For a while now I have been talking about the importance of an honest approach to the Scriptures.  I think it is time for a little self-reflection.  Here are some of my thoughts at this time on inspiration, inerrancy, and infabillity.

1. Of the three I's, inspiration is the easiest one for me to buy into.  
   1. Inspiration is the most important of these three.  Inerrancy and infallibility arise as a result of inspiration.  Said another way, because the text is inspired, it is inerrant and infallible. 
   2. Inspiration is vitally important for the Believer who wants to take the Bible seriously.  And I believe it is a prerequisite for studying and understanding the Scriptures properly.
   3. The reasoning behind belief in inspiration is logically problematic.  I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God because it says is is (2 Tim 3:16).  However, I believe it's statement about its nature because I have already assumed what it says is inspired.  This just may be my postmodern mindset, but I am fine with this reasoning as long as I understand it for what it actually is, a logically indefensible position.  A position of faith.
2. Inerrancy, is a little more difficult because I see what may be contradictions in details in the Bible
   1. These can be explained in several ways:
      1. our concept of proper historiography in the modern world is different from the ancient world's.  We need to be careful not to impose modern assumptions about proper method on a book that is over 2,000 years old.  
      2. Most of these can be explained in a somewhat satisfactory manner, and are probably the result of not understanding important details of the text.
      3. The most likely scenario for some of these contradictions is that inerrancy occurs only in the original manuscripts, of which we have none.  Although we can reconstruct these original manuscripts with astounding accuracy, we are still left with questions over possible scribal errors.
      4. Because inerrancy is only present in the original autographs, it is somewhat ludicrous to believe that the Bible we (hopefully) take to church on Sunday is free of errors.  It is a translation from copies, of copies, of copies, that is the subject of the theological bias of the translators.  Is there any surprise that our modern Bibles are not error free?
   2. That the Bible is free from errors does pose some rather difficult questions.  However, it has been demonstrated time and again (in my opinion) that the Bible, as a record of selected historical events, is almost unparalleled for its reliability in the ancient world.  
   3. In spite of numerous attempts to discredit it, it has always come up trustworthy.  In light of this, I do hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, even though I can almost hear, higher-critical readers snickering in the background.
3. Infallability is the difficult one, although to be clear I have not given up on this belief.
   1. I am down with people believing the Bible is without error, but that doesn't mean the bible is incapable of error.  One does not necessarily lead to the other.
   2. It seems to me that many people who ascribe to this belief do so in two ways
      1. they believe it without really thinking in detail about its implications
      2. they somehow believe that the Bible looses most if not all importance without infallibility.  The importance of the Scriptures comes from their inspiration, not their infallibility.  If infallibility exists, than it is as a result of inspiration, not the other way around.  They need the Bible to be infallible so they can justify their high view of it, although I believe one can have a very high view of Scripture without needing to subscribe to infallibility.
4. At the end of the day, these three beliefs are all founded in faith.  It is one thing to prove the historical superiority of the text, which has been done many times over.  But it is another thing entirely to take that historical accuracy and build from it a case of inerrancy, inspiration, or infallibility.
   1. we all need to understand and appreciate this fact.  These beliefs are the result of faith in a text about faith.  

It goes without saying but I don't have any of this figure out.  This just reflects my current thinking, as  backward and simple as it my be.

Also, I recently finished reading Kingdom of Priests: A History of Old Testament Israel by Eugene Merrill.  It is a fantastic survey of OT history from a evangelical mindset.  The introduction, which includes a section on pursuing an accurate historical reading while holding conservative assumptions about the text, is reason alone for picking up this Book.  Below is an amazon affiliate link.  

Kingdom of Priests: A History of Old Testament Israel

Sola Scriptura is a fraud

Sola Scriptura isn't a fraud per say, so I admit to the somewhat misleading nature of the title.  The doctrine of Sola Scriptura in its essence states the the final authority for all doctrine rests in the Bible alone.  This stands in opposition to Catholic and Orthodox positions that Scripture is one of three equal sources for determining doctrine.

     I think many believers like to think that they come to the Bible with an open mind.  Like the ideal scientist who lets the results of the scientific method determine the outcome of the experiment, Christians think (as I described in my last post) that they let the Bible determine their theology.  They are living in a world of dreams.  Anything approaching a "pure" reading of the Bible, does not exist.  However, do not lament.  It doesn't need to exist.  The trick to reading the Bible well is not to defeat all presuppositions, but to recognize them for what they are, unavoidable determiners for how you read the text.

     What we believe, and are taught about the nature of the Bible, determines much about our reading of the Bible.  Many more "conservative" (I HATE this label), Christians presuppose things like inerrancy, infallibility, and inspiration.  To be sure, these beliefs find a basis in the Scripture itself. These are self-descriptions of the word of God, but their nature is one of presupposition because they cannot be proven.  These things are matters of faith not fact.

     Likewise, other (less conservative?) people who approach the Bible, Christian and otherwise, do so with their own set of assumptions about the text.  Many who study the Bible academically totally deny divine origin, experience (miracles), or existence at all.  (How one can properly study a document and understand it while at the same time denying its most foundational element, the existence of God, is beyond my comprehension).  Needless to say, this leads them down a totally different rabbit hole than their conservative counterparts.  Their problem is one of faith also though.  I know of no conclusive proof that God can't or doesn't exist.  Atheism is nothing more than the belief that there is nothing higher to believe in, but I digress.

     So, in my opinion, the pursuit of an honest reading of Scripture does not begin by choking out all presuppositions.  But by coming to terms with what exactly they are and how they will direct your doctrinal development.

 

     

The Theology-Scripture circle

In my last post I introduced two different approaches to theological interactions with Scripture, Scripturizing theology (using the Bible to support your Theological opinions), and theologizing Scripture (making the Bible determine your theological positions).  This post I want to delve into the relationship between the two.

My last post made the point that moving from theology to Scripture is dangerous.  I still agree with that statement but just as one extreme is dangerous the other is just as dangerous if not even more ludicrous.  It seems that the ultimate in lunacy would be to hand a 5 year-old the NIV and let them come to their own conclusions on things like justification by faith, eternal security, or Jesus' fulfillment of OT messianic prophecies.  This though is the ultimate use of Scripture informing Theology.  We have taken an impressionable child and without giving them any sort of framework tasked them with building their own theology.  This is equally as dangerous, and probably impossible.

Our theology needs to inform our reading of the Holy Scripture in that it provides a framework upon which we build our knowledge of Scripture.    Our brains can store vast amounts of information because they categorize and organize it all.  Theology (especially systematic theology) is the categorization of Biblical revelation.  We need theology to understand Scripture.

The danger becomes when theology begins to equal or trump Scripture. At the end of the day, Theology is the servant of Scripture, not the other way around.

How then do we balance these two?  

1. Scripture is the supreme authority.  If you ever need to do Exegetical jumping jacks to explain your theology you are screwing things up.  Conservative Christians do this all the time.  They claim to be the ones who respect Biblical authority, yet bend the Bible into pretzels to make it say what they want.  When you do this you take the mantle of "authority" off of the Scripture and place it on your own shoulders.  You (and me) and your theology (and mine) are subservient to Bible.
2. Let the Scriptures mold and adapt your theology.  Think of it like this:  Scripture and Theology are two halves of one circle.  Neither is complete without the other.  You can in at any point of that circle and begin to move around and around.  As you move from Theology to Scripture, be intent on letting Scripture develop your theology.  As you move from Scripture to theology let your greater knowledge and understanding reinforce and build up that famework of Theology.
3. The entire Scripture is the supreme authority.  Don't over-gorge yourself on Paul only to starve yourself on Jeremiah.  Often Christians develop a "cannon within a cannon" continually regurgitating the same portions of Scripture.  Your theology will never develop fully without a solid understanding of the entire Scripture (cannon, and cannon will be the basis for a later blog, please stay tuned) 

the significance of Scripture

  This blog begins a series on the nature of the Bible for Christians.  It will explore Biblical presuppositions, the process of drawing out meanings from Scipture, and good practices for Biblical interpretation among others.

How do you read the Bible?  For Believers this is a foundational issue that needs to be contemplated.  You see, we all develop a personal theology that finds it roots in multiple sources, parents, teachers, friends, books, etc.  However, ultimately we should be seeking to bring our theology into harmony with Scriptural truths.  The process by which we harmonize our theology with the Bible generally happens in two ways:

1. Scripturalizing our Theology. 

     This is when any of us has or develops a particular theological position and then goes to the Bible to find the necessary support.  

2. Theologizing Scripture

     This is when we read the Bible and begin the process of principalizing and theologizing the Scriptural truths found therein.

3. An example

     Being that I grew up Pentecostal circles we had the distinctive doctrine of Baptism in the Holy Spirit (BHS) wherein a person has an initial salvation experience and then a separate distinct Baptism experience (BHS) evidence by the speaking in other tongues.  

     All my life growing up I heard things like, we believe in the BHS with the initial physical evidence of Speaking on Tongues, and here is the evidence. . . (I won't go into the specific scriptural proofs here, it is outside the emphasis of this blog).   This is an example of the first approach to drawing Theology out of Scripture.  However, when I went to college I began to look at Scripture and see that (in my own humble opinion), I could not, with intellectual honesty, accept the prevailing position wholeheartedly. 

What my pastors were doing (using the Bible to justify theological positions) when I was growing up was not bad, just dangerous.  The conclusions they came to were not wholly wrong, nor destructive in any way.  However, nut jobs who have no Biblical training, decide they have all of the theological answers and pull verses that have no contextual relationship with one another out to support some asinine theological position, that ends up destroying people's lives.

I am not demonizing anyone who follows this first line of thinking, in fact, I use it myself when teaching theological doctrines to people.  What I want to do here though, is call attention to the process scripturalizing our theological presuppositions.  This can lead us down some scary theological roads of which we tread with great danger. 

What do you think, did you grow up in a similar situation?  Has either approach caused you issues in the working out of your faith?  Let me know, I am interested to hear.

 

This post is simply an introduction into this idea, next post on Friday I plan on throwing out some thoughts on the Scriptural theology interaction.

Ugly Christians

Last post I ended with a declaration that us younger Christians don't want leaders who think they know everything.  Today I wanted to unpack that assertion a little and hopefully clarify what that means.

1. we are so ugly and screwed up ourselves that if you present personal perfection many of us will walk away.  Life has beaten most of us up. The statistics tell us that most people of my age group have tried and are consistently using drugs, alcohol, or porn.  These three things are ruining us.  We have so many monsters in our closet that the preacher with the happy family, white teeth, and nice clothes is totally foreign.  We often don't relate to you, and that means we don't listen to you either.  
2. There is a vast dichotomy between your ideal self and your real self, embrace it.  If you hide who you actually are it will destroy you in the end.  Jimmy Swaggart, Bernie Madoff, and John Edwards are perfect examples of this.  If you confess to your actual ugliness you save yourself from your eventual downfall.  People can relate to ugly, people follow ugly.  Your ugliness will eventually rear its head, why not put it out there for everyone to see.
3. We respond to ugly.  Because we have issues (point 1), and you have issues (point 2), know that we will respond to a leader who goes through the same trials and tribulations as us.  Jesus came and lived life among us, in part to show us that he didn't demand something of us that he didn't do himself.  Let us into your process of progressive sanctification.  If you do that, you will lead us down an eternity shifting path.  
4. The world is filled with broken and ugly people looking for a way out.  Our spiritual leaders need to show a little more brokenness and ugliness so that we know there is a way out.  Don't be perfect, be you.  That is what we want, real people who are just as screwed up as us showing us the way to and through salvation.

fixing the wal-mart culture

Last week I started a series about how and why twenty-somethings are fleeing the church.  Last post presented a set of reasons why we (I am a 24 year old licensed minister) are leaving the church.  This post will balance those reasons with possible solutions for overcoming those.  These ideas are the start of my theory for how end the exodus of the younger generations. 

1. Engage us in our language

     As I said last post, we are always engaging in one form or another in some sort of community be it facebook, twitter, or some other online group.  If you want to reach us but don't use these forms of communication forget about impacting our lives.  

     This outlook on life has it drawbacks to be sure.  We are not nearly as patient as our forefathers, if you can't communicate your message to us in 140 characters or less many of us likely don't care.  However, just as a missionary going to the Congo has to learn the language and culture of the people to contextualize the Gospel for them, so you must do to reach us in our spiritual wilderness wanderings, and wandering we are.

2. Recognize the value of intentional conversation

     When you become intentional about engaging our community, recognize the value in what we have to say.  Often church leaders are older than us, for good reason.  You (as the church leader), know more than us and have greater life experience than we do.  However, don't let your experience fool you.  While what you have to say is eternally valuable, we add something of value to the conversation too.  Don't forget the struggles you faced when taking on the mantle of the church from your fathers.  You had new ideas, thoughts, desires, and situations for which the Gospel needs to be contextualized, we are you, just younger.  

     To be sure, we will screw stuff up and commit some theological faux pas, but that is okay, you did too.  Talk with us not at us.  Give us the room to work out our faith with "fear and trembling," and be partners with us in doing so.

3. You Don't have all of the answers, embrace it.

     Twenty-somethings are arrogant.  We know that we know a lot.  One of the things we know very well is that our supposed leaders do not have all of the answers.  Any pretense that you do have all of our answers is screaming for us to turn you off.  

     The strange thing about this is that we don't care that you don't have all of the answers, in fact we don't want you to.  You know what would really surprise and impact us?  A leader who freely admits to not knowing and who wants to engage us in conversation about all things Christ.  We are a really screwed up generation, who wants to follow screwed up leaders.  Spit and shine does not appeal to us.

Join me for my next blog about the need for ugly Christians to appeal to our generation.   

     

The Young Adult Exodus: Wal-mart culture

I want to start a new series of blogs on why twenty-somethings are all fleeing from the church with no intentions on coming back into the fold.  There are a series of reasons why "church" doesn't work for younger people any more and the model needs to be updated.  I was originally going to call this series "rechurch" but as  I thought about it the name didn't fit.


"Church" today is largely impacted by a sort of Wal-mart culture.  Christians come to church once or twice a week to get a spiritual boost, coming with the intention of squeezing enough out of a service to get us through the week.  This approach does not jive with how we think.  This approach doesn't lend itself to the community we want to participate in.  Churches are filled with surface level interactions (how are you, how is the family, what is your favorite Bible verse etc.). Church is intended to be place where people come to work out their spiritual problems, in a safe community of believers.  The current state of affairs at many churches does not accomplish this and we see through the haze of fabricated interactions and don't like what we see.

Growing up, I heard over and over again about how with the advent of the internet people would be somehow less and less connected.  However, the opposite has happened.  With the advent of services like Facebook, twitter, myspace, and Linked in, people (especially of my generation) are more interconnected than ever, but not with a church.  A Sunday morning church service does not fit that style of community.  Your weekly trip to church is the spiritual equivalent of your weekly Wal-mart grocery trip.  We are interested in continual conversation rather than passively sitting and listening to someone standing behind a pulpit.

Church services are usually at inconvenient times.  Sunday morning services don't fit very well into many younger peoples schedules.  We have grown up in a culture in which we were expected to work on Sunday because most of us have held either a retail or fast food job at some point.  The people who usually run churches hail from a time where Sunday was an off limits work day, this is no longer the case.  Additionally, we spend nights out, Saturday and Sunday mornings are meant to sleep in and recover.  Pastors are kidding themselves if they actually believe that anyone under 30 actually likes having to get up early on a Sunday morning to go to church.  If you want to reach young adults, make Christ convenient.  

My next post will give a few hints on how to go about reaching and impact the twenty-something group.  We are a spiritually needy group who is actively searching for Christ.  Feel free to comment with your thoughts on the topic.

Defending God

My last post briefly discussed three ways in which academic and practical pursuits of Scripture need to work together for the benefit of Christianity.  Today I want to briefly look at Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion as an example for how I think these two disciplines should be working together.

In his book, which has the stated aim to prove that Atheism is the logically superior choice to any form of religious expression, Dawkins spends a great deal of time setting up a straw-man God (the grandfatherly figure in the sky) which he can then easily tear apart.  A large portion of his book consists of introducing traditional arguments for the existence of God, only to show that they are, "infantile," and "dialectical prestidigitation.”  Throughout his work, Dawkins words ring of a self-satisfied smug grin. clearly he is impressed with his intellectual abilities.

Dawkins makes a strong argument that none of these traditional arguments for God's existence actually accomplish what they set out to do, and I agree with him.  Some of his favorite arguments are, the ontological argument, cosmological argument, pascals wager, teleological argument, and the argument from religious experience. These arguments are not proofs, they only function as support for someone already leaning in the direction of belief.  They don't force belief, they support it.

All of these arguments have root in academic pursuits at some point, but are now often articulated in some form in Christianity at large.  This is for good reason, for people who's worldview allows for the existence of things they cannot readily scientifically examine (i.e. God) these arguments hold some weight.  The problem with Dawkins is that his worldview almost totally precludes even the possibility of God, thus these arguments hold no weight.  It is easy to disbelieve something that you have convinced yourself you are not able to believe.  His worldview allows no room for faith, thus God can't exist.

What am I getting at?  People like William Lane Craig are at the forefront of discussions like this, and are uniquely gifted to spend time pursuing questions like this.  He has spent years studying, researching, and writing about an intellectually defensible Christianity.  Pastors and teachers would do well to avail themselves of knowledge and resources like those William Lane Craig provides to help them deal with the issues and questions that will inevitably come as a result of the cultural permeation of Dawkins-like ideas.  Dawkins knows that most professors are so set in their beliefs that he can't sway them. However, he is hoping that by arrogant language and clever verbiage he can convince the less educated (and then in his opinion inferior) individual to follow his line of thinking.

You see, Craig does a great job of presenting answers to objections to the faith, but without people to support, learn, and eventually teach the things that he teaches, his work is in vain.  On the flip side, if people do not avail themselves of his work, they condemn themselves to a lack of usable knowledge with which to defend their own faith.

Have you read The God Delusion if so what did you think?  Did it sway or change your view of Christianity?  I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Check back next post when I begin a series called "Rechurch"

communication is the key

In my last post I introduced the idea that academic pursuits to Scripture and practical approaches to Scripture are often thought of as at odds to each other but are in fact two sides of the same coin. 

People today are becoming more educated at an ever increasing rate.  The people often responsible for communicating Scriptural principles (pastors, deacons, and the like) are being placed under an ever increasing need to articulate the faith with greater intelligence and deftness of word than ever before.  Often these people have much less "education" in terms of years than university professors.  There needs to be an ongoing dialogue between these two camps because pastors often make more persuasive communicators to people potentially joining the faith.

Due to increasing educational rates, people entering, exploring, and living out Christianity are less likely to buy into a poorly investigated and articulated doctrinal positions than ever before.  No longer is the phrase, "because the Bible says so" good enough for most people.  

Some of the most brilliant people on the earth are dedicating themselves to eradicating the underlying theological foundations of Christianity, and they are targeting everyday people of religious interest as their key demographic. It is our job to vie with the likes of Richard Dawkins (author of the God Delusion), to explicate an intellectually honest, and forthright version of the faith, that has the ability to speak to people's needs and change their lives. 

Next post I will reflect on Dawkin's book as an example of the dialogue that can happen between Christianity and atheism.

What do you think?  Have you run into these issues before?  Are you facing the issues described here?  I would love to hear from you.

Academic v. practical- Bridging the gap

For years there has been a very real tension between two different approaches to Scripture.  On the one hand you have the academic approach.  Colleges and universities study the details of Biblical passages, develop and deconstruct varying theological positions, and piece together broken pottery in an attempt to figure out the original context of religious dialogue.

On the other hand you have the practical approach.  Pastors, priests, and deacons are often not concerned with the existence of deutero-Isaiah, Akkadian cognates for Hebrew verbs, or the exact location of Babylon in 830 B.C.E.  They are concerned with a simple and direct communication of God's word and its application for their people from week to week.  These two approaches are as different as they are necessary.

Think about it like this: Christian academics are the test pilots of the faith while pastors (or whatever any individual congregation calls its leaders) are the the commercial pilots taking people on their spiritual journeys.  One cannot exist without the other, just like faith and works in James 2.

Christian academics are on the frontier of Christian thought, testing, examining, and questioning, aspects of our faith which will trickle down and are then explicated by pastors and their like.  Just like test pilots test, examine, and refine aspects of airplane design that eventually get integrated into commercial air technology.  Each side serves the other.


My desire is to help bridge that gap.  There are exciting and significant discussions going on in both "academic" and "practical" circles and my desire is to have one foot in both sides of that discussion, bringing out the practical implications of academic inquiry. 


Tune in next blog for some thoughts about how these two disciplines should be feeding off of each other.


What do you think about this, has the academic study of the Bible gone too far or is the practical side of Biblical study falling behind?  Does the academic study of Scripture even have a place in our churches.  Hit me up with a comment I would love to hear your thoughts!