of the occasionally cantankerous, baptistic sort. Our folks who live there were not asked if they believe in God, or share the denominational distinctives of the Brethren denomination. But our folks receive top-quality care and attention in that fine facility, nonetheless.

By now, you may be wondering if there is a point to my rambling. Quite. I have never, ever in my life heard of the Pennsylvania Atheist Hospital, or the Atheists of America Nursing Home. Come to think of it, I do think I have heard of an atheists' nude beach, or some such.

Atheism is not a vigorous life philosophy that leads one to a life of self-sacrificing service to others. Yes, here or there, in ones or twos, there are undoubtedly sincere, socially-conscious atheists committing huge personal resources to sustain the weak, the infirm, the downtrodden, and those who many consider to be "useless." But more often, more normally, more naturally, atheism creates the Peter Singers of society, the Kevorkians, whose primary interest seems to be in ridding society of the weak, "for the greater good."

Atheism as a distinctive worldview is unable to create a civilization, or even a society. Simply look in history's dustbin for the attempts of atheists to create a civil society, or to transform a pre-existing society into an avowedly atheistic one. There you will find the Stalins, Pol Pots, Castros, and Hitlers of history. Without exception they have managed to wreak death and destruction on a wide scale, impoverish formerly self-sustaining economies, and utterly destroy the fabric of the original host society.

"Wait!" you protest, "what about the Crusades, the witch-trials, the toleration of slavery, and all the abuses and excesses of religion?" Yes, you find those too. Guilty as charged. But you are overlooking two things. First, within (for instance) Christianity you find the explanation and understanding of such behavior (it's called, "sin"), as well as the proper condemnation of it. You will discover that according to the proclamation of Christianity's own documents (the Bible), sin is to be found not only in the world, but also among the faithful. And you will find provision for both the forgiveness of sin, as well as victory over it (through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ).

Atheism has no such capacity for self-examination, but as the recent flood of popular atheistic literature attests, blame for violence, injustice, etc, is not found within the adherents of atheism, but it's the fault of religion. In other words, the atheist looks at the people of faith and says of the ills in the world, "its THEIR fault!"

The second thing you overlook is this: Christian societies tend to be eventually self-correcting. Witness the abolition of slavery in England and America. Atheistic societies don't self-correct; they don't last long enough to, nor do they have any guiding principles that illuminate the need for it. There is no "sin" in an atheistic society, nor is there the voice of the prophet calling it to repentance.

Atheism rides the wave, it surfs on the wake of a God-believing society, but of itself it has no generative ability to construct a merciful, or even useful community of people. In short: atheism can not survive apart from people of faith, who are needed to create the community in which atheists might be free to practice their unbelief. Atheism lives on the borrowed capital of religion-based morality and ethics, all the while hating the very hand that sustains it.

Posted by chcobb at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It is a sad commentary on me, that I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of blogging. It is not as though I am a Luddite or anything such. I actually worked my way through my theological training as the Director of I.T.

But I must confess a healthy skepticism that techno solutions are always helpful. For example, there was a good article today in the Washington Times by Jennifer Harper about the impact of technology on a marriage. See here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070123-121627-3474r.htm.

[Fear not, techno-junkies. I will once again remember (sooner or later) the appropriate html to render the above link with a little more grace.]

In any case - she makes her point well, with some rather interesting statistics. And, in any case, I am now writing my own blog. I will probably have an audience of one (that would be me, I read my own stuff, always wishing I had said it just a little differently). Oh me of little faith.

So - if you find theological ramblings, with occasional dry humor mixed in, interesting, you may drop by on occasion and see what's here. More than likely, the look and feel of the site will change periodically as I figure out exactly what it is that I am doing.

Posted by chcobb at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)