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Reformation of the church

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:57:49 +0100

As they embarked on their quest to find where many of our church practices have originated, Viola and Barna speak for many when they say in Pagan Christianity that they ‘ardently want their relationship with the Lord to be their top priority in life. They are tired of the institutions, denominations, and routines getting in the way of a resonant connection with Him’. If you’re mumbling to yourself right now, ‘That’s exactly how I feel’; then welcome on the journey. You are most definitely not alone.

Unfinished reform

Acknowledging that there is a reformation of the church that is ongoing in response to the above problem PC also asks whether that reformation has so far only achieved to present the ‘same stuff … in a different setting?’ That it hasn’t yet changed church to the extent that the church itself has become the transformative power in creation that God always intended it to be. This is a truly important question which should dwarf all others; a question that is regularly sidestepped as the church is content to change only some of its practices.

Controversial

Common to many reformers PC sees the mid-4^th century period as one of the key times when the church took the wrong journey. But the volume adds to this period a couple of others: namely the time surrounding the Protestant Reformation and the Revivalist period of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Identifying the latter two as periods where the church took upon herself bad practices will surely prove to be controversial for many evangelicals and yet PC says that unbiblical practices were adopted at those times, practices that ‘serve as barriers that keep us from encountering the living God.’

In the next post we’ll begin to look at Viola and Barna’s research and in particular what they feel about church buildings. In the meantime why not consider these questions: Can you see how church structure and practice is stopping you from experiencing God? Is your congregation continuing on a journey of change or has it stopped in its tracks? And should reform be a never-ending process or an event?

Comments, please!

Faith in a person not a book

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:54:49 +0100

What role does the Bible play in defining what a Christian is? Do we need to ‘believe the word of God’ before we can claim to be Christian? In certain quarters today you would think so. The Bible as the literal word of God to us has to be accepted. Any wavering on this and you would soon be condemned as being on dangerous ground.

But this has not been the case throughout church history. One German church historian noted the shift that happened during the first and second centuries C.E.:

About 50, he was of the church who had received baptism and the Holy Spirit and called Jesus, Lord; about 180, he who acknowledged the rule of faith (creed), the New Testament canon, and the authority of the bishops.

Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte – quoted in W. Walker, A History of the Christian Church (Edinburgh, 1963) page 57.

There is a lot to unpack in the above quote – not least on accepting the authority of bishops! – but you can see quite clearly that in the church’s early days your faith was defined by your relationship to God rather than what you believed. The Bible may have been important but it was not the defining question that determined your faith.

Can we see ourselves going back to that position?

Eusebius and Nicea

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:38:56 +0100

It takes a brave theologian to open-up Nicea. It was at the council held there in 325 C.E. that the church decided to define the divine nature of Jesus of Nazareth. This definition has been accepted as orthodoxy in the world-wide church ever since – though many minority groups have questioned it. In his chapter on how the historian Eusebius of Caesarea managed to infect the church with imperial values Roger Mitchell takes a critical look at Nicea, suggesting that the defence of God’s hierarchical sovereignty had as much to do with the Council as a theoretical Christology.

The divine nature of Jesus

Traditional teaching on Nicea has focussed on how some, including a cleric called Arius, were questioning whether Jesus actually shared God’s divine nature. Though they accepted him as the best example of humanity that had ever lived and the he was Son of God, they did not believe that he co-existed with God from eternity or that he was divine.

A deep split occurred within the church over the issue and while many post-Christendom thinkers have suggested that the healing of the split for the sake of unity in the empire was a motivating factor in calling the world’s first ecumenical church council, Mitchell is suggesting that there were deeper theological issues at stake. These were to do with how the sovereignty of God was viewed and how this sovereign power was transferred to the bishops and to the emperor. Eusebius was originally an Arian. It quite suited him to have God has supreme sovereign, then Jesus as a secondary figure, and then Jesus’s representatives on earth (bishop and emperor) below him – with power transferred down the hierarchical line. Having Jesus as a divine Son could not be countenanced as this would suggest a plurality of deities and monarchies.

Homoousios

So how did Nicea make it possible for the biblical emphasis on Jesus’s divinity to be accepted along-side the hierarchical principle? Mitchell – borrowing from another theologian – draws on the key Greek Nicene word homoousios. (You can’t go through theological college without having this word drilled into your brain!) It is translated simply as ‘of the same nature’. So Jesus is declared to be homoousios – ‘of the same nature’ – as the Father. But in choosing this word it is suggested that Constantine (who was in full control of the Council) deliberately chose a word that in pagan circles had the meaning of two separate gods sharing the same nature but with a subtle hierarchy between them. It was a word that certainly suited him as it gave legitimacy to hierarchy and monarchy while at the same time defending Jesus’s divine nature.

Critique of Nicea

On the basis of this understanding of homoousios Mitchell goes to offer a critique of Nicea that may well prove to be controversial. He sees the Gospels as ‘affirm[ing] a human and kenotic Christ’ who confronts the sovereign power of empire. However, Mitchell claims that Nicea ‘tended to subdue the human kenotic Jesus and ascribe sovereignty to both the Father and the Son’. And what of Nicea’s defence and definition of Jesus’s divinity and its relationship to the Father? It would seem that Mitchell would rather have left this question as the mystery that is presented in the Scriptures. For in attempting to address the issue Nicea, in Mitchell’s view, became little more than a ‘political device’ that legitimised imperial power.

This forms a series of blogposts on Roger Mitchell's Church, Gospel, & Empire. See previous post here.

The Bible and Science

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:57:24 +0100

Bishops, sex and science: a combination that was quite controversial last week as ever. At stake is the dignity of a section of our society and the livelihood of one psychotherapist. The story behind the headlines involves a journalist pretending to seek counselling to 'deal with his homosexual tendencies'. The psychotherapist – working in private practice – agrees as she is a Christian who believes a gay man can be cured of his homosexuality. The journalist breaks the story and the psychotherapist gets reprimanded by her professional body, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), who believe no such treatment is possible.

Choice and acceptance

The psychotherapist is now appealing the decision by BACP and a number of bishops, including former Archbishop George Carey, have written to support her. They believe that ‘competent practitioners, including those working with biblical Judeo-Christian values, should be free to assist those seeking help’. I have not seen BACP’s original decision in full but I presume that they base their reprimand on the current view in the science community that states that same-sex attraction is not a choice people make but something that is a part of their being; something they are born with and that they don’t have a choice about. Far from being able to be cured of their ‘affliction’ they would probably argue that those struggling with their sexuality need help to accept who they are.

I can’t claim to have carried out much research on the issue – and I’m certainly not an expert – but in all the reading I have done I have not come across one academic paper that disagrees with this scientific view. (If you know of any please send me a link.) There are, of course, Christian websites that exist who strongly argue the opposite but much of that is based on biblical understanding rather than on empirical research.

Opposing truth?

And here we have the bishops – in a debate with a professional medical body – firmly putting themselves on the side of the conservative interpretation of Scripture and against scientific understanding. This is their right, I suppose, but how wise is it? Back in the 16th century the church roundly condemned Galileo as a heretic and imprisoned him in his home for daring to question the theological truth about the movement of the sun around the earth.

In time science proved Galileo right and the church wrong. How close are we to seeing the church having to correct its stance on sexuality also?

Pagan Christianity

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:10:22 +0100

Pagan Christianity. The title says it all, does it not? And if you had any doubts about the contents of Frank Viola and George Barna’s book then their sub-title makes it even clearer – Exploring the roots of our church practices. Their central theme is that practices not ordained by God in Jesus have entered church life; practices first devised by pagans and introduced into the church and over the centuries have become the accepted way of doing things.

Church practices

Viola and Barna are interested in the day to day practical functions of the church. So you will find chapters on ‘the church building’, ‘the sermon’, and ‘the pastor’. While the book challenges many of these practices it does so based on a theological understanding and central to that is the view that the church is meant to function as a priesthood of all believers.

In saying that the church has introduced many pagan practices into its life Pagan Christianity (from now on PC) accuses the church of becoming unbiblical in its functions. It claims that the life of the church was based on ‘the timeless principles and teachings of the New Testament’ and sees the ‘first-century church as the church in its purest form, before it was tainted and corrupted’. This is certainly strong stuff but cannot be accepted without some challenge especially since the New Testament documents were only in the process of being written and collated in this period.

Key questions

Some key questions to be asked would be: how much prescription do we actually see in the NT for church practices or is there more room for plurality of form and function than PC accepts? Is there no room whatsoever for the practices of the church to be partly shaped by the culture surrounding it (as opposed to morality being shaped, for example)? Who should decide how the church interprets the NT and applies it in practice?

Your thoughts on these questions would be welcomed!

An Useful Bible

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:59:25 +0100

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking at 2 Timothy 3:16 and suggesting that though some will pluck it out of context and use it to ‘prove’ that the Bible is the inerrant word of God in all its detail this verse in fact can be used to do no such thing. Last week I looked at the word God-breathed and the previous week I considered which Scriptures it was referring to. Today it would be good to ask what the verse has to say about the purpose of Scripture.

Useful not sufficient

The NIV has it thus: it is ‘useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’. Let’s take the word ‘useful’ to begin with. The Greek is ophelimos and can be translated by ‘valuable’ or ‘profitable’ as well as ‘useful’. On its own it’s hardly a strong word, as pointed out by my friend Mark Lowe in a comment on a previous post. Paul uses it on another two occasions in his letters. It has the general meaning that something has ‘gain’ when used. In arguing against the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura some Catholic websites point out that ophelimos does not mean ‘sufficient’, in the sense that nothing else is required. And in that they are quite correct. So while Paul is saying that you would gain by studying the Scriptures, he is not saying that you need not turn anywhere else.

Training in righteousness

Now let’s ask what you would be gaining in. The verse itself is quite clear – you would gain by being taught, trained, corrected and rebuked. Also clear is the subject in which you would be taught it – righteousness. The context also makes this clear. In verse 15 Paul says that the ‘sacred writings’ would give Timothy ‘wisdom that leads to salvation’. And in verse 17 he speaks about the ‘man of God’ being ‘equipped’ for his work. Since this is a reference to Timothy’s work as a ‘minister’ then we may safely assume that Paul is talking about serving Christians in a spiritual capacity here. Indeed, the context of the whole letter – written to give the young Timothy advice and encouragement as he navigates through the choppy waters of serving a church in a pagan world – it could be said that Paul is telling him that the Hebrew scriptures could be very helpful as his spiritual and moral guide.

As indeed they are and as is the collection of books we know as the New Testament. They are highly valuable, uniquely valuable even, but they form only one part of our armoury. We have other tools to help us – not least our own access to God. But then Paul never suggested anything else.

Rejecting pluralism for empire

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:36:03 +0100

How could the church have been so infected by imperial power to render it so ineffective? This is the question that Roger Mitchell attempts to answer in the remainder of the first two parts of his book. He introduces key characters and periods in which the imperial principle was introduced and consolidated. The first of which is Eusebius of Caesarea.

Father of church history

Eusebius has the distinction of being referred to as ‘the father of church history’ and his most famous of books, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, was the first work of church history since the Book of Acts. Born around 260 C.E. in Palestine, he became the Bishop of Caesarea shortly after 313 and though he began the History in 290 he took a generation to complete it. These dates show that he was a contemporary of and a witness to some of the most momentous happenings of the early church period. His work did not just chronicle historical facts, however. He was also a theologian and an interpreter of events and his interpretation would become the accepted wisdom for centuries to follow.

Contrary to what we would expect, possibly, Eusebius did not portray Constantine as the one who ushered in messianic peace to the world. He was quite clear that this was the work of the church and was the continuation of the work already begun by Israel. However, while only the land of Israel was affected by this peace under Israel’s tenure, under the church’s tenure the whole of the empire was drawn in. Indeed, Eusebius saw the empire’s success – economic, political and military – as the result of the church’s success. A Christian emperor and a Christian empire was a sure sign that God’s work in his church was triumphant.

Plurality rejected

If a united empire and one emperor was the mark of success then the enemy over which this success was gained was polytheism and political plurality. Mitchell notes that to Eusebius this was the cause of all humanity’s problems and had to be defeated. Behind it was a demonic influence which stood against God and his plans for peace and restoration. In this kind of reasoning we can immediately see how Eusebius could then claim that empire and uniformity was a sign of victory and how plurality in either church practice or theology or in national governments was to be avoided at all costs. God’s sovereignty was manifested by uniformity in church and politics.

Eusebius, therefore, tied church and empire closely together. He probably wasn’t the first or the only one to make some of these connections but he was by far the most influential and his influence would last for a long time. In the next post we’ll look at how his view of sovereignty, of the atonement, and how the deliberations of the Council of Nicea managed to strengthen this tie to the extent that it still hasn’t been broken.

This post forms a series on Roger Mitchell’s book Church, Gospel & Empire. See previous post here.

An Ongoing Quest

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:46 +0100

Brian McLaren’s tenth and final question in his book A New Kind of Christianity asks ‘how we can translate our quest into action?’ He acknowledges that many will reject the quest but asks that we take Gamaliel’s view into consideration – if the quest is of God then it will flourish, if not then it will wither and die (Acts 5:36ff). Much of this chapter contains practical advice for people who share some of the same questions – especially people who find themselves in the midst of those aren’t.

With God on a quest

While acknowledging that his questions have partly arisen from an intellectual curiosity he also says that they have been bathed in much prayer and reflection. That is, he believes that God is in the quest somewhere. He also believes that the journey has a long history and has many saints who could act as our guides. Many are entering the quest out of desire for honesty in the face of some tough questions and are dissatisfied with the answers offered by more conservative minded theologians. But he cautions all who embark on the journey to be aware of the danger of criticising all that has gone before them and putting themselves as the new defenders of truth. We should, instead, see the past as the rungs of a ladder without which we would not have reached where we have come.

Negative responses

He also acknowledges that for many the journey is far from easy as the old ways are left behind. To such people he says, ‘Understand how hard this process is, and provide yourself with the kind of care you would want for a friend so engaged’. In undertaking the journey many will be faced with strong, negative reactions. In such circumstances it is important to respond well without bitterness and anger. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the negative responses stem from ‘inherited paradigms’ which cannot be outflanked but must ‘confronted, questioned and opened up’.

Unsatisfying answers

This is what McLaren does in this volume, of course, and this is what he encourages us to do. ‘It is time to reinvigorate the dialogue by having many of us come out of our closets and admit we have been asking these and other important questions in secret. We must stop being ashamed of our questions, and we must stop pretending to be content with unsatisfying answers … We must let our questions be the picks and shovels of a Spirit-inspired jailbreak.’

Not all the answers McLaren proposes have been satisfying in my opinion – though I haven’t been supplying a commentary or critique on his ideas. But his willingness to face the questions with honest inquiry is indeed very refreshing. It is a book that I can heartily recommend. I have been inspired by much of its content and want to follow up many of the trails he has opened. In that respect this book is certainly worth reading.

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity (London, 2010).

God-breathed Bible

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:28:58 +0100

When Paul said that ‘all scripture is inspired’ (2 Timothy 3:16, NASV) what did he mean? Last week I looked at the issue of which biblical books he could be referring to and concluded that it was the books of the Old Testament alone he had in mind. In this post I want to look at the word ‘inspired’.

God-breathed

The Greek word here is ‘theopneustos’ – literally ‘God-breathed’. (Interestingly the NIV uses this translation rather than ‘inspired’.) Nowhere else in the NT does this word appear and according to some scholars it doesn’t appear in any Greek literature from the 1st century. Maybe Paul made it up or maybe it just wasn’t in common usage but it leaves us with a dilemma in that we cannot be certain of its meaning. We can make a good, educated guess, but to insist that it carries this or that meaning seems a little too black and white.

But let’s have a go anyway. The scriptures referred to have been ‘breathed into them by God’. And there seems to be a broad consensus on that definition. What isn’t answered by that definition, however, is when this happens/ed. Did God’s breath enter into the scriptures when they were being written? Did it enter into the person doing the writing at the time of writing? Did it happen when they were first read by the recipients? Or does it happen when we read them today? For that matter, does it happen every time we read them or only sometimes? These questions are not answered by this verse.

Inspiration and accuracy

And we can ask a whole host of other key questions: what does it mean for the scriptures to be God-breathed? Does it give them an accuracy in terms of scientific knowledge, or historic, or geographic? Does it provide them with one meaning that cannot be changed throughout the years? Or can the interpretation change according to the circumstances of the time they are read? Does the breathing overcome all of the prejudices, the inconsistencies, the sinfulness, the lack of knowledge of the writer at all, in part or in whole? Do we have the same God-breathed direction today as we read and interpret them? Or are we left to our own devices?

These are big questions. Of course I understand that some find answering them quite easy. The Bible is 100% accurate in every detail. That’s what God-breathed means to them. Black and white with no room to argue. I’m afraid that I can’t agree with that interpretation of the word. It throws up far too many inconsistencies and whilst I accept some are able to push those inconsistencies deep down themselves so that they never interfere with their faith, I find myself unable to do that any longer.

For me God-breathed means that the Holy Spirit at times brings life and vitality to the words as I read and hear them. It brings them alive and inspires me in my walk with God. In these times I am challenged, encouraged, stirred, and comforted. They are words infused with the life of God and whether they are 100% accurate or not matters very little for it is the encounter with God as I read that matters most.

Imperial God

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:52:17 +0100

How is creation to be restored and how will peace – in all its manifestations and consequences – be effected within it and between it and God? Roger Mitchell understands the gospel way of doing this as a ‘kenotic gift’, a giving away by God of himself and his power for the good of creation. But it is the opposite of this that he sees in the church as it was subsumed by the ‘imperial sovereignty’ of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

Supreme power

He defines sovereignty as the expression of the rule of a sovereign – that rule being supreme and with hierarchy at the heart of its outworking. For example, in pre-parliamentary days the monarch of Great Britain was the supreme ruler of these islands and its overseas territories. The monarch was in full control of all the decision making process and by exercising this power was in full control of his/her empire. The monarch was, therefore, sovereign. This principle, argues Mitchell, infected the church with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in 312 C.E. to the extent that the means of ensuring peace and the restoration of creation was transferred from the gospel way (kenotic gift) to using sovereign power by church and state working in tandem. Peace was not to be effected by the giving away of power any longer but by being concentrated in the hands of the few and being used against the many.

Theological shift

The church, therefore, became a partner in the empire’s use of sovereign power. But it wasn’t just that church practice changed in this process; church belief – its theology – was also changed. Maybe in order to justify this unrivalled sovereign power, God himself was invested with imperial sovereignty. (More on this in a later post.) If Mitchel is correct in this then it will not do just to change church practice and structure; we must also ask some difficult questions about what we believe about God and his character. For in the quest to legitimise the imperial principle in church life the early medieval theologians created a god in their own image – a creation that may well have survived down the ages to our own day.

Defaulting to hierarchy

In the closing section of his introduction Roger Mitchell sketches some of the reform movements that have challenged this imperial power within church – groups such as the Anabaptists in the later Protestant Reformation. However, in the sketching of these movements he makes this sobering comment – ‘Even the most radical alternatives have tended to default to the machinations of sovereign power.’ This isn’t just a historical problem, I would suggest, but one we possibly see being outplayed today in Wales and no doubt other nations.

This post forms a series on Roger Mitchell’s book Church, Gospel & Empire. See previous post here.