We'll Figure It Out

So, as I commented on Friday, I think we've run aground on our latest string of posts, which might reflect the degree of difficulty of the enterprise.  I'm not sure I can fully frame what the enterprise is, exactly, but it's something to the effect of proposing a way forward for faith in Jesus in a secularizing western world.  We've used terms like "stage 4" or "centered set" along the way to try to characterize what this way forward might feel like.

Not all of us would agree that that's needed.  Maybe just learning from all the best thinkers in the church and theological worlds will do the trick.  If that's your take, fair enough!  I don't believe it, though, and that's been the spirit of the last posts.

But, just to clarify, it was clear to me we'd run aground when the last post drew impassioned defenses of theology or studying the Bible.  I was taken aback.  Was I arguing for anything but that?  This whole chain of posts, after all, had started with a post I'd done comparing the theologies of the Pietists, early Methodists, Lutherans, and reformation-era Catholics.  That sounded...theological to me. 

And it seemed to ground our conversation, if in a glancing way, with some historical thought on the subjects at hand, even as we attempt to press forward, which is what theology has historically done.  It did mention some traditions that evangelicals rarely look at, but perhaps that can reflect on the thinness of some evangelical theology rather than on the uselessness of Pietists, early Methodists, Lutherans and (though they were the villains in this post) reformation-era Catholics.

My point, in conception at least, was not that the way past the alleged deficiencies in evangelical theology was to scrap theology or the Bible, but to transcend the (to my mind) culturally-bound terms that have rendered it less than useful.  My enemies in the last post, you'll recall, were the Pharisees.  I don't see the Pharisees as our model for good theology, but rather as our model for lots of bankrupt proof-texting from scholars who'd lost sight that God was knowable. 

When I talked about people in our church from evangelical backgrounds occasionally complaining about wanting more "meat" from me or from our church, I wasn't conceding their point that there was more meat where they'd come from, but that I refused to feed them.  My take: the perceived "meat" they were looking for was thin stuff indeed, pumped full of steroids and sawdust, but the rich repast being offered them was unappealing because they'd become so accustomed to the other gruel.  (That sounds, oh, immodest.  I'll figure out a way to rephrase before we're done.  But...to make the point.) 

As I mentioned in one of my comments in the last post: I'm in conversations about starting a whole theological institute, costing big money and big effort in the end.  Three cheers for theology!  It's a good deal of what I regard myself as doing.

A lot of our road through these last few posts has involved questioning accepted definitions of terms of interest, like "love," "religion" and "Christian."  This could seem, I suppose, like a jettisoning of thought, because a renunciation of terms could seem like heading into...nothing.  But most theological steps forward throughout the history of the church have involved questioning terms.  The most famous thinker in the last century to talk about a "religionless Christianity" was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nobody's idea of an anti-intellectual.  

So, hey, we'll need to figure out another way to have this conversation someday, because it's a central one to our enterprise.  Clearly the terms I laid out just didn't work and generated more heat than light. 
At the moment, I'm not coming up with better ones, but that's been true along the way with a number of subjects, and we have been able to find ways profitably into those subjects just a short time later.  May it be true here.