The Visible Church

Lesslie Newbigin was a great man and an under-rated theologian. This fall I have been taking a course called "Readings in the theology of Lesslie Newbigin." In order to understand his theology, however, we must also understand his life. Newbigin was a missionary, an ecumenisist, a theologian, a bishop, a preacher, and a pastor. Most of his career was spent in India working for the Church of Southern India, a church which he helped bring together out of the missionary efforts of the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church, the Church of England, and the British Methodist church. He served in several capacities there as well as in Britian. I was first introduced to Bishop Newbigin in Dr. David VanHeemst's "Post Modern Political Theory" course. In it we read The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society. If I am completely honest, I do not remember exactly what that book was about, but I think it dealt with culture and its influence upon conceptions of truth. It may have also discussed how Christians do not need to accept foreign epistemologies. Regardless, I do remember loving the book. (I get confused because of the other material I had been reading for DVH and for my Dad. Some stuff by Marshall and Clapp sounds familiar. In addition I think my own engagement with theology had brought me to similar conclusions. Newbigin provided language for thoughts that I already possessed.)

In the present course we have read his Sin and Salvation, The Good Shepherd, and Signs Amid the Rubble. I highly recommend these books to anyone, and I believe every pastor should own The Good Shepherd (even if it is out of print! )

This week our reading came from The Household of God. It deals with Newbigin's ecclesiology. I find this to be incredibly exciting because I love ecclesiology, I love the church. (see my facebook note titled "I love you Belleville first")  After a long discussion about the nature of faith and its relation to the church, newbigin begins to explain his conception of church. He does this through critique of the protestant idea that individuals can come to God apart from the church. Newbigin argues that the Church is defined as whereever the Word is preached and the sacraments recieved. this means, however, that the Church comes through people. He then argues against the protestant conception of a visible and invisible church. He, perhaps unfairly, indicts luther for using this unscriptural language in Luther's attempts to reform the church. Since Luther emphasized the "invisible" nature of the church, the church has lost the idea of visible unity.

This leads Newbigin to ask the question, "How has it come about that the vast majority of Protestant Christians are content to see the Church of Jesus Christ split up into hundreds of separate sects, feel no sense of shame about such a situation, and sometimes even glory in it and claim the support of the New Testament for it?"

His question is an indictment against all protestants who are content with the denominational divide. Are we cotent with it? To go a step further, do we support greater division in the church? Do we see the demise of denominations to be a good thing? (that is a fun question to answer!)

The more I read of Newbigin, the more embarassed I become about my past thoughts concerning my denomination, but perhaps this is not just a trend of my denomination. I have noticed a trend within the Church of the Nazarene to assert its distinctive theology, an attempt to legitimatize the distinction between Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and Methodists. I cannot help but think this is the exact opposite of what we, as Christians, ought to be doing. This might be true of other denominations, but I feel as though in recent years many churches have been diggin in. They pull out their government issued shovels and dig their foxholes around a certain issue or couple of issues coming out to blast certain enemies. It seems as though thousands of feet have dug themselves in the ground getting ready to take a huge blow. This cannot be correct.
If there is One God and one baptism... shouldn't there be one Church?

Part of me would like to go on a rant against contemporary hyper denominationalism that is faddishly known as "Non denominationalism," but I won't. Instead I leave with a question. How or why are some (perhaps many) Christians content to see the bride of Christ, to see Christ's body split up into thousands of pieces? If God can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine by the power that is at work within us, then why is unity of the visible church seen as an imposibility? If Christ came to reconcile all things, then why are Christians not incredibly disturbed at the lack of reconciliation within Christ's own body?

Needles and thread

Earlier this week I was playing on facebook and went on my Evan Frerich's page. Evan and I played in our band Product 6 with Luke and John. we sure had a blast practicing and travelling the midwest. We played at camps, retreats, revivals, and concerts. John and Evan used to climb on the top of his church's roof. I could tell tons of awesome stories from the P6 days, but i am not writing about that. E has always been a musical guy and a musically connected one. I saw a link for www.thesixtyone.com. so I checked it out. The website is pretty awesome. It allows free listening to thousands of songs. It helped me remember that I truly love music. I also love being in the know when it comes to new music. As a result have found quite a few bands that are worth checking out. I recommend House of Heroes and The Rescues. while all this is awesome, Sleeping at Last is what prompted this entry. They are a band that I have loved in the past, but I have forgotten about them. I found them again, and I love it.

Their song Needle and thread is particularly beautiful. The chorus of the song is

We are made of love, 

And all the beauty stemming from it. 

We are made of love, 

And every fracture caused by the lack of love. 

Caused by the lack of love

This describes both the ideal and failure of humans. We are made of love by the creator of love and our purpose is to love. We fail whenever we do not love perfectly. Fractures are caused by a lack of love, and no human loves perfectly, therefore we are all fractured. Lesslie Newbigin described the human position as one of contradiction. Contradiction is quite similar to fractured. we are. I think St. Paul was the most blunt in his description of us. He said "all have sinned." For some reason Paul's words offend us, but if we think about it, it is true. We all sin because none of us lives up to the standard perfect love. And we are made of love. I hope one day I can live up to that love. Love is beautiful, and anything that embodies beauty is a result of love. What a poetic way to explain our fault, but also our potential. Thanks sleeping at last. Your epic music fits the profundity of these lyrics. i hope everyone can agree and come to recognize their own lack. In doing so they can find a way to heal those fractures. the way to heal a fracture is with the triune God who is love. to this God be the glory forever.

The Good I want to do...

In 'The Good Shepherd'; Meditation on Christian Ministry in Today's World Lesslie Newbigin says, 

"Very often our theme, if not the actual text, is chosen for us by the Chruch in the plan of lessons set forth in the Book of Common Worship... It is a safeguard against becoming a prisoner of my own limited ideas and emotions. It compels me over and over again to preach on a passage which i would not have chosen for myself., and therefore compels me to wrestle with what s new and unfamiliar to me. I would say that this wrestling with an uncongenial text can be the source of endless new insight. I am sure that the most helpful sermons I have preached have been those which came out of this kind of wrestling, not from texts which I could choose for myself."

I hope Newbigin's reflection on a long life of preaching comes to be true for me. Philip and i are going through the book of Romans. We have different perspectives on the book, yet we both wish to be faithful to its author and to the Gospel. Since I do not have to preach every week, I get time to mull over the passage. I get to live in it and let it marinade in my brain for a couple of weeks. Yet even if I were to go with KC's best, I am unsure that I will know how to handle my passage.  I get to preach out of Romans 7. here are the verses

Romans 7.14-8.6

14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. 15I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
8There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set youfree from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

I know this passage is incredibly important, but it is also incredibly difficult. I may have chosen this in a couple of years, but not now. Lets hope I can wrestle with it and that God will use that wrestling. For now I post the passage. comments welcome. What questions do you have? What question is Paul answering? How does this pericope operate within the wider Roman context?

this week, a conundrum

So I missed last week's sermon, and I have not yet listened to it online (on my list for tomorrow), but I am excited to see what happens this Sunday. I am going to assume that our next pericope(passage) will be Romans 1:18-32. It says,

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.


Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practise such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practise them. (courtesy of bible.oremus.org)

i translated this passage with much difficulty last week. I am taking a course on justification, for which this is one of the main passages. Today Dr. Campbell suggested that perhaps Paul is not the person speaking here. Maybe there is an interlocutor here. I am not yet certain on any position. But I do have a question. here Paul presents a situation in which, "they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened." It seems as though our ability to know God apart from divine revelation is what makes us culpable, and therefore worthy of punishment. The argument is based on Natural Theology.

If we assume that Paul wrote Romans and that Paul also wrote 1 Corinthians (which almost every Biblical scholar will admit) then Paul seems to be contradicting himself. in 1 Corinthians 2 he says,

6 Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. 7But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9But, as it is written,
‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—
10these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.

In this passage it seems as though natural theology is useless. What humans can know about God is only very little, and out of ignorance humans will kill God. The question then becomes, how is this true? How are we culpable for that which we cannot know apart from God? Is Romans 1:18 paradigmatic for all humans? Where does Paul tell us this? Just questions that I am working through. Hopefully I will have some answers later in the semester. I guess I need to keep reading and keep studying. I will fill you in as I get some answers.

This summer, I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about ministries at Warren's Grove. The greatest need I saw was something for people between the ages of 18-30. We have about 27 people loosely associated with the church in that age range. I know that this is a broad area with a ton of development that occurs within that decade, but it is still a fun age group. People develop at differing speeds, so age doesn't always tell a lot, but it is the best barometer for a small group at a church. Knowing all this, I decided to take advice from Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come." Therefore this fall we will be having a young adult small group at 7:00 PM in the fellowship hall. We will start on Sept 27th. The small group will be organized as a type of study. I have titled it "Christianity 101: What is this religion?"  Even as much as we might think we know Christianity, the religion is 2000 years old. I do not think any one person completely comprehends it. I think it might be fun to explore the religion. We will begin with the Apostle and Nicene Creeds and go from there. All who consider themselves "Young Adults" are welcome to come.  Check out this awesome flyer from a college friend Chris Sanders. Check out his website: http://www.christopherdelbert.com Thanks CSanders! 

Philip's Blog has inspired me to return to the blogging world once again. I do not know how valuable a tool this will be for ministry, but who knows. Maybe something will come of it. For now I am excited about our adventure into Romans. I am also taking a course on Romans so it will be fun to see the points of tension between Richard Hays and Douglass Campbell as seen through the lenses of two students and pastors work at the same church.  I welcome anyone to follow along. Not everything will pertain to church, but we will see.

grace and peace
Q