Systemic Theology

The faithmaps community has been discussing what more transpropositionally oriented term would be best selected to replace "Systematic Theology." Last evening while reading Brian Mclaren's Generous Orthodoxy, specifically, while working through chapter 9 entitled "Why I am Mystical/Poetic" (which is by far my favorite so far because it's so in tune with what we've been trying to say with the term faithmaps ), I stumbled upon Brian's suggested replacement term:

Systemic Theology.

I think it's helpful because it doesn't completely trash the modern impulse to look at things from a system perspective and yet it also doesn't tout any triumphalism of the systemic approach.

Brian also quotes with approval a favorite passage of mine from Barth's Dogmatics in Outline (though Brian lists the passage as being from the foreward to Church Dogmatics. I don't own nor have I read that book, so perhaps they share the same forward? ):

My lectures at the University of Basel are on "Systematic Theology." In Basel and elsewhere the juxtaposition of this noun and this adjective is based on a tradition which is quite recent and highly problematic. Is not the term "Systematic Theology" as paradoxical as a "wooden iron" [sic]? One day this conception will disappear just as suddenly as it has come into being.

Brian also mentions coherent, contextual, conversational, and comprehensive as potential alternatives.

andrew jones

when you speak with God and if you think of it, please mention andrew jones who had just lost his brother and now his dad this past friday night.

i bet he'd appreciate a comment on his blog too.

keeping baby while throwing out bathwater

jason clark on tradition:

1. So often we play with these traditions picking the ones that are immediate and most accessable. I am sure we are missing out on much of these traditions by just taking the easy bits we like.

2. We get people who have tried something once on a retreat to teach us how to use liturgy, when maybe we should be getting people whose life is this, and history to teach us (to avoid more of number 1!)

3. We must not make the same mistake an throw off all our traditions, just as the low church forms threw of everything. By this I mean I hear of churches abandoning their evangelical charistmatic worship experiences wholesale to embrace a completely new way of worshipping, seeing their old way as invalid. Sounds like the same mistake we made when we abandoned much of the church traditions in the first place.

4. If we don't take these cautions we are on a never ending cycle of re-inventions, superficiallity, and of being faddish, and missing out on the real value of tradition.

5. I suspect the real value of traditon is not to be 'cool', 'relevant', but to anchor us to something that confronts our consumerism (as much as I am refreshed by these traditions that are new to me).

jason gives us some helpful thoughts on tradition.

surviving cancer

just found this post by trevor mclaren who is brian mclaren's youngest son. bethany and i were going to cedar ridge and i remember when trevor was first diagnosed with cancer. well worth reading.

How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie

Warning: This post would not qualify as pomoChristian Emergent turbocool. But it would be distinctly uncool of me not to post it on that account.

My company is sending me to Walt Disney World in a few days to participate in some circulation meetings and some training in December and I was asked to read this book. I enjoyed it and found it helpful. Many of the principles in the book could be characterized as Christian and one of the delightful features of the book is the wealth of illustrations in the book. Very readable.

One theme I appreciated in the book was the importance of sincerity. Carnegie is careful to emphasize that what he is teaching should not be used merely to get what one wants.

Here's a brief summary.


o Part One: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

§ Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
§ Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.
§ Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.

o Part Two: Six Ways to Make People Like You.

§ Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people.
§ Principle 2: Smile.
§ Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
§ Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
§ Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
§ Principle 6: Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

o Part Three: How to Win People to your Way of Thinking

§ Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
§ Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
§ Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
§ Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way.
§ Principle 5: Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
§ Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
§ Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
§ Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
§ Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
§ Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives.
§ Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas.
§ Principle 12: Throw down a challenge.

o Part Four: Be a Leader: How to Change People without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

§ Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
§ Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
§ Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
§ Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
§ Principle 5: Let the other person save face.
§ Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
§ Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
§ Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
§ Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, et. al

andrew zirschky tell us about

a great debate in November of 2003 at the Youth Specialties Convention in St. Louis. It was a late night forum featuring Tony Jones, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, Duffy Robbins, and Chap Clark. And, frankly, the discussion got a little heated. But since it was a late night forum, YS neglected to record the event. So, if you dare download the 15+ megabyte file you'll be treated to the only known audio recording of the event. It's not of the highest quality, but it's okay. More importantly, it's interesting.

download the audiofile here.

the emerging culture cafe

looks like earl creps, who directs one of the the d.min programs at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, is launching a new website.

earl has one of the best resources guides i've seen on the web for emerging church.

The Balance of Imagination and Reason

Technically, extremism manifests the sin of sloth, and it results in despair-not as a divine punishment, but as the inevitable consequence of taking a road that is literally a dead end. The tyranny of unconscious images is no improvement over the tyranny of abstract ideas. Neither the rampaging flood nor the elegantly engineered water channels are sufficient for enabling the desert to blossom like the rose, or to produce food. If only the deluge can be directed, controlled, disciplined, and if only the dry water courses can be filled . . . .

Mary McDermott Shideler

Jen Ould brought up Shideler's Philosophy and Fairy Tales in the faithmaps discussion group.

When I first read this article some time ago, it took my thinking into a few different directions including:

• how story/myth/experience balances reason and enables right reason
• the limitations of information transfer for spiritual formation
• the need for balance in considering postmodern critiques of a modernized evangelicalism (and I don't mean to absolutize the movement)
  

I expanded on those thoughts here.

Epistemology and Theology: Holistic Thinking

You don't hear a lot in emerging church circles about sin anymore.

Such a lack is somewhat understandable.

Part of it is vocab. The word has been used so many times about so many things for so long that ec wants to find alternative nomenclature.

Part of it is a move in a post-evangelical ec away from a focus on the individual - a desire to break out of a mere concern with personal salvation.

Part of it is a desire to shed unnecessary baggage. The word can connote a preoccupation with playing cards and dancing as sin.

As in many ec moves, we nevertheless have to take care that baby is not thrown out with bathwater. Baggage aside, "sin" is an efficient little word that denotes much legitimately. And while Evangelicalism is well-pushed away from narcissistically focusing only on the individual, it is an overreaction to remove the legitimacy of focusing on one's own individual relationship with God. This includes, of course, a focus on sin. One's own personal sins.

As we avoid thinking deeply about "sin" to our own peril, we similarly err - as we've suggested elsewhere - when we avoid listening carefully (though discerningly) to the lights that have preceeded us.

One of those lights was William Paley, the late 18th century philosopher and theologian.

Paley addresses two topic with which ec is vitally concerned: epistemology and theology. And they speak of an aspect of how we come to know what we know in a way that's not normally treated, especially in philosophical circles. Paley explores the transpropositional aspects of knowing, zeroing specifically in on how our sin - our moral choices - effects what we claim to know and believe.

In the third volume of his Dogmatic Theology, William GT Shedd ( the famous late 19th century theologian) quotes William Paley at length after a couple of remarks:

"[William] Paley (Sermon on John 7:17) shows the influence of the vicious bias of the will upon the judgment of the understanding concerning the truty of Christianity, in the following manner. His general position is, that "virtue produces belief, and vice unbelief." Remarking upon the latter part of the proposition, he says: "A great many persons before they proceed upon an act of known transgression expressly raise the question in their own mind whether religion be true or not, in order to get at the object of their desire; for the real matter to be determined is, whether they shall have their desire gratified or not. In order to get at the vicious pleasure in some cases, or in other cases the worldly gain upon which they have set their heards, they choose to decide, and do in fact decide with themselves, that the truths of religion are not so certain as to be a reason for them to give up the pleasure which lies before them, or the advantage which is now in their power to compass and may never be again,. This conclusion does actually take place, and must almost necessarily take place, in the minds of men of bad morals.

And now remark the effect which it has upon their thoughts and belief afterward. When they come at another time to reflect upon religion, they reflect upon it as something which they had before adjudged to be unfounded, and too uncertain to be acted upon, or to be depended upon; and reflections accompanied with this adverse and unfavorable impression naturally lead to infidelity.

...

But not only do vicious and sinful men expressly raise the question to themselves, when they desire to gratify their desires, whether religion be true or not, there is also a tacit and unconsious rejection of religion which has the same effect. Whenever a man deliberately ventures upon an action which he knows that religion prohibits, he tacitly rejects religion. There may not pass in his thoughts every step which we have described, not may he come consciously to the conclusion: but he acts upon the conclusion, he practically adopts it. And the doing so will alienate his mind from religion as surely, almost, as if he had formally argued himself into an opinion of its untruth. The effect of sin is necessarily, and highly, and in all cases, adverse to the production and existence of religious faith. Real difficulties are doubled and trebled when they fall in with vicious propensities, and imaginary difficulties are readily started. Vice is wonderfully acute in discovering reasons on its own side" (Dogmatic Theology, Vol. III, pp. 81,2).

And it would be interesting to hear what corrolary Paley might have to say on the topic of "virtue produces belief" (as above).

What is very helpful in these remarks is Paley's exploration of the nexus of moral choices with belief. Belief is presented not as that which is utterly two-dimensional, logical, and sequential. Rather, belief is subjective with the knower's prior actions influencing them toward or away from particular beliefs.

I believe we see Jesus hinting at the same thing.

"John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.'"

Mark 9:37-39 (all quotes English Standard Version, emphasis mine)

Someone doing such works in Jesus' name is thusly hindering from later being able to speak pejoratively of Jesus.

Similarly, one might also see Jesus referring to a similar effect when after his resurrection but before his ascension the Lord conducts his famous interview with two of his followers on the Emmaus road. Jesus asks them what they're talking about. Cleopus responds:

"Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" ¹⁹And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

(Luke 24:18b-21a, emphasis mine)

Cleopus goes on to speak of reports of an empty tomb and Jesus says,

"'O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! '"

Luke 24:25

These two disciples seem genuinely befuddled. Moreover, they explicitly indicate "we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."

Jesus does not then simply tell them, "No, no, no, you're missing some of the steps. Let me set you straight." He does do this, but he also seems to hold them morally culpable for their lack of faith at this point. For Jesus characterizes the Emmaus disciples as being "slow of heart to believe."

This all indicates that there is no place for a putatively objective study of God or Christian theology apart from a very subjective submission to Jesus as Lord and Christian morality. The study of God must be intensely relational and flow out of obedience.

The intimate relationship between obedience and theological study can also be discerned in Jesus response to the scribe's question about the greatest commandment:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

And Jesus decided to add:

"On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Matthew 22:37b-40

The very foundation of the Scriptures is horizontal and vertical love. So also our study of them.

We've elsewhere explored other transpropositional aspects of epistemology.

Scott Stapp

I don't have anything to hide behind anymore. I don't have a band to hide behind anymore, and say, "We're not a Christian band." I was always afraid to speak about my faith publicly. I would always talk to God about it: "I'm not perfect. I don't want to be a stumbling block." What's helped me is that people are starting to realize that Christians don't have this holier-than-thou attitude, that we're not perfect.

Scott Stapp Interview in World Magazine

google for scholars

justin baeder alerts us to goggle for scholars.

from google:

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

find out more here.

april stace

is back blogging again.

sometime after brian mclaren's book on evangelism, more ready than you realized, came out, april revealed that she was alice in the book. (see jim henderson's Brian McLaren Library Page for a video of a discussion between brian and alice.)

april is the harpist in harp46 and is Director of Worship Arts Enhancement at Cedar Ridge Community Church where Brian is Senior Pastor.

The Iconoclasm of the Resurrection

Came across this wonderful passage in the Resurrection of the Son of God by NT Wright:

"What if the moratorium on speaking of Jesus' bodily resurrection, which has been kept in place until recently more by the critics' tone of voice than by sustained historical argument ('surely,' they imply on the edge of every discussion of the subject, 'you cannot be so impossibly naive as to think that something actually happened?'), should itself turn out to be part of that intellectual and cultural hegemony against which much of the world is now doing its best to reach? What if the resurrection, instead of (as is often imagined) legitimating a cosy, comfortable, socially and culturally conservative form of Christianity, should turn out to be, in the twenty-first century as in the first, the most socially, culturally and politically explosive force imaginable, blasting its way through the sealed tombs and locked doors of modernist epistemology and the (now) deeply conservative social and political culture which it sustains? (p. 713, emphasis mine) "

Gracious Disagreement

"You know, am I the only person in the entire United States of America who likes both George Bush and John Kerry, who believes they're both good people, who believe they both love our country and they just see the world differently?"

Bill Clinton at the opening of his Presidential Library on Thursday 18 November 2004

At the gathering, the following former Presidents (and one current President) also spoke graciously of former President Clinton:

President Bush,

Former President Bush,

and

Former President Carter.

I think because I'm so into conflict resolution, I love stories like this. It reminded me of the gracious comments that President Bush made of Clinton when his official portrait was unveiled in the White House in June.

Bush spoke first, lavishly lauding the man who defeated his father for reelection in 1992 and inspired his own campaign promise eight years later to restore honor and dignity to the White House. Bush kept glancing toward Clinton in the front row and at one point made Clinton laugh so hard, his face and neck turned red.

May God give us wisdom for those times when we disagree.

The Emerging Church and the Renaissance

Andrew Jones explores the nexus of emerging church stages and those of the Renaissance.

I'm not sure our conversation is yet at such a place to be compared to the Renaissance; Andrew labeled his own thoughts "thinking out loud" so I suspect he'd agree. Yet, his taxomony is interesting. It's a bit different from the one I've proffered (which I suggested wasn't definitive) but variant categorizations can be complimentary.

joe myers recommends

Found Joe Myers' (The Search to Belong) Amazon Listmania List!

My Daily Blogs

Earlier I had asked folks to let me know what their favorite blogs were in a few categories.

I'm currently tracking 121 blogs through the wonders of bloglines (my favorite aggregator). I don't read them all every day, but there are a few, for various reasons, that I generally will check any time that I see they've posted something new. They are:

• andrew jones
• brian mclaren
• dj chuang
• doug pagitt
• jason clark
• jordon cooper
• rex miller
• steve knight
• todd hunter
• tony sheng
• will sampson

kudo's to catalyst

rick lets us know that the catalyst folks (which featured mcmanus, mclaren, maxwell and others) gave every participant an American Apparel t-shirt. rick says that's cool because they are

a LA based company which makes high quality shirts while treating workers as important members of the company (they are anti-sweatshop), paying a fair wage and refusing to go off-shore to save money.

I agree!

Mosaic in the LA Times

The LA Times ran a piece on Erwin McManus church, Mosaic, in their Saturday 9 October 2004 edition.

Andrew Jones

Andrew thanks the 1240 folks that link to him.

I consider tallskinnykiwi.com to be a must read and appreciate Andrew's balance.